Throughout Pride and Prejudice, Austen illuminates the class and gender inequalities in marriage and courtship. She uses Collins’ exaggerated character and power over the Bennet daughters and entail to show the reader how wrong it is that someone (especially Collins) should control the matrimony and estate of an entire family simply because it has no sons. Wickham’s ploys for money show the immense power over relationships that men had due entailment. Mrs. Bennet’s hyperbolic dedication to marrying off her daughters illustrates the powerlessness that poor (relatively poor) women had in marriage because of entailment. Austen’s main motive behind each of these satires was the desire to show the world how awful it was that rich men were dominant in relationships because of the accepted rules of entailment.

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 2011. Ebook.