A Truth Universally Acknowledged
📖 A Truth Universally Acknowledged
The novel's first sentence is Austen's most famous irony: "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 not a description of men. It is a description of the society that surrounds them — a society in which a woman's entire future depends on securing a husband. Every conversation, visit, and dance that follows is structured by that fact. Austen names it in the first line, then spends the whole novel examining what it costs people to live inside it.
Austen frames the marriage theme immediately through Mrs Bennet: five daughters to marry off, no son to inherit Longbourn, an entail that will leave the family destitute if Mr Bennet dies without a male heir. Mrs Bennet's urgency, which Elizabeth and the narrator treat with irony, is economically rational. Austen prese
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🧠 Memory Aid: The Marriage Theme Trajectory
NEED → CONTRAST → SYNTHESIS
- N — NEED: Marriage as economic necessity; Mrs Bennet's urgency; Charlotte's calculation ("marriage had always been her object")
- C — CONTRAST: Three marriages compared — Lydia (passion alone), Charlotte (calculation alone), Jane (affection without self-knowledge)
- S — SYNTHESIS: Elizabeth and Darcy — affection tested by honest self-revision; "Do anything rather than marry without affection" earned, not given
Or remember: "Love without sense fails. Sense without love tolerates. Both together earns." — Lydia / Charlotte / Elizabeth-Darcy.
Now try it yourself
Quiz · Question 1 of 12
What is the main effect of Austen's opening sentence — 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife'?
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