Quotes on Marriage
No novelist has ever been clearer that marriage was an economic institution before it was a romantic one. Austen's marriage quotes cut both ways: the famous opening of Pride and Prejudice mocks the market, while Elizabeth's 'anything rather than marry without affection' states the ideal her plots fight to make affordable. The tension between those two positions is the engine of all six novels — Charlotte Lucas marries Mr. Collins for a home rather than a husband, Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park states the mercenary position outright ('a large income is the best recipe for happiness'), and Austen never fully resolves the argument between practical security and romantic ideal so much as she lets individual characters choose different points on the spectrum and live with the consequences. Reading her marriage quotes together makes clear that she isn't simply a romantic — she's a realist who happens to believe romance and financial sense can, occasionally, coincide.
“Do any thing rather than marry without affection.”
“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.”
“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”
“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”
“A single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else.”
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”