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The property matter at the center of the novel is the male entail.  The male entail, more properly known as the "fee tail male," is a form of property transmission that limits the course of inheritance.  The right to the possession of real property (land) is called a "fee."  But, in Austen's time, a person's holding the right to possession does not mean that he or she can do whatever he or she pleases with the land.  In most circumstances, land was preserved in some form for future generations -- typically for the first-born son, except in rare circumstances.  In order to preserve the land and keep it in the family line, someone who held the entire fee (the fee simple entire) could divide the property right.  

What Mr. Bennet's ancestor did was to divide the right to ownership of the land that Mr. Bennet eventually inherited in order to ensure that the land remained in the possession of a male descendant within the the family line.  The ancestor would have given a partial fee, the fee tail male, to his eldest son; he would have given the "remainder" of the fee to his second son or perhaps to a nephew or brother or cousin.  Each of these property rights -- the fee tail male and the remainder -- would have been passed on in the form of an inheritance from father to son.  But the fee tail male is a conditional fee.  The fee-holder can only pass the fee on to a son.  If he has no son, the fee passes to the man who holds the remainder right -- in this case, Mr. Collins.  Once Mr. Collins acquires the fee, upon Mr. Bennet's death, the fee tail male and the remainder will be joined, and Mr. Collins will hold the entire fee (the fee simple entire) and can do pretty much what he wants with the land.

Because the Bennet daughters cannot inherit land, and because there is no Bennet son to inherit the land and provide for them, they must marry.  Their goal, as women of the leisure (upper) class, is to remain within that class.  To fall from that class, and actually to have to work for a living, is unthinkable and disgraceful.  Few options are available to women of the leisure classes -- or, more precisely, few options are available for them to remain within the leisure classes.  They may marry gentlemen from the leisure class (a landowner, a clergyman, or an officer), they may remain single and live with leisure-class relatives who can provide for them, they can become household managers for leisure-class relatives, or they can become governesses.  Even though these last two ways of life involve work, they were still respectable and "genteel."

You must keep in mind that gentlemen at this time do not really work.  That is why I refer to the upper classes as the leisure class.  According to common law in Britain at the time, eldest sons inherited all real property (land) from their fathers according to a rule known as "primogeniture" (for "first born").  The rule of primogeniture was so important to maintenance of cultural identity and preservation of wealth, that the English, while they controlled Ireland, decreed that in Ireland land had to be divided among all sons.  The division land was one factor in the increase of poverty among Catholics in Ireland. 

In England, younger sons had to be provided for in other ways that maintained their class standing.  Whereas eldest sons were prepared for a life of superintending land and family matters, second sons were usually sent to university at Oxford, Cambridge, or Durham to prepare for lives as clergyman in the Church of England.  Third and younger sons might also choose such a path, as long as the father was willing and able to provide for their educations.  Still younger sons, particularly where there was not enough money to provide a university education, usually had commissions as army officers purhcased for them.  (Navy officers were, in contrast, usually commissioned for their merits.)

Again, the goal of young adults of the leisure class was to remain within the leisure class.  Class was not entirely a matter of wealth.  The Gardiners are wealthy people, but Mr. Gardiner is, as Caroline Bingley sneers, "in trade."  Mr. Bingley's marrying Jane Bennet would give him a "low connection."  Similarly, Mrs. Bennet's brother-in-law is an attorney.  Attorneys and physicians were not members of the respectable classes, despite their wealth.  Even though the Bennet daughters are gentlewomen, their connections are low -- low enough that people like the Bingleys and the Darcys might have doubts about connecting themselves to the families.

How will concerns with class influence love?  To marry someone of a lower class, a class outside of the leisure class, or someone with low connections would require a gentleperson's sacrifice of some measure of personal identity.  We like to think that love conquers all, but we seldom see it.  Have you ever wondered why movie stars fall in love with other movie stars, and rock musicians with supermodels?  Even love and marriage are ways that we express our class identities and class aspirations.