Common Pride & Prejudice Misconceptions, Part 2
“Jane will be quite an old maid soon, I declare. She is almost three-and-twenty! Lord! how ashamed I should be of not being married before three-and-twenty!”
-Lydia Bennet, Pride & Prejudice
There is a common perception that women married very young in the past, but this is not exactly true. Royalty and nobility were more likely to marry young, sometimes even as infants, but often these marriages were in name only and the couple might not even live together until both parties were of age (they may not even be in the same country!). The lower classes didn’t tend to marry until they had enough money or a solid enough career path to do so, which usually wasn’t until their twenties.
The average age at the time of first marriage in the mid-eighteenth century was 26.4 for men and 23.4 for women (Women’s History of Britian, 2005)
Jane Austen wrote about the gentry. In her novels, Lydia Bennet is called “very young” to be out (on the market for marriage) at fifteen many times by different people. We are told only her mother’s indulgence has her out so young. While Marianne Dashwood is out at sixteen and a half in Sense & Sensibility, this may be because it’s easier to have her accompanying her older sister. Catherine Morland is out and about in Bath at seventeen in Northanger Abbey, while all the other heroines are eighteen or older before joining society. Emma is a special case, she takes charge of her household at thirteen when her sister marries and thus joins society early, but of course, she was not looking to marry. Her love story doesn’t begin until she’s twenty-one.
The two characters who deride “older” women are both young teenagers and not to be taken seriously. Lydia Bennet and Marianne Dashwood’s opinions are clearly silly:
“A woman of seven and twenty,” said Marianne, after pausing a moment, “can never hope to feel or inspire affection again, and if her home be uncomfortable, or her fortune small, I can suppose that she might bring herself to submit to the offices of a nurse, for the sake of the provision and security of a wife. In his marrying such a woman therefore there would be nothing unsuitable. It would be a compact of convenience, and the world would be satisfied. In my eyes it would be no marriage at all, but that would be nothing. To me it would seem only a commercial exchange, in which each wished to be benefited at the expense of the other.” Sense & Sensibility
Anne Elliot in Persuasion somehow did manage to marry for love at seven and twenty! Charlotte Lucas in Pride & Prejudice was still attending balls and searching for a husband at the same age.
Elizabeth Elliot in Persuasion is single at twenty-nine, and here the end of the marriageable period is mentioned:
She had the remembrance of all this, she had the consciousness of being nine-and-twenty to give her some regrets and some apprehensions; she was fully satisfied of being still quite as handsome as ever, but she felt her approach to the years of danger, and would have rejoiced to be certain of being properly solicited by baronet-blood within the next twelvemonth or two.
While I do think Elizabeth Elliot is somewhat delusional in her marriage goals, the idea that she still has time left to find a husband is not contradicted. She has both beauty and her status as a baronet’s daughter. If she lowered her standards a bit, she might easily be married in a year as she wishes (but she probably won’t).
To look at other contemporary literature, in Belinda by Maria Edgeworth, we are given about thirty-five as the age of spinsterhood:
I have often asked myself, what is to become of such girls when they grow old or ugly, or when the public eye grows tired of them? If they have large fortunes, it is all very well; they can afford to divert themselves for a season or two, without doubt; they are sure to be sought after and followed, not by mere danglers, but by men of suitable views and pretensions: but nothing to my mind can be more miserable than the situation of a poor girl, who, after spending not only the interest, but the solid capital of her small fortune in dress, and frivolous extravagance, fails in her matrimonial expectations (as many do merely from not beginning to speculate in time). She finds herself at five or six-and-thirty a burden to her friends, destitute of the means of rendering herself independent
It seems then that Jane Bennet is far from an old maid, she probably has several more years before a resonable person -ie not Lydia Bennet- would consider her to be one. However, I do think that for girls with little else to recommend them, age is a more important factor.
Women like Caroline Bingley and Mary Crawford, with their fortunes of £20,000, certainly didn’t need to be as worried about marrying early. However, women like Jane Bennet are mostly trading on youth and beauty, which can fade. For them, marrying early is more important.
Or to represent this graphically:
Women with wealth and education just had more to bargin with while trying to marry; they could afford to let youth and beauty pass by. Isabella Thorpe and Lucy Steele, for example, are trying to make the very most of their youth, beauty, and some deception because they have very little else to try to marry upon.
Jane Bennet isn’t yet an old maid and she probably wouldn’t be considered one for years, but that doesn’t mean that she can relax either. The fact that her parents never bothered to save money for any of their daughters means that they must rely on youth, beauty, and temperment. There were many women in the gentry who never married, and without many career prospects, they would be forced to rely on their family for the rest of their lives.
More:
Lady Catherine Can’t Fire Mr. Collins Common Pride & Prejudice Misconceptions, Part 1
Could Mr. Bennet have Saved Enough for Decent Fortunes on his Income?
Why the Tour of Pemberley Matters: Part 1 and Part 2
How well could Caroline Bingley expect to marry?
What do we Really Know about Colonel Fitzwilliam?
My published novels:
Prideful & Persuaded – a Jane Austen cross-over romance staring Caroline Bingley
Unfairly Caught – a Mansfield Park variation
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