Outline
Thesis: An ideal marriage should include love, commitment, and understanding.
Paragraph 1: Lydia & Wickham - completely lacks all 3, married for lust, money, and social status
Paragraph 2: Charlotte & Collins - completely lacks love, but there is a degree of commitment and understanding
Paragraph 3: The Bennets - There is a little bit of love and some commitment and a lot of understanding on Mr. Bennet's part
Paragraph 4: Jane & Bingley - Love and understanding present, but level of commitment is not achieved
Paragraph 5: Lizzy & Darcy - got it all, portrayed as ideal couple
Paragraph 6: Jane also wants money to be heavily considered in marriage
Paragraph 7: Might have… to a very small degree. But if so, then she would've made Lizzy's family richer than they are now
Conclusion: Ideal marriage consists of a high level of love, commitment and understanding. Something something.
Pride and Prejudice, written by Jane Austen, is a classic romance from the 19th century. The title itself gives away two out of the three main themes of the story: pride and prejudice. The last theme, constantly referred to during the novel, is marriage. In the novel, Jane Austen presented many different couples, each with their own nature and characters. Through this, she is able to communicate her belief regarding an ideal marriage, which should include a high degree of love, understanding, and commitment.
Lydia and Wickham is portrayed as the least unstable couple, because they have a serious lack in all three virtues that Austen set up as requirements for the ideal marriage. Through Elizabeth's voice, Austen speaks of her disapproval of Lydia and Wickham. She refers to Lydia as a person who “wanted only encouragement to attach herself to anybody.” (Austen, 200). And since, in her opinions, it's an “astonishment that Wickham should marry a girl whom it was impossible he could marry for money”, the union of these two disgraceful people is both...