Jane Austen is so important to me

Jane Austen is a feminist icon. Pride and Prejudice was written in a time where marriage was viewed as strictly a contract, where both families would profit from the arrangement, and the woman would have someone to take care of her. Jane Austen writes about women, the way they should always be written about, she shows them to be characters who are more complex than how most media portray them. The women in Jane Austen’s novels face challenges, and have personalities like real people. I love this book, I think Jane Austen is speaking through Lizzy, and voicing her displeasure with the way marriage was viewed, at that time. I think Jane Austen understood why it had to be that way, but I think she hoped for marriage to be more important, and that, one day, women could get married for reasons beyond needing someone to take care of them. I like how she acknowledges how that isn’t usually possible, especially if the woman is not young and pretty like Lizzy, and doesn’t have the privilege of turning men down, if she doesn’t feel like marrying the man who proposes. I admire Jane Austen for making the women in her stories their own people, with their own personalities, and challenges instead of making them characters to further the plot for the men in the book, for her progressive thinking, for her drive to not conform to society’s expectations about what a woman should do and her decision to remain single.