“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

This is the opening line of Jane Austen’s most notorious work, Pride and Prejudice, which she began composing in 1796 under the working title, First Impressions. She was only 20 years old at the time and completed the project in a mere ten months. Yet, it wasn’t until 1813, after the success of her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, that publishers finally accepted it for print.  

Pride and Prejudice, along with all of Austen’s works, emerged during an era marked by intense social and political upheaval. The American Revolutionary War (1775-1784) had recently concluded, only to be followed closely by the French Revolution (1789-1799), which subsequently ushered Europe into the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). It was, in the words of Thomas Paine, an “age of reason” warring against tradition, seeking to uproot old social orders and establish equality and liberty for all people. Such notions also empowered emerging social rights movements, including abolitionism and first-wave feminism, which both arose during this period with previously unseen strength and boldness.

Austen’s novel fits effortlessly into the chaos of the era because it, too, is a revolutionary work, a book that encourages and pioneers social change. Defining it by genre, it falls under two primary categories—a novel of manners and realism. The novel of manners genre materialized as a means of presenting satirical commentary on societal class structures, dealing with subjects such as social roles and behaviors, the well-mannered versus ill-mannered comportment that distinguished the classes. It is also a work of realism because it intricately follows the lives of common men and women, depicting social realities as they existed during Austen’s life.  

In this period, English society maintained strict behavioral rules for three social classes—aristocracy, gentry, and the laboring class. Austen was part of the gentry, as was the protagonist of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennett. The story itself observes a love match between characters who are separated by class (aristocracy and gentry), and marks inconsistencies in the societal rules that distinguished them. While the aristocracy was expected to manifest good comportment, Austen depicts elite characters in her novel whose behavior falls woefully short of any ‘good’ label that could be slapped upon it. Inversely, many of Austen’s characters in the gentry class display good manners that far surpass those of some of the aristocratic. By doing this, Austen blurs the lines between the classes, highlighting absurdities in the notion of social expectations, and centering her readers on an idea that well-mannered and respectable people can exist in any social class.   

The story’s opening line is important because it presents the novel as one designed to confront problematic rules regarding courtship and marriage. Austen uses the revolutionary language of her day, “a truth universally acknowledged,” to mock the English societal structure that viewed marriage as an economic issue rather than an issue of love and well-being. (Note how similar her diction is to that of contemporary revolutionary documents, such as “we hold these truths to be self-evident,” from the U.S. Declaration of Independence.)

Austen’s word choice in this line highlights the lack of reason behind the ideologies guiding the social structures of her time. Unlike the revolutionary philosophies of the era, social traditions such as class systems and marriage contracts were seemingly void of reason: If a man has a fortune, he must want a wife. The logical deduction here is comically weak, as there is no evidence to prove a correlation between the two issues of possessing a fortune and wanting to get married. Such a statement, then, seems to say if the logic is flawed, perhaps the system is too.

Want to read more from Bex Roden? Check out her series on 5 Famous Literary Quotes Explained.