This is why 50% of marriages end in divorce.
“Prudie decided that she would rather teach French at the high school than marry for money. It was a decision quickly made, but she could always revisit it.” (Page 159) Does anyone else get the feeling that Prudie isn’t 100% into this marriage? Is this a commentary on how people treat marriage these days?
posted by MamaChristy at
11:16 AM
3 Comments:
This is a sore spot for me as I believe that many people enter into marriage without making it the life-long commitment that it should be. Did Fowler include this because it is the current state of the world and many people's attitude toward marriage? I think so. Perhaps Austen made her novels feel very "now" and Fowler is trying to do the same with her characters.
By
MamaChristy, at 6:58 PM
I remember reading this and it made me lauigh out loud. I just loved the wryness of it.
As an Austen reader, I think this line is straight out of Jane Austen. It's the kind of tongue-in-cheek, almost sarcastic and yet eerily serious thing an Austen character would say. Women in her books were so pressured to marry for money that a woman who didn't -- a'la Lizzie Bennett -- was a joke in and of herself, though not necesarily an unkind one. It's just that no one believed there was any other reason to marry.
And I totally agree with MC that many people enter today's marriages without the commitment to seeing it through. But, I do think people marry today for better intentions than they used to. now that marriage is a choice, not a necessity either for survival or to preserve a family pride, I think people marry with better intentions -- even if those don't always work.
So, I guess the piggyback question no. 1 is: Is it better to marry for money or appearances, and be committed to being together for ever, or marry for love and walk away when the love fades or changes?
This may be a false statistic, but I have read that people who enter into an arranged marriage coordinated by their families actually have lower divorce rates and consider themselves happier than those folks that marry for love.
OK, here's my piggyback question 2: Do you all think anyone in the JABC was *really* in love with their partner? By your standards of love? Do Jocelyn and Grigg have a shot at that kind of love?
By
JenniNapa, at 10:11 AM
I agree with what you both have said. I didn't really look at that way in the book though. They were at a function where she was thinking about the fact that being rich usually meant you eventualy wanted to "trade up", and that rich marriages didn't last. On the next page she said "Dean wasn't a rich man, but he was the faithful sort."
I just took it to mean that she would rather be poor with someone she loved and that she knew would stay with her, instead of living in luxury and wondering if the man would end up ditching her.
Then again, I haven't read any Jane Austen at all, so that may not be the proper way to look at it. :)
By
mamashine, at 5:25 AM
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