The financial and social insecurity of educated young women without fortune on the marriage market. Mr Bennet is a member of the gentry, moderately well-off, who, however, has laid nothing aside for the financial security of his daughters. The Bennet estate is entailed, which means that after Mr Bennet’s death the closest male heir, Mr Collins, the pompous clergyman, will inherit Longbourn. Mrs Bennet and her daughters would then be deprived of social distinction, the income coming from the estate, and they would need to establish themselves in a more modest home. Considering the fact that Mr Bennet’s annual income is not enough for him to lay much aside, his death would impoverish his family. In this context, Mrs Bennet’s obsession over her daughters’ future, her wish to have them well-married is well-founded.

The nature of marriage in general. Marriage works out best between two partners who have similar moral convictions and are intellectually equal, and have either similar dispositions (Jane and Bingley) or are willing to learn from each other (Elizabeth and Darcy). The differences between quite a number of marriages in the novel, among which there are several examples of mismatches: the Bennets’, the Collins,’ the Wickhams’, draws attention to this crucial issue. Twenty-five years before Mr Bennet had married the beautiful, but silly and ill-bred Mrs Bennet (with a middle-class background). Mrs Bennet is no intellectual partner for Mr Bennet—he escapes to the library to spend his time reading rather than seeing to the affairs of his property or providing the necessary education in manners to his daughters. Elizabeth’s best friend, Charlotte Lucas, marries the foolish Mr Collins because she has no real alternative: this is the only way she can have a household of her own instead of being dependent on the male members of her family. Elizabeth’s youngest sister Lydia becomes a victim of the mercenary Wickham because of her passionate nature and her childish and romantic notions about love and marriage. For Austen marriage is based on affection and esteem, it is a partnership of equal minds. A certain social and financial background is necessary, however. Only the Gardiners, (Elizabeth’s uncle and aunt) provide an example of an exemplary marriage for Jane and Elizabeth to follow.

Contrast between town and country manners (a literary cliché of the period). In all of Austen’s novels most characters living in London are worldly (for example, the Bingley sisters or the Crawford siblings in Mansfield Park), and their proud manners usually reveal their prejudice to society and life in the country. Country families are more natural, informal and less artificial in their manners, less dedicated to following the highest fashions, but more observant of moral codes. Corruption is usually linked to London—where Lydia lives together with Wickham for a short period although she is not yet married to him.

Contrast of manners between divergent social classes. English society at the end of the eighteenth century and in the regency period was rapidly changing. The upward mobility of the “middling” classes (the less wealthy families of gentry origin, like the Bennets, also belong to this class not just the professional representatives of the middle class). The superiority and the class-consciousness of the aristocracy to the expense of others is reflected in Lady Catherine’s manners (thus Darcy, not only Elizabeth, has relations to be ashamed of). Elizabeth remarks that “her air was not conciliating, nor was her manner of receiving them, such as to make her visitors forget their inferior rank” (Ch. 29). Nevertheless it is at Rosings, Lady Catherine’s estate, that Elizabeth and Darcy get to meet again and Lady Catherine is also the one who unwittingly becomes responsible for their union. Her intervention backfires when Darcy discovers from her report that Elizabeth’s mind has changed about him, and thus indirectly, and against her wishes, she brings about their marriage.

Lurking in the background of the happy, scenic atmosphere of Pride and Prejudice and the incandescent marriages of Jane and Elizabeth, is the Collins’ parsonage and the fate of Mrs. Collins. The discomforts of being married to an insufferable fool to alleviate economic and social necessity show a reality which Austen must have been familiar with and an alternative which she probably regarded with distaste.