Pride and Prejudice | Social Concerns
The famous first sentence of this novel, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife," announces immediately that this, like other novels of Jane Austen, centers on marriage for its value as plot and as a central, civilizing social institution—whatever the limitations it suffers in the hands of the vulnerable, the superficial, or the incurably selfish. The most important marriage effected in the course of the book is that between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, but other marriages are measured against this...
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