Pride-and-Prejudice

oriented her immediate society was, it is worth commenting on Austen’s
choice to remain single. In 1802, she received and accepted a proposal from
Harris Bigg-Wither, a pleasant young man, Oxford educated and heir to the
impressive Manydown estate in Hampshire, close to Austen’s family home at
Steventon. She quickly changed her mind, however, and rejected the proposal
the day after having accepted it. It seems that while Jane liked Harris, she was
not in love with him, and this was enough to give her pause. Her decision was
remarkable, for even though romantic love had increasingly become an
acceptable incentive for marriage, Austen was a dutiful daughter who lived in
an age when friendship, economic motive, family ties, and religious duty
were at least as compelling as personal choice. In declining Harris Bigg-
Wither’s proposal, Austen made a choice not nearly so dramatic in its
disregard for economic considerations as that of her fictional heroine
Elizabeth Bennet in declining Mr. Darcy, but one that was similarly
impractical. It is hard to say whether Austen simply flew in the face of
convention and unwisely put her economic future at risk, or whether she knew
that with so many successful and dutiful brothers someone would maintain
her somehow.
Claire Tomalin suggests that Austen compared Harris Bigg-Wither
unfavorably to Tom Lefroy, to whom she had had a romantic attachment
several years earlier, one severed by his relatives, who were concerned about
the imprudence of such a match—Austen was, after all, no heiress. Now that
she was heading into her late twenties and had grown accustomed to life as a
spinster aunt, it is also possible that Austen took a long, hard look at
motherhood and decided that its joys were not worth the grief. Throughout the
eighteenth century and long afterward, the mortality rates for newborns and
women during childbirth was high. The trend in British society to encourage
frequent and numerous pregnancies put women at even greater risk. In 1808
Austen’s brother Edward’s wife, Elizabeth, died giving birth to her eleventh
child. Her brother Charles’s wife, Fanny, died during childbirth in 1814, at
age twenty-four, with her fourth child, who also died several weeks later. In
1823, a few years after Austen’s own death, her brother Francis’s wife, Mary,
died giving birth to her eleventh child. Understandably, Austen’s letters
demonstrate a mixed attitude toward marriage and motherhood. To her niece
Fanny Knight, Austen wrote shortly before her own death that “Single
Women have a dreadful propensity for being poor—which is one very strong
argument in favour of Matrimony.” On the other hand, she continued with
sage advice, “Do not be in a hurry; depend upon it, the right Man will come at
last… . And then, by not beginning the business of Mothering quite so early
in life, you will be young in Constitution, spirits, figure & countenance.”