Evolutionary Love and Companionate Marriage in Jane Austen's Novel Pride and Prejudice

Abstract

In the novel Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen has selected the basic unit of human relationship, the family.  In the family we have several forms of relationships. The most fundamental relationship is there in terms of love and marriage which form the basic theme of the novel Pride and Prejudice. In the research paper, love has been analyzed as an evolutionary process. It is the logic of love that unfolds the characteristics of its main characters.  Their love has been brought out from the usual shadow of emotionalism and sentimentality. It has been put under the direct control of their ratiocination. And that is the peculiarity of Austen's treatment of love. The characters have passed through various stages of love so that, ultimately, they reach the final stage of passionate love, shorn of their pride and prejudice. From there they move to marriage which I have called the companionate marriage. When they enter matrimony, they enter it as pure companions moving together, hand in hand, in their life. It is not the marriage as established and defined by the early nineteenth century society. Austen's lovers do not abjure the society, yet they do not accept this society's concept of marriage completely. As they have shaped their love, so they will shape their marriage.