the horrible world of pride and prejudice

[igorfazlyev]

The kind of society depicted in Pride and Prejudice is totally horrible if you think about it. In that society women have nothing, I'm no historian but to the best of my knowledge at the time women couldn't even own property unless they were widows or something or perhaps even in that case it could still slip through their fingers to their diseased husband's next of kin as would have been the case in the event of Mr. BEnnet's death; his imbecilic cousin, Mr. Collins, stood to inherit his estate after his death in spite of the fact that he had a wife and five daughters.
To me this whole arrangement appears absolutely insane. And what's even more insane is the way the women in the novel seem perfectly content to put up with this extremely unfair state of affairs. Is this due to some defect in the female psyche, a defect that is at the same time an asset because it enables them to adapt and feel fine in just about any situation, however horrible it may appear to an outsider.
  And, to my utter astonishment, some women, and notably Pride and Prejudice fans, have pointed out that to their mind the social order presented in Pride and Prejudice doesn't appear to be that bad. After all back then women didn't have to work, all they needed to do was find a 'man of goof fortune' and get him to marry them. When viewed from perspective Elizabeth Bennett's change of heart about Mr. Darcy after seeing his luxurious estate appears to be perfectly logical. The man might be a complete ass when it comes to social interactions but he's loaded and he's lusting after her and what else can a woman possibly need.
  And as Charlotte Lucas' acceptance of Mr. Collins' proposal clearly evidences, when driven to desperation by advancing years and lack of tolerable prospects, a woman can even be persuaded to marry a total imbecile.
  It's all very sad, this state of affairs that existed in those days but the way women even to day tend to find it quite acceptable is perhaps even sadder.   

[Eliza101]

I don't see what's so horrible about this arrangement.
After all it's a known fact that men need sex more than women and it's only appropriate that they should be properly compensated for giving men what they want and lust after.
This is especially true if it's young women we're talking about, again it's a well documented fact of nature that young women's libido is barely a fraction of that found in most young men. So what we have is a situation where women have something that men want and there's many ways of going about the exchange, one of which is what in the olden days was called holy matrimony, right?
So chuck it, you can always hire prostitutes if you loath the idea of supporting a wife.