Jane Austen: Money Matters
Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817)
I recently reread Jane Austen’s novels (Jane Austen: Her Complete Novels ). Austen’s novels are classics, justifiably so. One of the things that makes a work of literature a classic is that each time you reread it you notice new things. You can read Austen for the love stories, for her wit, for descriptions of the upper class world in which she lived. This time I found my self reading her for the economic situation of her characters and for their relationships to those who were not of their class.
Rich and poor are relative terms. Austen writes only about the comparatively rich, them and nothing else. The lower classes do not seem to exist in Austen’s world. They are seldom mentioned and rarely named. They have no dialogue and are never important to the story. Only in Mansfield Park are they even described and that only so the two servants of Fanny’s poor family can be disparaged. Despite that these vulgar and slatternly women seem to have their own lives, unlike the other servants in Austen’s novels. The servants Austen mentions most often are coachmen, drivers for the rich families she writes about, and they are only mentioned humorously. Austen’s characters (and probably Austen herself) thought it humorous that the drivers cared so for the health and well-being of the horses in their charge that they were loath to use them.
Despite the genteel poverty of some of Austen’s characters they all seem to have servants. Pride and Prejudice mentions Bennett servants including a cook, a housekeeper and two housemaids. They also have a carriage which means they had a driver and probably a stable boy or two as well.
In Sense and Sensibility when the Dashwoods move to their new cottage in reduced conditions, they take three servants, a man and two women.
In Emma, a novel where the heroine is a local heiress, the Bates, Miss Bates and her mother Mrs. Bates and their niece Jane Fairfax are poor, at least for their social set. They have fallen far and might expect to fall farther. They are so poor they are often given gifts of food and invited to supper. Despite this they have a cook and their door is always answered by a girl named Sally.
In Mansfield Park when Franny Price visits her poor family, her father unable to work, too many brothers and sisters, yet her family has two servants. Not good servants. They are frequently complained of, but that is two more servants than most of us will ever have. Mansfield Park, of course, has servants past counting, most of them nameless and invisible. At least the Price family servants have names and personalities.
In Mansfield Park the kitchen workers are referred to as “inferiors”. In Persuasion Sir Walter finds the navy offensive “as being the means of bringing persons of obscure birth into undue distinction”. Mr. Elliot’s late wife is referred to as a “very low woman” because her father was a grazier and her grandfather had been a butcher. This despite her having been an heiress. A person must have money and high birth to be acceptable.
No one else counts
Jane Austen was born the year before the American Declaration of Independence and died two years after the death of Napoleon but in all her books there is no mention of the American or French revolutions or how an increase in social and economic justice might affect the upper class British world that Austen writes about.
War is barely mentioned and never dwelt on despite several minor characters having relatives who died in battle and despite at least one major character having made his fortune in battle (apparently officers on a ship that captures an enemy ship got part of the pillage, as though they were privateers instead of soldiers. ) In Austen’s novels a soldier’s purpose seems to be to wear a red coat and flirt with young women. She does not mention how these soldiers were used to grow the British Empire and to exploit people all over the world.
In some ways the world Austen describes is like the pre-civil war world of Gone with the Wind except in Gone With the Wind even women had some awareness of larger issues. It can be argued that a lack of a wider awareness in Austen’s characters adds a timeless quality to her work but it also makes it trivial and limits it to the world of women.
Austen’s novels include no mention of history, rarely of politics or literature. The women of Austen’s novels are shown as ignorant of everything outside of their family and social circle. Ignorant to the bone. The Bennett girls of Pride and Prejudice never went to school, never even have a governess though the family always has a cook and other servants. The girls do nothing but amuse themselves. No wonder, as their father describes them, they are “ignorant silly girls.”
Austen’s novels, at their base, are about love and money. I think one reason Austen’s work remains popular is that most of her novels are Cinderella stories. The comparatively poor girl captures a man who is rich, nice and good-looking, generally the prince of the novel, the best man in it. Love is important but money comes first. Without money no man is a prince.
Money magically appears. People either have it or they don’t. There is never any good explanation of where money comes from. None of it seems earned. Maybe Jane Austen herself wasn’t clear about how money was made. Indeed, the only way an upper class woman could get money was to marry it, inherit it or to draw interest on money that she inherited. Women in Austen’s novels seem raised and trained to be a cross between parasite, a geisha and a brood mare. Even if they could earn an honest living the very idea was considered horrible, as it was to Jane Fairfax in Emma who expected to have to make her living as a governess. She was saved from this terrible fate by marrying a rich man.
With few exceptions men do not seem to earn money either. True, in Emma Mr. Knightley has a large farm but that was inherited. In Persuasion Captain Wentworth had gotten rich capturing enemy ships and in Pride and Prejudice Mrs. Bennett’s brother was a lawyer. A few clergymen are mentioned, mostly in terms of how much of a living they have. Apparently ministering to the poor and keeping them docile could be relatively well rewarded. Most of the wealthy men in Austen’s novels inherited or married their money and property. None of them earned it except perhaps for Captain Wentworth, if being a privateer can be considered as “earning” money. Interestingly, a man’s wealth is measured in his yearly income while a girl’s wealth is measured as a lump sum. In Pride and Prejudice Darcey had an income of 10,000 pounds a year. Bingley had three or four thousand a year. Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park had 20,000 pounds. In Pride and Prejudice Jane and Elizabeth each have a thousand pounds.
Austen’s class prejudice can be clearly seen in Emma. Most of the troubles in the novel are a result of Emma making friends with the poorer Harriet, something she comes to rue when Harriet comes to love Mr. Knightley, Emma’s neighbor, brother-in-law’s brother and the man Emma decides she want to marry once she finds Harriet has fixed her heart on him. Emma’s interference in Harriet’s life and encouraging her to fix on men above her station causes even Harriet much heartache. This is Emma’s moral, that classes do not mix.
Class prejudice seems to be a given in all Austen’s work. As it probably was in her life.
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© Alllie 2007
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