A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.
– Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 6. This is Mr. Darcy’s comeback to Caroline Bingley, who is astonished that Elizabeth Bennet is his "favourite" and jokingly asks Darcy when the wedding is to be. Darcy’s tongue-in-cheek response keeps up the joke, but it also contains a lot of truth. For marriage is a big obsession with the female characters in the novel and is one of its main themes.