MARRIAGE MATERIAL
Rebecca Probert explores how Austen’s novels reflected the reality of getting married in Regency England
Marriage in Jane Austen’s day was a serious business, says Rebecca Probert
From the opening lines of Pride
and Prejudice, we all know that “a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”. Of course, what Jane Austen really shows us is that single women lacking a fortune had very few options other than a husband. The professions were closed to women, however capable they were. Middle-class women might find employment as companions, teachers or governesses. Lower down the scale, women might work as servants or nurses, or even in the burgeoning factories of the Industrial Revolution. But for gentlemen’s daughters, it was marriage or an increasingly resented dependency on family.
So how did one meet potential spouses and decide whom to marry, and when? What role did money or love play, and how much control did parents exert? How and where did couples get married, and what did they expect of married life?
Suitable partners
At the highest levels of society, aristocratic young women would be presented at court and enjoy a ‘season’ in London during which they would meet eligible men of their own class in carefully monitored situations. For the gentry and professional classes, however, access to this national marriage market was generally not an option. Most of Jane’s heroines depend on eligible men turning up within their own family circle, with three marrying men to whom they are related by blood or marriage. Others fall in love rapidly when a suitable candidate arrives on the scene – in Persuasion, Jane Austen hints that Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth might have fallen for each other even if they had been less suited, since “he had nothing to
do, and she had hardly anyone to love”. After Anne is persuaded into giving him up, no equivalent suitor can be found “in the small limits of the society around them”. No wonder, then, that the arrival of Bingley and Darcy causes such excitement at Longbourn, and that Catherine Morland has to travel as far afield as Bath and Northanger Abbey to enjoy the adventures befitting a heroine!
Lower down the social scale, children might leave home at a fairly young age to work as servants and apprentices, depending on the employment opportunities available locally. Given the long hours of work, and the control exerted by employers, this did not necessarily bring them more freedom, but it did potentially enlarge their circle of acquaintances, and potential spouses.
In the first quarter of the 19th century, the average age at first marriage was 25½ years for men and under 24 for women, but this varied considerably by class. The poor were advised to delay their marriage in order to ensure that they had sufficient resources to set up home together. Professional men usually felt the need to establish themselves before marrying.
By contrast, those who did not have to make their own way in life could afford to marry at a younger age. Heirs married at an earlier age than their younger siblings, and many aristocratic and gentlemen’s daughters, like Catherine Morland, were barely out of their teens when they wed.
Mr Elton may be crass in claiming that everyone “has their level”, but most of Jane Austen’s characters are constantly calibrating suitable spouses, either for themselves or for others. Similarity in age, rank, wealth, and education was seen as important in ensuring the success of a marriage. Emma, with a fortune of £ 30,000, is aghast that Mr Elton has “the arrogance to raise his eyes to her… so well understanding the gradations of rank below him, and … so blind to what rose above”. And she rapidly revises her estimation of the suitability of the matches she has been trying to make for her pretty but illegitimate friend Harriet when she discovers her to be the daughter of a tradesman, not a gentleman! Harriet’s eventual happy match with a local farmer emphasises the moral of finding a spouse who is one’s social equal.
Nonetheless, marriage for money alone attracted social disapproval. Charlotte Lucas’ choice of the smarmy Mr Collins might be excused on the basis of desperation, but the scheming Lucy Steele, willing to transfer her affection from Edward to Robert Ferrars as soon as it is confirmed that he will receive a handsome allowance from his mother, has few redeeming features. The fortune-hunting Wickham, Willoughby, and William Elliot are all depicted as doubly immoral, seducing girls without money and courting heiresses for whom they have no real love.
Nor were marriages based purely on passion and superficial attraction, such as that of Lydia and Wickham, seen as the basis for a happy and stable union. Instead, the Regency period saw increased emphasis on the importance of mutual respect and affection in marriage. Emotional intimacy required similarity of tastes as well as status, although Marianne Dashwood’s youthful assertion that she “could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with [her] own” was clearly regarded as unrealistic.
Parental persuasion
What role did parents play in determining who would make a suitable spouse? By Jane Austen’s day, there was clear disapproval of parents who sought to force their sons or daughters into unwanted marriages. While parents had the power to refuse consent to their children marrying under the age of 21, this was only really an issue for the upper one-tenth who married by licence. Those who had already left home and were living at some distance from their parents could have
the banns called in their new parish without fear of parental contradiction. Those with property could exercise more subtle forms of control by threatening disinheritance if their offspring married against their wishes, but the many cases coming before the courts at the time show that this did not always deter young men and women from marrying whom they chose.
So it is unsurprising that parental opinion rarely plays much of a role in the choice of spouse in Austen’s novels. Mrs Bennet does her best to push Elizabeth into marrying Mr Collins, but her threat never to speak to her again if she does not carries little weight. Anne Elliot’s decision to give up Frederick Wentworth is due more to the advice of her friend Lady Russell, and her desire to act in Frederick’s best interests, than to her father’s negative view of the match. Henry Tilney, meanwhile, is most indignant when he discovers that his father has sent Catherine away from Northanger upon learning that she is not as wealthy as he supposed, and immediately sets off to propose. It is her parents who refuse to let the marriage go ahead until it is accepted by Henry’s father, but the teasing conclusion leaves it open whether the moral of the story is to “recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience” given that the delay allows Henry and Catherine to get to know each other better.
Getting hitched
Jane Austen’s heroines tend to be conventional in choosing to marry in their parish church: the law stipulated that marriages must take place in church after certain formalities had been observed, and there was a marked tendency among couples to prefer the bride’s parish. Even Lydia Bennet eventually marries in strict compliance with the law, marrying in the church in the parish where Wickham has his lodgings and fretting about not arriving in time to be married between the permitted hours of 8am and noon.
Regency weddings would generally have been modest affairs. Emma Woodhouse is not unusual in marrying before a “small band of true friends”. At the highest levels of society, even greater privacy could be secured by a special licence, which allowed a marriage to be celebrated at any time or place. Such licences had a social cachet as they were expensive and could only be granted by the Archbishop of Canterbury – hence Mrs Bennet’s snobbish desire for Elizabeth and Darcy to be married in this way! Alas, there was a well-established convention that such licences would generally only be granted to peers and peeresses, their sons and daughters, privy councillors, judges, baronets, knights and MPs. Darcy, as only the nephew of an earl, would have to have shown “strong and weighty reasons” for the privilege to be extended to him, and pleasing his future mother-in-law was probably not a sufficiently good reason.
Some couples eloped, or attempted to. Scotland’s lax marriage law, combined with improvements to the toll roads, led some to head for Gretna Green, just over the border. Eloping with an heiress had a double advantage: not only did it sidestep family objections, but it also removed the opportunity for the family to draw up a marriage settlement to protect the bride’s property. On marriage, most of a wife’s
property became the husband’s, so families sought to tie up any money for the benefit of the wife and any future children in advance of the wedding. Had Wickham succeeded in eloping with young Georgiana Darcy, her £ 30,000 would have become his.
In Jane’s novels we see the full range of matrimonial outcomes. The forced marriage of Colonel Brandon’s first love results in her infidelity, divorce, downward spiral, and death. Various men and women – Mr Bennet, Mr Palmer, and Lady Elliot among them – find themselves yoked to uncongenial partners because of “some unaccountable bias in favour of beauty” at an impressionable age. Some appear to be happily married couples while living effectively separate lives under the same roof, while others join with partners who prove only too suitable in sharing their worst traits – the stingy John Dashwood and his wife, or the pretentious Eltons.
And some, of course, bring out the best in one another. The union of Elizabeth and Darcy illustrates the perfect combination of affection, respect, and substance, with enough in common to be happy and sufficient differences to soften and improve each other. What more could we ask for our ancestors, or indeed ourselves?