THE ISSUE OF MARRIAGE IN JANE AUSTEN’S EMMA

Abstract

This article examines the issue of marriage in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Jane Austen’s Emma . The article focuses on the issue of marriage in Victorian England in general illustrated with the marriages in the novel. Emma, the protagonist, gets involved in matchmaking while, at the same time, believing that she will never get married. Fur-thermore, the article aims to discuss the views, status and condition of the woman in family and marriage during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and to show how Jane Austen represents these views in the novel.