Everyday Canvas

Socioeconomic Pressure in Jane Austen's Time and Today

Prompt: Jane Austen was one of the first authors to examine the effects of socioeconomic pressure on personal relationships. Do you think the same socioeconomic pressure may still mess up personal relationships in our day?

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Possibly a similar socioeconomic pressure exists. At least, more or less so.

In Austen’s novels, the harsh economic reality of a young woman’s value in the marriage market is what preoccupies most of the characters. Today’s values of evaluating a woman’s marriageability may be somewhat different and more left to chance before the knot is tied, but afterwards, similar economic realities may have an effect on the preservation of the marriage.

In Jane Austen’s time, social class was somewhat tied to family backgrounds and riches. In today’s society, even when couples jump over that hurdle of class differences, they still need to be economically independent within their own family unit, which may provide extra stress for the partner in the marriage who came from the richer class.

In Austen’s time and today, the family’s encouragement and society’s expectations do play a role, but in both cases, as Austen liked to stress on the fact, women’s choices are their own, even if they may be under pressure.

What differs is the age. Women married at a much younger age then, somewhere between 15 and 19, which possibly added to the pressure on the young brides who possibly weren’t quite ready for the so-called marital bliss and taking care of a household and raising children. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Bennet married Mrs. Bennet because her youth and beauty captivated him. There is also the referral to Mr. Bennet’s marrying beneath his class. Later, however, when he discovered her true irrational personality, he was disappointed, and not being able to undo his mistake, he kept away from her and became involved in the country and his books. I’m quite sure Mrs. Bennet wasn’t too crazy about him either, for her husband was treating her without respect.

In some circles, today, similar attitudes can be found in marriages between peoples from different classes since family and society pressures still exist, although divorce is a possibility or a certainty.

Another difference is the option of marrying or not. Today, a woman or a man may opt to stay single and not have any children, which is mostly acceptable. I doubt that could have been the case in Austen’s time without having wagging tongues behind people’s backs. This, too, is somehow tied to family and class.