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Jane Austen, Economist

Jane Austen, Economist

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:45 pm by Peter Leithart

Jane Austen, Economist 2017-09-06T23:45:18+06:00 Peter Leithart

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England’s economy in Austen’s time was still dominated by land ownership. Land was the most settled and permanent form of wealth, and writers like Coleridge and Burke asserted that landownership formed a “natural” governing class that had a physical stake in the nation. In 1710, Parliament enacted property qualifications for all MPs, and throughout the 18th century there was a property requirement for voting as well. Land could be an income-producing asset in a variety of ways, not only for the yearly income it would yield but also from the popular use of mortgages of investments.

Yet, the British economy was undergoing marked changes during Austen’s lifetime. Edward Copeland summarizes some of the factors that contributed to the instability of English economic life: “an expanding commercial sector, a rapidly developing consumer culture, an economy tied to the ups and downs of foreign wars, high taxes, scarce capital, inadequate banking and credit systems and large sums of money to be made and spent by those who never had it before. Aggressive enclosures of common lands, consolidation of neighboring farms and the introduction of modern agricultural improvements had brought enormous wealth and power to the great landholders.” Those without money, or those who had fixed incomes, or those who still depended on the older landed system could be in trouble. And, as we’ll see below, Austen was interested in the effects of these economic changes on life and marriage.

One key feature of this new economic landscape was the rise of England as a “consumer society.” What does this mean? It means that more people are capable of buying more goods than ever before, and purchasing power of non-necessities descends down the social scale. Items that were once only affordable to the upper classes are increasingly available to middle and even lower classes. In a consumer society, people buy in order to keep pace with fashion, not because something has worn out. In a consumer society, purchasing would not be limited to market days and fairs and pedlars; any day could be a day for purchase, as the number of shops increasing dramatically. Consumer society is advertising society, and the 18th century was awash in advertising. Women could follow the changing fashions of the city from the rural areas by purchasing fashion magazines and catalogues, and they could also purchase many of the fashions in a local shop.

England was particularly well-suited for this eruption of consumption. Much of the purchasing was driven by imitation, emulation, envy, the desire to keep up with the upper classes. Historian Neil McKendrick notes that England’s social structure was far more “compressed” than other European countries. Adam Smith saw that the difference between the English King and the English commoner was far smaller than the difference between the commoner and “many an African King.” The smaller gaps between classes spurred emulative consumption: “In a society in which the social distance between the classes is too great to bridge, as say between a landed aristocracy and a landless peasantry, or in which the distance is unbridgeable, as in a caste society, then new patterns of increased expenditure on consumer goods are extremely difficult if not impossible to induce . . . .In England where there was a constant restless striving to clamber from one rank to the next, and where possessions, and especially clothes, both symbolized and signaled each step in the social promotion, the economic potentialities of such social needs could, if properly harnessed, be immense.”

England was also dominated by London, where fully 11 per cent of the population lived by 1750, up from 7 percent a century earlier. Many more than this had lived in London for some portion of time, and thus “16 per cent of the total adult population [was] exposed to the influence of London’s shops, London’s lifestyle and the prevailing London fashion,” and thus London’s “potential for influencing consumer behaviour was enormous.”

Desire for luxury goods increased hand-in-hand with increased purchasing power. The middle classes were increasingly wealthy, and this meant that there was an increasing demand for various sorts of commodities that were increasingly flooding the market. Technological advances made production more efficient, and meant that more goods could be offered for sale. In addition to the increase in domestic goods that were available, imports increased dramatically. David Selwyn estimates that imported goods reached 12 million pounds by 1770. Selwyn describes some of these goods: “Not only tea (expensive at the beginning of the century, less so by the end), coffee, chocolate and spices, but also exotic clothes and furniture were becoming available to the middle classes; and improved transport by means of navigable rivers, canals and turnpike roads, ensured that they were readily obtainable throughout the kingdom.” Most of these goods were not mass-produced during this period, but were produced by local craftsmen.

The increase of consumer goods meant the increase of shops and the birth of shopping as a leisure activity. By 1801, there were 74,500 shops in England, far more than any other European country. The best shopping districts of London foreshadow today’s malls: “Oxford Street in particular was very smart,” Selwyn notes, “brilliantly lit with oil lamps, its shops staying open until ten o’clock at night. All sorts of attractive goods were enticingly displayed in bright bow-fronted windows, and more were laid out for inspection in the spacious first-floor showrooms of some of the larger establishments. Austen mentions shopping in London on several occasions, including a visit to the shop of the famous china producer Josiah Wedgewood. She does not seem to have enjoyed shopping. In letters, she describes her excursions as “commissions” that she performed for others. She complains in other letters about having to wait a “full half an hour” at a “thronged” counter before she could buy some Bugle Trimming and three pairs of silk stockings.

So, the consumer boom had arisen from the simultaneous increase in the availability of goods and an increase in purchasing power. It also involved a significant change in the mentality and outlook of the English. Many condemned the increasing expenditures on luxuries. Jonathan Swift said that England could prevent “all Excesses in Cloathing, Furniture and the Like” if Parliament would “enact and enforce sumptuary Laws against Luxury.” Fielding noted the social effects: “Nothing has wrought such an alteration in this order of people, as the introduction of trade. This hath indeed given a new face to the whole nation, hath in great measure subverted the former state of affairs, and hath almost totally changed the manners, customs, and habits of the people, more especially of the lower sort. The narrowness of their future is changed into wealth, their frugality into luxury, their humility into pride, and their subjection into equality.” John Wesley launched an attack on Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees, subtitle “Private Vices, Publick Benefits,” calling Mandeville a more wicked writer than even Machiavelli.

But the future belonged to Mandeville and other defenders of the economic benefits of luxury, “exorbitant Appetites of Men,” high-Living, envy, vanity, and fashion. One Nicholas Barbon noted that “it is not Necessity that causeth the Consumption. Nature may be Satisfied with little; but it is the wants of the Mind, Fashion and the desire of Novelties and Things Scarce that causeth Trade.” Mandeville celebrated the beneficial effects of vice in his buzzing social hive:

The Root of evi

l Avarice,
That damn’d ill-natur’d baneful Vice,
Was Slave to Prodigality,
That Noble Sin; whilst Luxury. [180]
Employ’d a Million of the Poor,
And odious Pride a Million more
Envy it self, and Vanity
Were Ministers of Industry;
Their darling Folly, Fickleness [185]
In Diet, Furniture, and Dress,
That strange, ridic’lous Vice, was made
The very Wheel, that turn’d the Trade.
Their Laws and Cloaths were equally
Objects of Mutability; [190]
For, what was well done for a Time,
In half a Year became a Crime;
Yet whilst they alter’d thus their Laws,
Still finding and correcting Flaws,
They mended by Inconstancy [195]
Faults, which no Prudence could foresee.

Thus Vice nursed Ingenuity,
Which join’d with Time; and Industry
Had carry’d Life’s Conveniencies,
It’s real Pleasures, Comforts, Ease, [200]
To such a Height, the very Poor
Lived better than the Rich before;
And nothing could be added more:

What kind of lifestyle could an 18th-century Englishman hope for? What could his income purchase? According to a contemporary domestic guide called The Complete Servant, a young maid in service to a widow or unmarried lady might make from 5 to 10 guineas a year; a guinea is 21 shillings; there were 20 shillings per pound, so this translates to a bit more than 10 pounds a year. In order to employ such a maid, the widow would need an income of some 100 pounds a year, which is what Miss Bates’s has in Emma. Austen’s works show that she considered even as much as 300 pounds a year to be a small income. Colonel Brandon offers to set up Edward Ferrars with that sum, a sum that Mrs. Jennings thinks is only enough to support Edward as a bachelor: “The Colonel is a ninny,” she exclaims. Elsewhere in Sense and Sensibility, the figure of 350 pounds a year is described as too little to “supply them with the comforts of life.” Austen’s brother James married with 300 pounds a year, but, Copeland says, “quickly discovered that it would not support his ambitions notions of compentence: a close carriage for his wife and a pack of harriers for his hunting pleasures.” At 500 pounds, a single woman will be well enough off. The Complete Servant says that with 500, a widow can have two women servants and a boy and an occasional gardener. Austen’s father, at his earning peak, had 700 a year, which inspired him to set up a carriage. He soon found the carriage too expensive and gave it away. In Austen’s novels, the main characters are usually living at a much more comfortable level. Mr. Bennet has 2000 a year, but he is lackadaisical about its management and saves no money for his daughters. He has been hoping for a son to keep his estate together. Mr. Darcy has 10,000 a year, and as a result is able to furnish his home with furniture of real “elegance” and provides a parlor for his sister. Mr. Rushworth has 12,000, enough to have a house in London.

Where did this money come from? For the most part, those who held land got their annual income from the land itself. Those without land might have invested in “the funds,” national debt bonds that paid 5% a year. Few would have invested in commercial ventures, since investors were still held liable for losses. Heiresses, Edward Copeland points out, would receive their money as a lump sum, not as an annual income, but the lump sum would generally be invested in government securities earning 5% a year. Hence, a 20,000 pound fortune would translate into a 1000 pound a year; a 10,000 inheritance into 500 a year.

Little of this income would have been devoted to food. At Steventon, Austen’s family would have grown most of their food on the few acres they owned. They had some imported foodstuffs – tea, sugar, chocolate, spices, citrus fruits – but they had their own cows, ducks, chickens and turkeys, and grew potatoes, vegetables, herbs, and fruit in their garden. They made their own mead, taken from honey produced by bees on their own property. Furniture and other household items of course varied in price. Austen’s brother James equipped the parsonage at Dean with mahogany furniture that cost over 200 pounds. Mr. Austen’s resources were more modest. He bought beds with mahogany knobs for about a pound, cotton for the bed hangings for 4 pounds. On December 5, 1794, he paid 12s for “a Small Mahogany Writing Desk with a Long Drawer and Glass Ink Stand Compleat,” which is usually presumed to be a present for Jane. Copeland suggests that we attempt to translate “servants” into household conveniences: “add a servant, add a convenience – hot water, central heating, a washing machine, and so on.” In short, Austen’s novels present consumption items, luxury items, as markers of income and status, rather than merely presenting landed wealth and houses as a sign of wealth. A horse, a carriage, additional servants, a house in town – these extras signify the range of incomes among Austen’s characters.

Comparing purchasing power across the centuries is difficult. As Daniel Pool points out, “the fact that the Victorians had no Hondas and we have no candles, i.e., we don’t buy the same goods and don’t have the same economic needs, makes the purchasing power of the two currencies fundamentally incommensurable. Nonetheless, intrepid estimates in the last ten years [Pool was writing in 1993] have put the pound’s worth in the neighborhood of $20, $50, or $200.” Darcy’s annual income thus represents, in purchasing power, somewhere between $200,000 and $2,000,000 per year.

Austen displays an early interest in economic matters, and this is an interest that crosses her entire career. Even in the Juvenilia, she is remarkably knowing about how money works in the world. This is not limited to recording the incomes of the various wealthy single men with which she populates her book. She is aware of how money affects life. Her early story Edgar and Emma, certainly dated no later than 1793 (when Austen was 18) and perhaps a number of years earlier, is a brief tale of frustrated love, which ends with Emma Marlow discovering that her beloved, Edgar Willmot, is not among the party that has come to visit the Marlows. Emma checks her tears, but as soon as the Willmots leave, she gives herself “to the overflowings of her grief” and “retiring to her own room, continued in tears the remainder of her Life.” Along the way, Austen introduces Mr Willmot as “the representative of a very ancient Family and possessed besides his paternal Estate, a considerable share in a Lead mine and a ticked in the Lottery.”

This realism about money and economics, and the power of money and wealth to shape behavior and desires, is found in many of Austen’s published works as well. Particularly in the early novels, the problem is a simple lack of income. Sense and Sensibility opens with a description of the fortunes of the Dashwood family, particularly the women. John initially intends to bestow 1000 pounds on each of them, not much, but something that would provide some income. His wife Fanny is able to convince him that they would impoverish their own son if they gave that much money to the girls, and John finally concludes: “I am convinced within myself that your father had no idea of your giving them any money at all. The assistance he thought of, I dare say, was only such as might be reasonably expected of you; for instance, such as looking out for a comfortable small house for them, helping them to move their things, and sending them presents of fish and game, and so forth, whenever they are in season. I’ll lay my life that he meant nothing farther; indeed, it would be very strange and unreasonable if he did. Do but consider, my dear Mr. Da
shwood, how excessively comfortable your mother-in-law and her daughters may live on the interest of seven thousand pounds, besides the thousand pounds belonging to each of the girls, which brings them in fifty pounds a year apiece, and, of course, they will pay their mother for their board out of it. Altogether, they will have five hundred a year amongst them, and what on earth can four women want for more than that?- They will live so cheap! Their house-keeping will be nothing at all. They will have no carriage, no horses, and hardly any servants; they will keep no company, and can have no expenses of any kind! Only conceive how comfortable they will be! Five hundred a year! I am sure I cannot imagine how they will spend half of it; and as to your giving them more, it is quite absurd to think of it. They will be much more able to give you something.”

In Persuasion, she deals with the tensions between the older landed classes, represented by Walter Elliot. The novel opens with his self-admiring review of the Baronetage. The Elliots are in difficult circumstances, however, and are having to rent out Kellynch Hall, their ancestral home, which they do to a naval officer and his wife, the Crofts. Mr. Shepherd, the Elliot’s manager, suggests that one of the rising members of the military might be a good tenant for Kellynch. Sir Walter is less enthused about the social mobility that the military makes possible. However useful it may be, he objects to the navy “as being the means of bringing persons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of; and secondly, as it cuts up a man’s youth and vigour most horribly; a sailor grows old sooner than any other man. I have observed it all my life. A man is in greater danger in the navy of being insulted by the rise of one whose father, his father might have disdained to speak to, and of becoming prematurely an object of disgust himself, than in any other line. One day last spring, in town, I was in company with two men, striking instances of what I am talking of; Lord St Ives, whose father we all know to have been a country curate, without bread to eat; I was to give place to Lord St Ives, and a certain Admiral Baldwin, the most deplorable-looking personage you can imagine; his face the colour of mahogany, rough and rugged to the last degree; all lines and wrinkles, nine grey hairs of a side, and nothing but a dab of powder at top. `In the name of heaven, who is that old fellow?’ said I to a friend of mine who was standing near, (Sir Basil Morley). `Old fellow!’ cried Sir Basil, `it is Admiral Baldwin. What do you take his age to be?’ `Sixty,’ said I, `or perhaps sixty-two.’ `Forty,’ replied Sir Basil, `forty, and no more.’ Picture to yourselves my amazement; I shall not easily forget Admiral Baldwin. I never saw quite so wretched an example of what a sea-faring life can do; but to a degree, I know it is the same with them all: they are all knocked about, and exposed to every climate, and every weather, till they are not fit to be seen. It is a pity they are not knocked on the head at once, before they reach Admiral Baldwin’s age.”

Even more in Sanditon, Austen’s last, unfinished, work, Austen focuses on the new economy of the early 19th century. The novel, Copeland says, “probes the consequences of abandoning the landed estate as the model of the British economy. The social world of Sanditon appears in terms of credit, speculation and the vagaries of consumer demand with the traditional landed estate falling into the hands of the commercial classes.” Copeland describes the economy of the novel as simultaneously “hopeful and depressed, principled and naïve, forward-looking and uncertain, backward-looking too, but like Adam and Eve’s melancholy backward glance at their garden, there is no hope of return.” Mrs. Parker at one point in the novel says of her family’s ancestral home: “It was always a very comfortable House – said Mrs. Parker – looking at it through the back window with something like the fondness of regret. – And such a nice Garden, such an excellent Garden.”

Austen is not only concerned about the effect that relative poverty has on the marital fortunes of her characters, but also concerned with the way that money and luxury reveals and shapes character. I’ve said that for Austen, syntax is character; it’s also true that spending is character. As one critic says, “Jane Austen never endorses extravagance in her characters, and indeed unnecessary expenditure, especially on oneself, is a sign of moral weakness.” Mr. Knightley is an ideal for Austen. He has great estates, and manages them himself; he is not a wastrel rich boy, but actually works. And he manages the estates with thrift, prudence, and above all, with generosity. Austen is not opposed to wealth, but she is concerned with the moral and social effects of wealth that is not organized and overseen with prudence and good taste.

Robert Ferrars keeps everyone waiting as he selects the right toothpick case, and this show that the “correctness of his eye, and the delicacy of his taste” are greater than the really important thing, his “politeness.” Within Pride and Prejudice, Caroline Bingley and Lady Catherine are the exemplars of bad uses of wealth. In Book 1, chapter 4: Elizabeth contemplates Jane’s declaration that Miss Bingley will be a “very charming neighbor”: “Elizabeth listened in silence, but was not convinced. Their behaviour at the assembly had not been calculated to please in general; and with more quickness of observation and less pliancy of temper than her sister, and with a judgment, too, unassailed by any attention to herself, she was very little disposed to approve them. They were in fact very fine ladies, not deficient in good humour when they were pleased, nor in the power of being agreeable where they chose it; but proud and conceited. They were rather handsome, had been educated in one of the first private seminaries in town, had a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, were in the habit of spending more than they ought, and of associating with people of rank; and were therefore in every respect entitled to think well of themselves, and meanly of others. They were of a respectable family in the north of England; a circumstance more deeply impressed on their memories than that their brother’s fortune and their own had been acquired by trade. Caroline’s letter to Jane shows her obsession with fashion and novelty and consumption (Book 1, chapter 2): “Hope was over, entirely over; and when Jane could attend to the rest of the letter, she found little, except the professed affection of the writer, that could give her any comfort. Miss Darcy’s praise occupied the chief of it. Her many attractions were again dwelt on, and Caroline boasted joyfully of their increasing intimacy, and ventured to predict the accomplishment of the wishes which had been unfolded in her former letter. She wrote also with great pleasure of her brother’s being an inmate of Mr. Darcy’s house, and mentioned with raptures some plans of the latter with regard to new furniture.” Later (Book 3, chapter 3), Caroline criticizes Elizabeth’s lack of fashionableness in dress and deportment.

Lady Catherine represents old money, and, while she wants her visitors to dress well and conduct themselves appropriately at Rosings, she likes the fact that not everyone keeps up with the fashion. She likes to have a visible marker of social distinction, one of the things that is disappearing in Austen’s day. In Book 2, chapater 6, Elizabeth visits Rosings, and Mr. Collins gives instructions on how to present herself to Lady Catherine: “Do not make yourself uneasy, my dear cousin, about your apparel. Lady Catherine is far from requiring that ele
gance of dress in us, which becomes herself and daughter. I would advise you merely to put on whatever of your clothes is superior to the rest, there is no occasion for any thing more. Lady Catherine will not think the worse of you for being simply dressed. She likes to have the distinction of rank preserved.”
Elizabeth’s enjoyment of the park and gardens at Rosings is affected by Mr. Collins’s excessive enthusiasm: “As the weather was fine, they had a pleasant walk of about half a mile across the park. — Every park has its beauty and its prospects; and Elizabeth saw much to be pleased with, though she could not be in such raptures as Mr. Collins expected the scene to inspire, and was but slightly affected by his enumeration of the windows in front of the house, and his relation of what the glazing altogether had originally cost Sir Lewis De Bourgh.” Dinner is lavish: “The dinner was exceedingly handsome, and there were all the servants, and all the articles of plate which Mr. Collins had promised; and, as he had likewise foretold, he took his seat at the bottom of the table, by her ladyship’s desire, and looked as if he felt that life could furnish nothing greater. — He carved, and ate, and praised with delighted alacrity; and every dish was commended, first by him, and then by Sir William, who was now enough recovered to echo whatever his son in law said, in a manner which Elizabeth wondered Lady Catherine could bear. But Lady Catherine seemed gratified by their excessive admiration, and gave most gracious smiles, especially when any dish on the table proved a novelty to them. The party did not supply much conversation. Elizabeth was ready to speak whenever there was an opening, but she was seated between Charlotte and Miss De Bourgh — the former of whom was engaged in listening to Lady Catherine, and the latter said not a word to her all dinner time. Mrs. Jenkinson was chiefly employed in watching how little Miss De Bourgh ate, pressing her to try some other dish, and fearing she were indisposed. Maria thought speaking out of the question, and the gentlemen did nothing but eat and admire.”

Lady Catherine’s wealth and position gives her the right, she thinks, of minutely managing everyone else’s affairs: “When the ladies returned to the drawing room, there was little to be done but to hear Lady Catherine talk, which she did without any intermission till coffee came in, delivering her opinion on every subject in so decisive a manner as proved that she was not used to have her judgment controverted. She enquired into Charlotte’s domestic concerns familiarly and minutely, and gave her a great deal of advice as to the management of them all; told her how every thing ought to be regulated in so small a family as her’s, and instructed her as to the care of her cows and her poultry. Elizabeth found that nothing was beneath this great lady’s attention, which could furnish her with an occasion of dictating to others.”

Though hardly a wealthy man, Collins also displays an obsession with his goods. Elizabeth visits Charlotte after they have married, and Mr. Collins ostentatiously shows her around the Parsonage (Book 2, chapter 5) “At length the Parsonage was discernable. The garden sloping to the road, the house standing in it, the green pales and the laurel hedge, everything declared that they were arriving. Mr. Collins and Charlotte appeared at the door, and the carriage stopped at a small gate, which led by a short gravel walk to the house, amidst the nods and smiles of the whole party. In a moment they were all out of the chaise, rejoicing at the sight of each other. Mrs. Collins welcomed her friend with the liveliest pleasure, and Elizabeth was more and more satisfied with coming, when she found herself so affectionately received. She saw instantly that her cousin’s manners were not altered by his marriage; his formal civility was just what it had been, and he detained her some minutes at the gate to hear and satisfy his enquiries after all her family. They were then, with no other delay than his pointing out the neatness of the entrance, taken into the house; and as soon as they were in the parlour, he welcomed them a second time with ostentatious formality to his humble abode, and punctually repeated all his wife’s offers of refreshment. Elizabeth was prepared to see him in his glory; and she could not help fancying that in displaying the good proportion of the room, its aspect and its furniture, he addressed himself particularly to her, as if wishing to make her feel what she had lost in refusing him. But though every thing seemed neat and comfortable, she was not able to gratify him by any sigh of repentance; and rather looked with wonder at her friend that she could have so cheerful an air, with such a companion. When Mr. Collins said any thing of which his wife might reasonably be ashamed, which certainly was not unseldom, she involuntarily turned her eye on Charlotte. Once or twice she could discern a faint blush; but in general Charlotte wisely did not hear. After sitting long enough to admire every article of furniture in the room, from the sideboard to the fender, to give an account of their journey, and of all that had happened in London, Mr. Collins invited them to take a stroll in the garden, which was large and well laid out, and to the cultivation of which he attended himself. To work in his garden was one of his most respectable pleasures; and Elizabeth admired the command of countenance with which Charlotte talked of the healthfulness of the excercise, and owned she encouraged it as much as possible. Here, leading the way through every walk and cross walk, and scarcely allowing them an interval to utter the praises he asked for, every view was pointed out with a minuteness which left beauty entirely behind. He could number the fields in every direction, and could tell how many trees there were in the most distant clump. But of all the views which his garden, or which the country, or the kingdom could boast, none were to be compared with the prospect of Rosings, afforded by an opening in the trees that bordered the park nearly opposite the front of his house. It was a handsome modern building, well situated on rising ground.”

Is Elizabeth different? She is attracted to Darcy when she sees Pemberly. She sees goods – furniture, etc – that are rich and suitable to the owner, but they reflect taste and judgment, not gaudy and showy (Book 3, chapter 1): “Elizabeth’s mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and admired every remarkable spot and point of view. They gradually ascended for half a mile, and then found themselves at the top of a considerable eminence, where the wood ceased, and the eye was instantly caught by Pemberley House, situated on the opposite side of a valley, into which the road, with some abruptness, wound. It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills; — and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal, nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. They were all of them warm in their admiration; and at that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!”

Money intersects regularly with marriage in P&P. One of the key issues in P&P is the “entail” that threatens to remove the property of the Bennets to Mr. Collins. To understand this legal mechanism, we need to understand something of the inheritance practices of 18th-century England. Primogeniture was still the customary practice: The eldest son inherited the estate from his parents. Originally intended by the king to ensure the provision of warriors for his army, it became by the 18th century a mechanism
for families to protect their own economic standing.

Primogeniture had significant effects on the pool of eligible males. It meant that there was an oversupply of very rich, very useless, very spoiled older sons. They never had to do a day’s work, and would inherit the family estates regardless of their qualities. It was hard on girls, because they could not inherit the property at all. It had a supply-and-demand effect in the marriage market. Pool notes, “In a society where the general rule among the wealth is that the eldest son gets everything, then a population producing a roughly equal number of boys and girls (and England at mid-century was thought in overall population, at least, to suffer from a numerical shortage of marriage-age men) will witness a mad scramble among the girls – or their mothers – to try to land one of the relatively limited number of eldest sons.” We see this, of course, touching the lives of the Bennets, who enter the competition for moneyed sons at the urging of their mother. This seems whimsical and sentimental, and with Mrs. Bennet it is; but it’s also the reality of things in Austen’s time.

But what happens if the oldest son is wasteful, and what keeps him from selling the estate and using the cash for himself. If he lacked family pride, what kept him from destroying the careful preservation of generations of his ancestors? To prevent this dispersion of great estates, and their preservation over several generations, they invented the legal mechanism of the entail. Daniel Pool explains: “The restrictions of entail (usually formally embodied in a piece of paper called a deed of settlement or a ‘strict settlement’) were a way of tying up the property so that the heir got only the income from the land – he couldn’t sell or mortgage it. In fact, the settlement was usually a deed giving the land to the eldest son, but only for use during his lifetime, his rights to the property being thus restricted or ‘entailed’ (from the French tailler, meaning ‘to cut off’).” This was such a popular solution that some attempted to entail the property in perpetuity, but this was not permitted: “the law refused to sanction entailing or tying up the estate for so long – in practice, it would only permit it to be entailed until the grandson of the man making the settlement turned twenty-one. Then, said the law, all the restrictions of the entail on the property had to be lifted, and the newly of age heir had to be given full ownership, i.e., he had to be able to sell it or give it away just like any other property.”

Great families found this unsatisfactory, and so they sought ways to ensure the property remained intact until the third generation. They were able to protect this by a little coercion. Sons in landed families, particularly eldest sons, didn’t work for a living, and lived instead on the allowance granted by the father. Given that, “the father of this inheriting grandson . . . had merely to indulge in a little discreet coercion – sign a new deed of settlement tying up the estate until your grandson is twenty-one, he said in effect, or I cut off your allowance.” This would keep the family property intact for another two generations. The problem the Bennets face is the problem of girls. If girls inherited the property, the family name would disappear entirely. What to do? “Quite often,” Pool explains, “the answer was that the deed of settlement or will entailing the property would provide for a lateral pass to another branch of the family that did have a young male.” This might be fixed by adopting an heir, as the Knight family did for Edward Austen, who became Edward Knight and inherited considerable estates.

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