[fergal_reid]

The Austin novels made a lot more sense to me when I started to think of them as closer to tales of corporate Mergers & Acquisitions, rather than love stories. The rich familes then were like large corporations are now, and a marriage was a very financial merger.

I think I realised this when I first read Pride and Prejudice and the main character started talking about basically falling in love with the Pemberley estate.

Thereafter, any time I visit an English country house with extensive gardens, the massive wealth expenditure to create them makes a lot more sense when you view them as M&A marketing budget.

This is hopefully too cynical, and the truth is somewhere in between - but it's equally naive to read Austen as straight love stories with a modern perspective - there's a lot of clear focus on the incomes and social situations in the text.

[elevatedastalt]

For most of human civilization, marriages _were_ mergers and acquisitions. Over the course of your married life you developed love through mutual companionship. The idea of them being primarily driven by romance and love is a very recent artifact. In many ways it's also an incomplete and somewhat inimical development, because I've observed modern couples ignore aspects of duty, responsibility, service etc. that are central to building a life together, and obsess just singularly over love or attraction.

[bazoom42]

Marriage among the landed gentry were both economic and emotional arrangement and the novels explore the tension between these aspects. If you focus on just one aspect you miss the conflict of the story. It is literally in the title of “Sense and Sensibility”, where sense is the financial aspect and sensibility the emotional.

[thrway123]

Lizzie was joking about falling in love with the Pemberley estates. She fell in love through seeing him through the eyes of the people who knew him best.

However, marriage was primarily a financial arrangement back then. That is true.

[fergal_reid]

> Lizzie was joking

Well, obviously we shouldn't get too hung up on what a fictional character thought - but I stand by my recollection.

Just googling it, and finding this page: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/pride/quotes/symbol/pemberley...

I think you can say the last quote on that page is the character joking (although I'm not sure I read it that way); but the second last quote was the one I was referring to, and is in the narrator's voice.

But, look, while reading that did change my perspective on the story, I also don't want to interpret things too cynically; I'm not saying the character of Elizabeth should be read as purely seeking advantage; just that they were clearly evaluating marriage on a combination of advantage, and 'love', with a lot of weight on the former; and all of Austen made a lot more sense when I realised that.

[bill_joy_fanboy]

> This is hopefully too cynical...

Nah, it's just how it is.

A casual web search will show that women care about money in relationships and marriage... a lot.

[ArchieMaclean]

I'd be willing to bet that the majority of results you find in that search will be men talking about how much women care about money... of course some women do, but far far from all of them

[libraryofbabel]

Whatever your position on this, reducing things back to 21st century individualistic dating preferences and gender norms is ahistorical and shallow. The parent comment was spot on in the analogy — this isn’t about what individuals choose, it’s dynastic. A family is “the firm” and marriage in one of the primary strategic tools to advance its interests. At the very top of the pile, the Austrian Habsburg family built a 500 year imperial dynasty in Central Europe primarily from marriages. But it’s similar further down: land, property, family reputation, strategic alliances, and sometimes (but not always) individual preferences as well.

[willismichael]

Meh, when we got married she had assets that were easily more than 10x what I owned. I wasn't even able to make any real money until two years later.

[jowea]

Don't forget the political alliance aspect.