Even in Austen's time the use of
want and
need did not have the exact same connotation.
Want conveyed a gap to be filled (even if it was a desire to be fulfilled) where
need conveyed an obligation or duty.
Darcy, as the embodiment of the Pemberley estate,
needed an heir, which could only be obtained by way of a wife.
But he
wanted to fill the emotional and spiritual gap in his life.
His yin counterpart had similar challenges:
needing an economic improvement, and
wanting to love and be loved.
In asking what is meant by "want" in P&P's first sentence, we look at the possibility that the meaning of "want" should be questioned throughout the text when it comes to obtaining a wife.
In writing "want," Austen jokingly tosses off that a wife is desired, when in truth far more is
needed.
As for Elizabeth marrying "only for the deepest love" -- that's movie canon shortcutting the text's canon. Film cannot spend all the time the book can developing this vast body of material pointing to a thing it never calls out.
"Marrying for the deepest love" is the black hole we never really see, but instead is defined by the mass that surrounds it.
We can detect its importance to Austen's story by weighting of words she employs:
The word 'want' and variants appears 87 times; the phrase 'in want of' twice, once referring to a dance partner.
The word 'need' and variants appears 19 times, featured once 'in need of' with regard to encouragement to Mr. Collins to talk.
The word 'love' or variants appears 121 times -- more than want, need, and their variants combined.
We can detect Elizabeth's ethic by her own words, and by the words to which she responds:
Chapter 6:"Your plan is a good one," replied Elizabeth, "where nothing is in question but the desire of being well married, and if I were determined to get a rich husband, or any husband, I dare say I should adopt it. ..."
Elizabeth's ethic is different by way of contrast to Charlotte's more mechanistic approach.Chapter 19:"... I am perfectly serious in my refusal. You could not make me happy, and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who could make you so. ..."
Making a spouse happy and being made happy are critically important, enough so to be spelled out.Chapter 23:"... She had always felt that Charlotte's opinion of matrimony was not exactly like her own, but she had not supposed it to be possible that, when called into action, she would have sacrificed every better feeling to worldly advantage. ..."
Again, the contrast of mechanistic, goal-oriented "fill the need" versus "fulfill the want."Chapter 25:[Mrs. Gardiner] "...Without supposing them, from what she saw, to be very seriously in love, their preference of each other was plain enough to make her a little uneasy; and she resolved to speak to Elizabeth on the subject before she left Hertfordshire, and represent to her the imprudence of encouraging such an attachment. ..."
Mrs. Gardiner is a means by which Elizabeth is asked to evaluate her feelings, with love being the goal, but Wickham being an inappropriate target.Chapter 26:[Mrs. Gardiner] ""You are too sensible a girl, Lizzy, to fall in love merely because you are warned against it [...] But as it is, you must not let your fancy run away with you. You have sense, and we all expect you to use it. ..."
"... At present I am not in love with Mr. Wickham; no, I certainly am not. But he is, beyond all comparison, the most agreeable man I ever saw—and if he becomes really attached to me—I believe it will be better that he should not. I see the imprudence of it. ..."
"I am now convinced, my dear aunt, that I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial towards him; they are even impartial towards Miss King. I cannot find out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this. My watchfulness has been effectual; and though I certainly should be a more interesting object to all my acquaintances were I distractedly in love with him, I cannot say that I regret my comparative insignificance. ..."
Here Mrs. Gardiner not only asks Lizzy to consider her feelings, which her aunt knows are not driven purely by whimsy, that Lizzy's love would be based on something more than physical attraction.
And Lizzy herself recognizes that a relationship couldn't exist with Wickham not only because he is a faithless fortune hunter, but because she is not really in love with him.
Indeed, she foreshadows the depth of love she will feel when she says that feeling such "pure and elevating passion" would compel her to "detest" him -- as she will with Darcy for a time.The black hole of deepest love, outlined, defined.
