#3

           Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice speaks of a time in which males ruled and dominated the world.  Females were an oppressed gender.  In the story the character Mr. Collins, cousin, to Mr. Bennet, appears.  He has rights to the Bennet property under the law of entailment.  Mrs. Bennet is highly vexed by the idea that the “estate should be entailed away from your own [Mr. Bennet’s] children” (Austen 54).  It is a shame to see that during the Victorian times females did not merit the right to the inheritance of land from their fathers.  Instead at the capricious whim of a male relative could precipitate the turning out of the female side of a family.  Later on, Mr. Collins displays his intention of marrying one of the Bennet daughters in order to right the breach between himself and the family over entailment.  This thought process displays the Victorian belief that women only subsist for domestic life: marriage and the hearth.  This is a serious contrast to modern society, in which females are given more freedom and choice in their future.  Women of the Victorian era had no future but the one found within the household.  This female suppression is seen in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.