PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Mr. Bennet of the Longbourn estate has five daughters, but his property is entailed, meaning that none of the girls can inherit it. His wife has no fortune, so it is imperative that at least one of the girls marry well in order to support the others on his death. Jane Austen's opening line, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" is a sentence filled with irony and playfulness. The novel revolves around the importance of marrying for love, not simply for money, despite the social pressures to make a good (i.e. wealthy) match.