is what Charlotte's brothers are considering, & I think it's her focus as well.

I also agree that it could be more agreeable to her to stay with her aging parents or to become a governess than to be married to "the idiot Collins" (Lost in Austen); I even wonder about the religious life; in Roman Catholic tradition women interested in education & "without thinking highly of men or matrimony" could enter a religious order. I know there are women's religious orders in the CofE now; did they exist then? And if they did, would Charlotte consider one a reasonable alternative?

"Marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want."