Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: 200 years on sons expected to marry for financial security According to a new survey, 37.3 per cent of parents believe their sons will be financially sound for the rest of their lives if they marry a good woman - while less than a third of parents (31.9 per cent) believe the same of their daughter to be the case if she weds. The Scottish Widows study, which polled 1,000 British parents to mark the 200th anniversary of the Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice, in which the protagonist Elizabeth Bennet's entire future is predicated on her being married off to a successful man, shows just how much family norms have shifted in the last two centuries. Women of Jane Austen's era were forced to seek marriages of convenience for economic security - while now nearly eight out of 10 parents with daughters believe doing well at university and getting a good job is the answer to them achieving the greatest financial security for the future. By contrast only seven per cent think their daughters need to "marry well" to be financially set. Professor Jane Humphries of Economic History at Oxford University, said: "This new research reveals that the nature of the support has changed, girls no longer need dowries and settlements to attract husbands, they need down payments and student loans to get them on the property ladder and through the system of higher education. "Considering the changes in the "modern day Bennet's" family priorities, a modern day Pride and Prejudice might begin "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman is capable of building her own good fortune by herself [instead of "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."]" Priorities for families have also drastically changed since Austen's time. Today more than half of parents" top goal for their daughters is getting a good education. Only four per cent believe that starting a family should be a priority for their children. However, in 1813 there was little reason to educate daughters for a career as they were expected to marry and be supported by someone else's son. Professor Humphries added: "In the 19th century, for girls of Elizabeth Bennet's class, work would have been socially disastrous: a shameful sign of the inability of the young woman's father to maintain his family properly." The bi-centenary of Pride and Prejudice is being marked today by a "readathon" of the novel at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath. Fans and Austen experts will read aloud the whole novel in a 12-hour web broadcast - digitally linking up with Jane Austen societies around the world.