Why Is Marriage Important In The 21st Century

The act of marriage is perceived differently depending on the individual, however, it is clear that a generalization can be put into place looking back both historically and on our values today. In our modern world, the act of getting married can be described as mutual affection, equality on both ends to support one another other, and wanting to be with someone based on care for them, and not out of one’s own benefit. These values in our 21st century are drastically different than what was common in the 17th century. It is important to look back onto how marriage used to be historical. This can be indicated by analyzing the interactions between the characters in Pride and Prejudice, written by Jane Austen. This novel highlights the desires of love and marriage for these characters and the struggle for women to attain this for much different reasoning: they had no way to

They were not entitled to become educated or employed and instead had to spend all of their time training to become the ideal domestic wife, through sewing or playing the piano to prove their worth. With this disadvantage, financial stability was the top and most important quality when finding a man to marry since they could not attain that independently. The women in Pride and Prejudice were competitive to win the best man they could find, which created the plot for this novel. Writer Daryl Jones described them as, “feisty, intelligent heroine in financially straitened circumstances [that] overcome the opposition of a backward-looking tradition and authority, as well as the preconceptions about class and money to which her own sceptical intelligence has initially predisposed her, to win the hand of a man who is effectively the richest man in England.” (Jones pg. 93). Austen illustrated this struggle between multiple women fighting for men throughout this novel, and the differences of their individual