Otto Bauer
ELA Speech
Many people are drawn to wealth for different reasons, whether it be for their
own gain or benefit, or for achieving different goals. Wealth has always held a
high status for people who possess it in history and today. It comes with many
advantages that also become social problems, aside from being someone of high
status just for being wealthy, it makes everyone else see wealthy people as a
priority to follow, or always be looking for people with money. There are many
kinds of wealth, and an example seen in Pride and Prejudice is the different
amounts of wealth found in the rich characters, such as Mr. Darcy or Mr. Bingley,
and how maybe one affects how people view the other just by their differences in
money. In the book we saw how the rich hold dances where people are invited,
and they basically get to choose who they want for marriage or service, since
people of lower classes can’t really decline. We also see how this affects the status
of what could be considered the middle class in the book, such as the Bennet
family looking for rich husbands for the women to marry and save their land and
family name. This topic of wealth also leads to another topic which Jane Austen
touched in the book, which was happiness in relationships. She shows us how
married couples aren’t happy even if they have a lot of money, and how that can’t
sustain a relationship. Jane Austen also reached a point in which she expressed
how happiness can’t be the only thing a relationship is based on if it can’t be
sustained at all. She wanted people to get the idea that a balance needed to be
achieved, in which people in a relationship were happy, but also had enough
money to be able to live a good and normal life. The extremes of this are also