Re: Never underestimate the risks of childbearing in 1800

My husband is almost 15 years older than I am. We married when I was 23 and he was 37. My mother, who was living in Malaysia at the time, wrote to me of the reaction her Chinese friends had when learning of our age difference--which is that they entirely approved of it. To them, it made sense, because it meant that he was old enough to be established in a career and able to support me, and I was young enough, not only to bear him children, but to take care of him when he got old. They were rather less approving when they heard that my 25 year old brother had been married for three years already. "But what will he do when he is old and has no young wife to take care of him?"

When you consider marriage from a more practical standpoint, which people in the 19th century did, then of course there is advantage in a man who is a little bit older, and a woman who is young. They weren't concerned about equality in marriage, and men were expected to know more and know better than their wives. What women chiefly needed out of marriage--financial security--was best had from a man who was well established in the world, and what men chiefly needed out of marriage--children--were best had from a woman who was still young. And even though Austen challenged many ideas about marriage, it's inevitable that general cultural perceptions of such things would affect her.