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This essay explores the extent to which women's consent is requisite to marriage in Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison and is a contribution to current critical debate on Richardson's constructions of patriarchal imperatives. The essay focuses on the marriage of a minor character, Miss Mansfield, arguing that her coerced marriage is not an anomaly, but rather an example of a tendency that subtly permeates Grandison. The essay concludes, however, that we cannot read Richardson simplistically as inhibiting women's agency; rather, Miss Mansfield's marriage forms part of a background discourse that participates in contemporary debates on choice, pressure and property in marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]