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the water without source. Then, it is easy to find that Austen takes the relationship between man and reality as the basis. Perhaps that is why she is considered as a realist. To some further extent, that is also the linkage to feasible ideals, to harmonious relationship between man and world, sense and sensibility. Her heroines’ transcendence of ugliness and vulgarity were highly admired. At the same time, she reveals that people are easily deceived by appearance. So the importance of facing reality and oneself protruded. It must be remembered that Austen held up the mirror to her time when she is charged with want of delicacy in dealing with the relations between sexes, and especially in speaking of the view of women with regard to matrimony. Women in those days evidently did consider a happy marriage as the best thing that destiny could have in store for them. They desired it for themselves and they sought it for their daughters. Other views had not opened out to them; they had not thought of professions or public life, nor had it entered into the mind of any of them that maternity was not the highest duty and the crown of womanhood, and what they sought in marriage were rank and money. As Austen said ironically, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”(2) But the real truth is a woman without money must be in want of a husband in possession of a good fortune. Charlotte Lucas is a typical character. She knows clearly that “Mr. Collins, to be sure, was neither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must be imaginary. But still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object: it was the only honorable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and, however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want. This preservative she had now obtained.”(3) Such marriage without love is merely an undisguised economical need. The warring fact of women’s economical status was as clear as daylight. Women were forced to make a living by marriage, judging the quality of matrimony with quantity of wealth. In such a moment, to pursuit the marriage based on love like Elizabeth was really very romantic even extravagant. But that is exactly what Austen appreciates. She does not approve or reward matchmaking or husband-hunting. Charlotte Lucas gets what she sought, a husband with a good income, but we are made to see that she has bought it dear. “And to the pang of a friend disgracing herself, and sunk in her esteem was added the distressing conviction that it was impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the lot she had chosen.” (4) Let us see Elizabeth, the ending is quite different. This heroine does neither accept vulgar, self-centered Mr. Collins nor haughty Darcy who accord with the demands for a large fortune. She ignored the philistine point of view as in Mr. Collins’s proposal------“It does not appear to me that my hand is unworthy of your acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would be any other than highly desirable. My situation in life, my connections with the family of De Bourgh, and my relationship to your own, are circumstances highly in my favor, and thou should take it into further consideration that, in spite of your manifold attractions, it is by no means certain that another offer of mar