^ Pretty slim pickings, as @alh said. It helps explain why Mrs. Bennet went a little crazy whenever an eligible match came along.
I imagine there must have been a few other “landed gentry” families of moderate income nearby, but clearly not enough. After all, this is one of Elizabeth’s first teasing complaints about Darcy: “He danced only four dances, though gentlemen were scarce; and, to my certain knowledge, more than one young lady was sitting down in want of a partner” (chapter 31).
Cardinal Fang: I am sorry; I didn’t mean to embarrass you! As I wrote upthread it is difficult for me to look at Pride and Prejudice with objective eyes since it so permeates our popular culture. A while back a reading buddy and I tried to concentrate on the text without being influenced by movies and other writings and it was an eye-opener. A lot of what we thought was going on really wasn’t, and there were certainly very different ways to interpret various scenes. Thinking about the characters, we wondered about the rather hysterical depictions of Mrs. Bennet. Maybe she is more like the semi-invalid mother in Mansfield Park. Both women keep having to lie down due to (perhaps imaginary) illnesses and require a lot of attention from their families. Neither family takes them seriously. They are indulged. (It seems to me that “whiny malingering sister” in Persasion is perhaps just a younger version of the same character) But in film versions Mrs. Bennet is shrieking and Lady Bertram is pretty passive. Also, it is difficult for me to think about the story from Austen’s point of view rather than a modern one. A woman living 200 years ago was living in a very different world.
Who can the Bennet girls marry? Isn’t it usually younger sons ending up in the military? LIke Colonel Fitzwilliams, who pretty much tells Lizzie he admires her but has to marry money. Maybe one of those soldiers has enough income to be an acceptable choice. Maybe they can visit the Gardiners and meet some new young men, but the Gardiners live in the wrong part of London and probably associate with lawyers, tradesmen, etc. That would seem to be a step down in social class for the Bennet girls. Would Mr. Bennet approve such a marriage? He made such a marriage. (I had totally forgotten Mrs. Bennet had a dowry!) Mr. Bennet doesn’t want to take them to the seaside, which is another place Austen’s heroines meet their future husbands. Do we hear about any local clergy in P & P? They seem acceptablehusband material.
If I go through the novels and make a list of who gets married, it looks to me like the heroine’s choices are severely limited by geography and social class.
Jane Austen never married. Was that a choice? I tend to be a very autobiographical reader… not a very good trait.
Snowball City: I really like your post #211, since it seems to me Persuasion is the novel that contains almost every character and theme depicted in all the other books.
Except maybe Lady Susan. Maybe that one is an outlier. I haven’t read it in quite a while and it isn’t fresh in my mind.
I will stir the pot and say that in my opinion, Mr B is Sir Walter without the mirrors and vanity. He never economized enough to save towards his wife and daughter’s futures should he die. There is no dowry on the scale that his wife brought in. Even if there had been a son, there would have been no ready cash for marrying the girls off. Very irresponsible financially!
It’s fun to speculate (article from 2008, when the portrait was auctioned): http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/austens-very-own-mr-darcy-843552.html
Snowball City: What do you make of this quote?
Have you got these figures at hand: Mrs. Bennet’s dowry. The dowry of the girls. I don’t want to look it up if you already have that info. Did they spend Mrs. Bennet’s dowry or is it just divided up among all the daughters? All this money in the percents is very confusing to me - though I sure wish it were possible to live off a relatively modest principal these days!
Mr. Bennet doesn’t exceed his income. It seems to me, based on sites I’ve looked at, that Mrs. Bennet and the girls will have enough money to live on if he dies, though they will be living in very reduced circumstances. They will have to find a new home, maybe with Mrs. Bennet’s relatives. This is what happens in Sense and Sensibility. Will Mr. Collins be any more generous than Mr. Dashwood to a grieving widow and her children?
On the other hand, Sir Walter spends more than he has and has to rent his house out. He isn’t providing for Anne at all, if I recall correctly.
They do both favor one child.
If I remember correctly, none of the Austen heroines, except for Emma, are heiresses. Except for Fanny Price, they have enough money to support themselves as they age if they live with others. Probably they wouldn’t be forced to look for positions as governesses like Jane Fairfax.
It won’t be a surprise to me if my memory is incorrect here.
Also, I believe this is the situation Jane Austen found herself in. As I confessed, my reading is autobiographical.
According to the paragraph that follows the one you quoted, Mrs B brought in 5,000. (But I thought earlier it had said 4,000 - perhaps an extra thousand came from somewhere else.) As part of Lydia’s marriage, she is promised 1,000 upon the deaths of her parents.
Digging into my memory, dowries were often invested in government bonds that paid at 4%. This is referred to in Mr Collin’s proposal to Elizabeth. 5,000 at 4% would generate an income of 200 pounds. There is no way they could live on that. It would result in living in a boarding house similar to Anne Elliot’s friend in Persuasion.
edited to add that Lydia is to get from her father 100 pounds per year. Mr B thinks that this amount is roughly what it costs to keep her currently in “board” and pocket money.
I think you are absolutely correct that amount isn’t paying for a comfortable home. The Dashwood women are living off the charity of Mrs. Dashwood’s cousin and he is supplying much of their food. There are different ways to think about it. I have no idea what is correct. With deceased parents, all the girls together have an income of 1000 pounds. In Sense and Sensibility, the sisters discuss an income of 2000 pounds as being correct for a family of their class. (unless I’m misremembering!) However, this assumes the family already owns a house and land.
http://www.jasna.org/publications/persuasions-online/vol36no1/toran/
^there is a table in this article comparing the incomes of various Austen characters
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/the-economics-of-jane-austen/375486/
eta: In Sense and Sensibility, in their reduced circumstances, the Dashwoods still employ servants. Austen is writing about her own class. Even in reduced circumstances, they are pretty well off compared to the majority of the population. Anne Elliot’s friend does have a roof over her head. Many didn’t. fwiw
" Isn’t it usually younger sons ending up in the military?"
The military or the clergy. Becoming a clergyman was a socially acceptable career for a younger son who didn’t inherit land or money. To take up a profession such as solicitor or doctor would have been a step down - perhaps not all the way down to middle class school teacher or shop keeper but headed that way.
What is your math for them having an income of 1000 pounds? I must have missed something.
Nope. You are absolutely right. I am not mathy. Maybe Cardinal Fang has the time and interest in figuring out how potentially destitute the Bennet girls may have been if orphaned and unmarried. It would take me days and I’d inevitably miss some decimals.
eta: or of course anyone else with an interest. I’m just shouting out to CF because she has explained math issues to me before on various threads, which I’ve always really appreciated.
Supposing Mr. Bennett had dropped dead at the beginning of the book, Mr. Collins would get Longbourn, and all Mrs. Bennett and the girls would have would be her 4000 pound dowry, which is producing 200 pounds a year.
I went several months ago to The Greenbrier http://www.greenbrier.com/
During one of our tours they told us that back in the late 1700’s/1800’s it was the place to “summer” for the landholders of the south. They wanted to get away from the heat, and since it was in the mountains was cooler. They had no way to meet each other in the south as the plantations were so big and there weren’t the cities yet like in the North. One of the big things that happened their during the season was for the young men and women to meet each other and get married. It did happen here just as much as England. And they all waited until this summer at Greenbrier to meet others in their situation.
^ the beta version of Tinder
Weirdly, at least to me, everyone in Elizabeth Bennett’s class has servants, even impoverished people. The Collinses have servants. Fanny Price’s mother married a poor sailor, and has too many kids in tiny lodgings, but they have a servant. Even Anne Elliot’s friend, the disabled widow whose husband lost all his money and then died, has a servant.
I believe a maid of all work got about 5 pounds a year, plus room and board.
I’d love a servant, but wouldn’t wish that life on anyone – anyone living in the 18th or 19th century, that is.
I want a robot servant.
For as many times as I’ve read Pride and Prejudice, I’ve never really understood Wickham’s motivation for running off with Lydia. Neither elopement nor simple seduction makes much sense. As Elizabeth asked, “…what claims has Lydia, what attractions has she beyond youth, health, and good humour, that could make him for her sake forego every chance of benefiting himself by marrying well?”
And there is also Mr. Gardiner’s point: “It appears to me so very unlikely, that any young man should form such a design against a girl who is by no means unprotected or friendless and who was actually staying in his colonel’s family…”
I’d say it was revenge, except that at this point in the novel, Wickham is unaware of Darcy’s attachment to Elizabeth. It certainly wasn’t “true love” or even a moment of unthinking lust – Wickham is a schemer, so in that regard, he exercises some discipline in order to attain his end goal.
Wickham ran off because of he couldn’t pay his gambling debts, his “debts of honor” (he has none). He had a girl willing to run off with him and have sex with him. Why not bring her along? It’s not like he was making any commitment to her. When he got tired of her, he’d abandon her to the streets.