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An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.
Jane Austen
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote expresses the painful choice faced in love and obligation, highlighting the conflict between personal desires and familial expectations.

In this quote from Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice', the character conveys the dilemma faced by Elizabeth, who must choose between marrying Mr. Collins to secure familial approval or rejecting him to maintain her own happiness. This situation underscores the emotional turmoil that can arise when love conflicts with societal and familial pressures, forcing individuals to make difficult decisions that can alienate them from loved ones.

Themes

LoveChoiceFamilyMarriageObligation

In practice

Example use cases

In a wedding speech, one might mention the difficult choices that bring people together despite their challenges.

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