The first line of the Pride and Prejudice says something about society assumes every single man of good fortune is actively looking for a wife.  So I think that societal pressure to get married was one of the main themes Jane Austen wanted to explore.  However, in 2013 it seems the pressure is more on the girls than the boys.  Now men are almost expected to be players in their 20's (Mike, The Situation, I'm talking about at you) while women are the ones looking for their soulmate.  So in this post I'm going to focus more on the pressure women have felt and are feeling currently to be someone's wife.  

Jane Austen describes the ridiculousness of girls' desperation to wed.  We see this in Elizabeth's mom making a fool of herself and the family through half the book trying to get her daughters married off.  Then we see Lydia pull a Kim Kardashian.  Why?  Because Lydia wanted to be married soooo bad she took the first guy who came along and asked for her hand.  Unfortunately for her, society didn't accept 72 day marriages back then.

Elizabeth is such the opposite of her sister.  She reminds me of Jo from Little Women in that she'd rather be alone, than marry just to marry.  But I haven't met many girls that feel this way today. I see on Facebook at least once a day that one of my friends got engaged.  It seems my generation is almost as obsessed with tying the knot as Elizabeth's generation was.  

source

About 2/3 of my friends have a Pinterest board title "My Future Wedding".  Although I'm pretty sure if they had Pinterest back then Mrs. Bennet would have been allllll over that ish.  And Mrs. Bennet totally would have signed her daughters up for every season of The Bachelor.  Am I right?

So while you'd think that because this book was written so long ago women would have wanted different things back then, I disagree.  And it got me thinking.  Why do women feel such a strong need to get married?  Let's compare:  

Back then:

1. Women wanted a man to financially keep them since they couldn't earn their own living.
2. Women wanted their own house to run because that was like a job for them.
3. Women wanted to raise a family.
4. Women wanted to get out of their parents house (and they felt like a burden if they were in their 20's still living at home).
5. Women wanted to be wanted and loved.
6. Women died young back then.

Classics Retold  is a project hosted by Alison @ The Cheap Reader, Alyssa @ Books Take You Places, Charlene @ Bookish Whimsy, Wendy @ Excellent Library, and Brittany @ Book Addict’s Guide. 

     Remember that time I signed up for a classics challenge that's starting in September?  Ya me neither. For once I'm glad I'm ridiculously OCD and have a blog calendar because I almost forgot that I was doing this event next month!

     But now I'm getting excited...again.  For this project I will be reading and viewing as many adaptations of the classic I chose which is:

         

and besides the Kierra Knightly movie I will also watch: