Money and Social Currency in Pride and Prejudice
In the society described in Jane Austen 's Pride and Prejudice, money was as much a social currency as it was a means of exchange for goods and services. Money was often commensurate with social rank, yet there was a feeling against parvenus who worked for their fortunes. As the mark of an eligible bachelor or an avenue to gentility or a genteel career, money had a great part to play in the society in which Pride and Prejudice, a novel of manners, is set.
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." This sentence, one of the most famous first lines in English literature, begins Pride and Prejudice, stating quite clearly the central position of marriage in the book and the central position of money in marriage. Mrs. Bennet is obsessed with the concern of seeing her five daughters, who will not receive their father 's estate, "well married," that is, married to a man of good means. Mrs. Bennet and her neighbors are entranced by Mr. Bingley 's "four or five thousand a year," and even more bowled over by Mr. Darcy 's income of ten thousand pounds a year. Pride and Prejudice provides examples of purely mercenary matches, and even the happiest marriages in the book have their monetary concerns.
Mr. Wickham is not a good mate because of his relative poverty, and is seen as mercenary by the Bennet girls when he tries to marry Ms. King, heiress to a fortune of ten thousand pounds. The Bennets ' shame in Wickham 's elopement with Lydia is somewhat ameliorated when Darcy buys a respectable commission in the army for Wickham, who was loathe to ally himself with a girl of such small fortune as Lydia. Charlotte Lucas marries the disagreeable Mr. Collins because he has a comfortable living under the patronage of Lady Catherine, and at the age of twenty-seven, Charlotte is in danger of becoming an old maid. Elizabeth puts it well when she remarks to herself on leaving Hunsford, "Poor Charlotte! -- it was
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." This sentence, one of the most famous first lines in English literature, begins Pride and Prejudice, stating quite clearly the central position of marriage in the book and the central position of money in marriage. Mrs. Bennet is obsessed with the concern of seeing her five daughters, who will not receive their father 's estate, "well married," that is, married to a man of good means. Mrs. Bennet and her neighbors are entranced by Mr. Bingley 's "four or five thousand a year," and even more bowled over by Mr. Darcy 's income of ten thousand pounds a year. Pride and Prejudice provides examples of purely mercenary matches, and even the happiest marriages in the book have their monetary concerns.
Mr. Wickham is not a good mate because of his relative poverty, and is seen as mercenary by the Bennet girls when he tries to marry Ms. King, heiress to a fortune of ten thousand pounds. The Bennets ' shame in Wickham 's elopement with Lydia is somewhat ameliorated when Darcy buys a respectable commission in the army for Wickham, who was loathe to ally himself with a girl of such small fortune as Lydia. Charlotte Lucas marries the disagreeable Mr. Collins because he has a comfortable living under the patronage of Lady Catherine, and at the age of twenty-seven, Charlotte is in danger of becoming an old maid. Elizabeth puts it well when she remarks to herself on leaving Hunsford, "Poor Charlotte! -- it was
Bibliography: Moore, J Mary Wollstonecraft UK (1999) Wollstonecraft, M A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, (1792) in Norton Anthology of English LiteratureNew York (2000)