Claudia Gray's Photo Blog

Before 1835, you COULD marry them, but if somebody challenged your marriage in court, the marriage could be voided. After 1835, you just literally couldn't legally marry in England.

The thing is, this did not stop people from marrying their siblings-in-law. It was very normal for a wife to die, and the wife's sister moves in to help take care of the kids, and then the sister and the widower fall in love, and marry. After 1835, couples like this would be forced to have essentially a destination wedding so you could be legally wed in someplace like France or one of the English colonies where it was still legal. If you weren't wealthy enough to travel out of the country you were in a spot of trouble.

is that not even pride & prejudice thinks that behaviour of hers is entirely a good thing?

Like?? half of lizzy’s entire character arc is realizing that her judgy wit that she always congratulated herself on was based on really shaky foundations?? because she’s not nearly as good a judge of character as she believed, and that it’s actually kind of a character flaw motivated by the TITULAR combination of faults??? that she has as much pride & prejudice as she accuses others of having? & that she needs to let go of that a bit, in order to have better relationships with the people around her???

because Lizzy over-developed those traits as part of deliberately being his daughter as much as possible and dissociating herself from her mother. but stepping outside the narrow context of their family where those are The Two Options reveals him as also embarrassingly flawed, and the terrible limitations of this approach to cultivating one's own character.