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Pride and Prejudice - Background Information
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Class
When Darcy proposes to Elizabeth, he cites their economic and social differences as an obstacle his excessive love has had to overcome, though he still anxiously harps on the problems it poses for him within his social circle. His aunt, Lady Catherine, later characterises these differences in particularly harsh terms when she conveys what Elizabeth's marriage to Darcy will become: "Will the shades of Pemberley be thus polluted?" Although Elizabeth responds to Lady Catherine's accusations that hers is a potentially contaminating economic and social position (Elizabeth even insists she and Darcy, as a gentleman's daughter and a gentleman, are "equals"), Lady Catherine refuses to accept the possibility of Darcy's marriage to Elizabeth. However, as the novel closes, "...through curiosity to see how his wife conducted herself", Lady Catherine condescends to visit them at Pemberley.
As is apparent from Elizabeth's response, the key class distinction in the social world of Pride and Prejudice is between those who are 'gentlemen' and those who are not. The main signifier of gentlemanly status in this world is the possession of inherited landed wealth. Pemberley, Rosings Park, and Longbourn are all inherited estates of longstanding; so possessors in the family name do have the settled status of gentlemen, whereas Lucas Lodge is not, and Sir William does not. Gentlemanly status could, however, be maintained by those not in possession of an estate for those in specific occupations; chiefly the Church, the Law, and the Armed Forces. But within these professions, the distinction was still evident. Officers in regular regiments of foot were gentlemen; officers in the Marines were not. Incumbent beneficed clergy (prebendaries, rectors, and vicars) were gentlemen; perpetual and assistant curates were not. For younger sons of titled and gentry families like Colonel Fitzwilliam, the Law, Church, and the Army represented alternative refuges of gentility for those without landed wealth of their own. In this, the English landed gentry were unusual in Europe; younger sons of equivalent minor nobility in France, Sweden, or Italy who entered salaried professions commonly were considered to have lost noble status.
Associated with the distinction between who is a gentleman and who is not is the key question of the book: which qualities are 'gentlemanlike' and which are not? Elizabeth refuses Mr Darcy's first proposal on the grounds that it is, as his behaviour towards her and her family has consistently been, not gentlemanlike. Mr Darcy is incredulous at the charge; but eventually comes to accept the truth of it: "Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: ‘Had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.’". As historic gentlemanly status depended on retaining inherited land under the family name, so the conventional gentlemanlike qualities were seen in maintaining the dignity of that family name and in deference to the wishes of one's elders and betters; qualities given formal status through the legal instruments of entailed succession and strict settlement by which both Pemberley and Longbourn are bound. But in the course of the plot, both Elizabeth and Mr Darcy come to see true gentlemanly qualities as rather being grounded in concern for the feelings of others, and in avoiding hurtful or overbearing deeds and words. Kitson Clark argues that in this, Austen prefigures changing ideals of gentlemanly qualities that underpin Victorian social and educational ethics.
The Bingleys present a particular problem for navigating class. Though Caroline Bingley and Mrs. Hurst behave and speak of others as if they have always belonged in the upper echelons of society, Austen makes it clear that the Bingley fortunes stem from trade. The fact that Bingley rents Netherfield Hall – it is, after all, "to let" – distinguishes him significantly from Darcy, whose estate belonged to his father's family and who, through his mother, is the grandson and nephew of an earl. Bingley, unlike Darcy, does not yet own an estate but has portable and growing wealth that makes him a good catch on the marriage market for poorer daughters of the gentry, like Jane Bennet, or of ambitious merchants. Class plays a central role in the evolution of the characters, and Jane Austen's radical approach to class is seen as the plot unfolds.
An undercurrent of the old Anglo-Norman upper class is hinted at in the story, as suggested by the names of Fitzwilliam Darcy and his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh; Fitzwilliam, D'Arcy, de Bourgh (Burke), and even Bennet are traditional Norman surnames.
Relating to the lower classes, such characters are mostly only present through rare mentions, like asking "the housekeeper"; and those references exist mostly in a separate realm from the classes of the main characters, as when a discussion among the Bennet sisters pauses because someone from the staff walked in to the room to deliver a message. Main characters are, however, evaluated on the basis of how they treat those of lower classes; Mr Darcy as being fair and honorable, Lady Catherine as scolding, hectoring, and overbearing.
Self-knowledge
Through their interactions and their critiques of each other, Darcy and Elizabeth come to recognise their faults and work to correct them. Elizabeth meditates on her own mistakes thoroughly in chapter 36:
"How despicably have I acted!" she cried; "I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable distrust. How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself."
Other characters rarely exhibit this depth of understanding, or at least are not given the space within the novel for this sort of development.
Tanner writes that Mrs. Bennet, in particular, "has a very limited view of the requirements of that performance; lacking any introspective tendencies, she is incapable of appreciating the feelings of others and is only aware of material objects". Mrs Bennet's behaviour reflects the society in which she lives, as she knows that her daughters will not succeed if they do not get married. "The business of her life was to get her daughters married: its solace was visiting and news." This shows that Mrs. Bennet is only aware of "material objects" and not of her feelings and emotions.
A notable exception is Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth Bennet's close friend and confidant. She accepts Mr. Collins's proposal of marriage once Lizzie rejects him, not out of sentiment but acute awareness of her circumstances as "one of a large family". Charlotte's decision is reflective of her prudent nature and awareness.
Style
Free Indirect Speech
Pride and Prejudice, like most of Austen's works, employs the narrative technique of free indirect speech, which has been defined as "the free representation of a character's speech, by which one means, not words actually spoken by a character, but the words that typify the character's thoughts, or the way the character would think or speak, if she thought or spoke".
Austen creates her characters with fully developed personalities and unique voices. Though Darcy and Elizabeth are very alike, they are also considerably different. By using a narrative that adopts the tone and vocabulary of a particular character (in this case, Elizabeth), Austen invites the reader to follow events from Elizabeth's viewpoint, sharing her prejudices and misapprehensions. "The learning curve, while undergone by both protagonists, is disclosed to us solely through Elizabeth's point of view and her free indirect speech is essential ... for it is through it that we remain caught, if not stuck, within Elizabeth's misprisions."
Austen is known to use irony throughout the novel, especially from the viewpoint of the character of Elizabeth Bennet. She conveys the "oppressive rules of femininity that actually dominate her life and work, and are covered by her beautifully carved Trojan horse of ironic distance." Beginning with a historical investigation of the development of a particular literary form and then transitioning into empirical verifications, it reveals free indirect discourse as a tool that emerged over time as a practical means for addressing the physical distinctness of minds. Seen in this way, free indirect discourse is a distinctly literary response to an environmental concern, providing a scientific justification that does not reduce literature to a mechanical extension of biology, but takes its value to be its own original form.
Letters
Overall across the novel, around 40 letters are quoted or alluded to; such that many commentators have proposed - though without concrete textual evidence - that Austen's novels, 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Sense and Sensibility', may both first have been drafted as epistolary novels consisting entirely of letters - as her novella Lady Susan had been.
While free indirect speech builds up with the reader an identification with the current feelings and understandings of Elizabeth Bennet, at other times, the reader is allowed to gain further knowledge of other characters' sentiments through the exchange of letters. This is especially the case for Darcy's letter to Elizabeth following his disastrous first proposal; as through his letter, the reader and Elizabeth are given insight into Darcy's feelings and motivations in his own voice, to a degree that he could not then have expressed to Elizabeth outright. Moreover, this letter provides Elizabeth with proof of Wickham's true character, which leads her to question her condemnation of Darcy's treatment of him.
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The many letters quoted and alluded to in Pride and Prejudice can be divided into two broad categories: formal letters of civility; introduction, invitation, acceptance (and excuse), thanks for hospitality, condolence, and congratulation; and otherwise private, personal, and business letters. Formal letters are commonly expected to be read out loud in a household; personal letters are to be read by the recipient in private; and in general are expected to be treated in confidence, though it is always understood that a letter 'belongs' to its recipient. Crucially, in the novel, characters express feelings and communicate understandings in private and personal letters, that they may be inhibited by civility from stating face-to-face; as when Aunt Gardiner writes to Elizabeth "Will you be angry with me, my dear Lizzy) if I take this opportunity of saying (what I was never bold enough to say before) how much I like him?". Consequently, the novel is able to juxtapose characters in situations when the reader is aware of a dislocation between the characters' feelings arising from what they know to be the case from a private letter, and the feelings they are constrained to express in civil conversational exchange. Characteristically, in reporting such exchanges, Austen refrains from giving explicit expression to her characters' inner feelings, leaving it to the reader to understand their undercurrent of suppressed rage; as in the conversation between Elizabeth and Wickham following her receiving a letter from Aunt Gardiner relating Wickham's recent villainies in London.
Elizabeth's letters in the resolution of the plot
The bulk of the letters cited in the novel are addressed to, or read to, Elizabeth Bennet without citing her letters in response. But in the final chapters, we read an exchange of letters between Elizabeth and Aunt Gardiner, apparently providing the mechanism through which the plot is brought to conclusion. This resolution relies on there being an implicit license to express in private letters speculations that could not in civility be said in conversation.
By this time, it is clear to the reader that Elizabeth and Darcy have both come to regret their former mischaracterisations of one another, and are primed to recognise their love. But the circumstances of Darcy's first proposal, his crass denigration of Elizabeth's family and herself, and the absolute finality of her dismissal of him in response, still stood in the way of the desired happy ending. The logjam turns out to be broken in the unlikely person of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who had received a report that the two may be about to become engaged, and then confronted first Elizabeth and then Darcy with a demand that they each undertake never to marry one another. Both in turn had refused to give any such guarantee; and in respect of Darcy, "its effect had been exactly contrariwise" in giving him reason to hope that a renewed and contrite proposal might be acceptable. But as John Sutherland has noted, Austen has set the reader a puzzle: who had given Lady Catherine the (premature) report of the oncoming engagement, and how? An answer appears to have been suggested to Elizabeth the day after Lady Catherine's visit, when Mr Bennet receives a letter from Mr Collins, who says that he had informed Lady Catherine of the possible engagement between Elizabeth and Darcy, intelligence which Mr Bennet concludes Mr Collins must have learned from a letter to Charlotte, which he assumes came from one of her family, "the good-natured, gossiping Lucases". But Elizabeth will have known this not to be at all likely, as the information passed to Lady Catherine - and then thrown back at her - had included private circumstances of the marriage settlement of Wickham and Lydia, which the Lucases would not have known.
A more plausible narrative may be suggested by Mia Barzilay Freund, who notes that, "the swift cascade of events that results in her betrothal to Mr. Darcy" had been triggered for Elizabeth through Lydia's unintended disclosure - on which she had been sworn to secrecy - that Darcy had attended her wedding to Wickham. Elizabeth and Jane had promised Lydia not to probe any further outright, but Elizabeth is so overcome with suppositions about what this news may portend that she sidesteps Jane's assurances in writing to Aunt Gardiner, requesting further information in a letter, expressing surprise that "a person unconnected with any of us" should have been at the ceremony. This was being coy, and was a sly strategem as Elizabeth admits to herself on posting the letter. Aunt Gardiner, who has seen Darcy and Elizabeth together in Derbyshire, is not fooled for a moment, but nevertheless provides a very full response; "slyness seems the fashion," she says, noting a similar coyness had been apparent in Darcy's conversation at Gracechurch Street, whenever the subject of Elizabeth arose. So Aunt Gardiner takes this mutual coyness as an invitation to do some private probing of her own; if Elizabeth is being sly about Darcy, and Darcy is being sly about Elizabeth, may Aunt Gardiner presume in supposing that they may be in it together? Might there indeed already be an understanding that they could marry one another?
Elizabeth does not reply immediately to Aunt Gardiner's letter, and does not know how to; not until after she is has been confronted by Wickham, who presents her with what she now knows to be gross misrepresentations of the circumstances of his marriage, then with the glad events of Jane's engagement to Bingley, then with the shocking realisation that Lady Catherine and Mr Collins have also concluded that a marriage with Darcy could be on the cards, and then with Darcy's second, and whole-hearted, proposal. So well over a week passes before Elizabeth does reply, as she says, "I would have thanked you before, my dear aunt, as I ought to have done, for your long, kind, satisfactory detail of particulars; but, to say the truth, I was too cross to write. You supposed more than really existed. But now suppose as much as you chuse." As Freund notes, this would seem harsh as a response to Aunt Gardiner's playful and private 'suppositions', especially if "Mrs. Gardiner’s letter precipitates the change in circumstance that allows Elizabeth to furnish her with a favourable reply". But Elizabeth would have known that Aunt Gardiner would likely also have been writing to Charlotte to tell the Collins's why they could not have been invited to Wickham and Lydia's wedding; and if Elizabeth - whether correctly or not - suspected that Aunt Gardiner's suppositions could have been apparent, however obliquely, in a letter to the Collins's - and so to Lady Catherine - then her short-term harshness, and crossness, would be more explicable. Nevertheless, two play at the supposition game; so arguably it is Elizabeth Bennet, if indirectly and partially, who betrays Elizabeth Bennet.
Development of the Novel
The Militia were mobilised after the French declaration of war on Britain in February 1793, and there was initially a lack of barracks for all the militia regiments, requiring the militia to set up huge camps in the countryside, which the novel refers to several times. The Brighton camp, for which the militia regiment leaves in May after spending the winter in Meryton, was opened in August 1793, and the barracks for all the regiments of the militia were completed by 1796, placing the events of the novel between 1793 and 1795.
Austen made significant revisions to the manuscript for First Impressions between 1811 and 1812. As nothing remains of the original manuscript, study of the first drafts of the novel is reduced to conjecture. From the large number of letters in the final novel, it is assumed that First Impressions was an epistolary novel.
She later renamed the story Pride and Prejudice around 1811/1812, when she sold the rights to publish the manuscript to Thomas Egerton for £110 (equivalent to £9,300 in 2023). In renaming the novel, Austen probably had in mind the "sufferings and oppositions" summarised in the final chapter of Fanny Burney's Cecilia, called "Pride and Prejudice", where the phrase appears three times in block capitals.
It is possible that the novel's original title was altered to avoid confusion with other works. In the years between the completion of First Impressions and its revision into Pride and Prejudice, two other works had been published under that name: a novel by Margaret Holford and a comedy by Horace Smith.
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Austen sold the copyright for the novel to Thomas Egerton from the Military Library, Whitehall, in exchange for £110 (Austen had asked for £150). This proved a costly decision. Austen had published Sense and Sensibility on a commission basis, whereby she indemnified the publisher against any losses and received any profits, less costs and the publisher's commission. Unaware that Sense and Sensibility would sell out its edition, making her £140, she passed the copyright to Egerton for a one-off payment, meaning that all the risk (and all the profits) would be his. Jan Fergus has calculated that Egerton subsequently made around £450 from just the first two editions of the book.
Egerton published the first edition of Pride and Prejudice in three hardcover volumes on 28 January 1813. It was advertised in The Morning Chronicle, priced at 18s. Favourable reviews saw this edition sell out, with a second edition published in October that year. A third edition was published in 1817.
Foreign language translations first appeared in 1813 in French; subsequent translations were published in German, Danish, and Swedish. Pride and Prejudice was first published in the United States in August 1832 as Elizabeth Bennet or Pride and Prejudice. The novel was also included in Richard Bentley's Standard Novel series in 1833. R. W. Chapman's scholarly edition of Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1923, has become the standard edition on which many modern published versions of the novel are based.
The novel was originally published anonymously, as were all of Austen's novels. However, whereas her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, was presented as being written "by a Lady," Pride and Prejudice was attributed to "the Author of Sense and Sensibility". This began to consolidate a conception of Austen as an author, albeit anonymously. Her subsequent novels were similarly attributed to the anonymous author of all her then-published works.
Reception
19th century
The novel was well received, with three favourable reviews in the first months following publication. Anne Isabella Milbanke, later to be the wife of Lord Byron, called it "the fashionable novel". Noted critic and reviewer George Henry Lewes declared that he "would rather have written Pride and Prejudice, or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley Novels."
Throughout the 19th century, not all reviews of the work were positive. Charlotte Brontë, in a letter to Lewes, wrote that Pride and Prejudice was a disappointment, "a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but [...] no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck". Along with her, Mark Twain was overwhelmingly negative of the work. He stated, "Everytime I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig [Austen] up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."
Austen for her part thought the "playfulness and epigrammaticism" of Pride and Prejudice was excessive, complaining in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1813 that the novel lacked "shade" and should have had a chapter "of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story; an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott or the history of Buonaparté".
Walter Scott wrote in his journal, "Read again and for the third time at least, Miss Austen's very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice."
20th century
The American scholar Claudia L. Johnson defended the novel from the criticism that it has an unrealistic fairy-tale quality. One critic, Mary Poovey, wrote that the "romantic conclusion" of Pride and Prejudice is an attempt to hedge the conflict between the "individualistic perspective inherent in the bourgeois value system and the authoritarian hierarchy retained from traditional, paternalistic society". Johnson wrote that Austen's view of a power structure capable of reformation was not an "escape" from conflict. Johnson wrote that the "outrageous unconventionality" of Elizabeth Bennet was in Austen's own time very daring, especially given the strict censorship that was imposed in Britain by the Prime Minister, William Pitt, in the 1790s when Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice.
21st century
In 2003, the BBC conducted a poll for the "UK's Best-Loved Book" in which Pride and Prejudice came second, behind The Lord of the Rings.
In a 2008 survey of more than 15,000 Australian readers, Pride and Prejudice came first in a list of the 101 best books ever written.
The 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice on 28 January 2013 was celebrated around the globe by media networks such as the Huffington Post, The New York Times, and The Daily Telegraph, among others.
Thanks for the excellent comments.Some studies of names in Jane Austen have pointed out that in her time “Fitzwilliam” and “Darcy” not only had Norman associations, but were used in the great Whig clans of the aristocracy and upper gentry which dominated politics, and patronage, in the eighteenth century. The Austens were rural Tories who were accustomed to view the Whigs as not only wrong-headed on many issues, but, in their higher ranks, as insufferably arrogant. Whether the reader was expected to pick up on this subtext as a political undertone is debatable: I think not.
“Fitzwilliam” (specifically the “Fitz” part) as a repeatedly used given name within a family also implied that at some point on the family tree, someone was the offspring of royalty from the wrong side of the blanket. I think the hero’s name (as well as his aunt de Bourgh’s) is just meant to suggest “hifalutin” and “connected” in the minds of readers.As always, Gem, great job on the background info! You must be grateful when we have an obscure author, as opposed to one about whom so much has been written as Jane Austen! 🫣
Regarding the Whig vs. Tory thing: I think that often when we consider such issues, we see them too much through the eyes of a modern understanding of party. In JA’s day, and within her family, it was not so much about policies or values adopted by each party; in many of their views, the Austens were more ideologically aligned with the Whigs. For instance, they were abolitionists, and Jane Austen at least deeply questioned the concept of the natural superiority of the gentry; she valued people more for how they improved their minds and treated others, regardless of their polished manners or family tree. These views became more explicit over the course of her life.But as a clerical family, the Austens accepted without apparent question that the king was the head of the Established Church, which aligned them with Tories, who held an expansive view of the divine right of kings. The Whigs were on a sustained campaign to increase the power of the landed gentry and aristocracy as a counterpoise to royal prerogative. So our usual frames of right vs. left in politics didn’t play a big role in the political understandings of her day.
Very true. Although in the long run the Whigs, despite a long history of repression, passed themselves off as the historical “liberal” party as it emerged in the nineteenth century with a greater emphasis on individual liberty (not equivalent to recent American Liberal social policies). This masquerade was facilitated by Tories calling them Liberal, in association with foreign “Liberales.” They forgot its existing laudatory meaning in English, an interesting case of English xenophobia being limited by general ignorance of foreign affairs.
By Jane Austen’s time, “Fitz-“ (especially in Fitzroy) in surnames indicated royal connections in new names, but in really old names it was just Anglo-Norman for fils, “son of.” It was used as a personal name to indicate family alliances in the upper crust. But, as noted, I remain unconvinced that Jane Austen intended her readers to see anything more than vague aristocratic associations in the association with Darcy. It is, however, a respectable opinion, based on considerable research into onomastics in the late eighteenth century.
Background Information
Please note: The background information below contains spoilers. I did not hide them as I assumed most here (besides me) have already read the book.
Pride and Prejudice is the second published novel (but third to be written) by English author Jane Austen, written when she was aged 20–21, and later published in 1813. A novel of manners, it follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of the book, who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness.
Her father, Mr. Bennet, the owner of the Longbourn estate in Hertfordshire, has five daughters. However, this estate is entailed by a strict settlement that Mr. Bennet entered into when he came of age, so it can only be inherited by a male heir. His wife brought a settlement of £5,000 into the marriage and has since inherited an additional £4,000 upon the death of her father; however, Mrs. Bennet and her family face living only on the interest from these sums upon Mr. Bennet's death. To his regret, he has failed to save out of the income from the estate to provide enhanced marriage portions for his daughters. So, at least one of the daughters must marry well to support the others, which is a primary motivation driving the plot.
Pride and Prejudice has consistently appeared near the top of lists of "most-loved books" among literary scholars and the reading public. It has become one of the most popular novels in English literature, with over 20 million copies sold, and has inspired many derivatives in modern literature. For more than a century, dramatic adaptations, reprints, unofficial sequels, films, and TV versions of Pride and Prejudice have portrayed the memorable characters and themes of the novel, reaching mass audiences.
Major themes
Many critics take the title as the start when analysing the themes of Pride and Prejudice, but Robert Fox cautions against reading too much into the title (which was initially First Impressions), because commercial factors may have played a role in its selection. "After the success of Sense and Sensibility, nothing would have seemed more natural than to bring out another novel of the same author using again the formula of antithesis and alliteration for the title."
The qualities of the title are not exclusively assigned to one or the other of the protagonists; both Elizabeth and Darcy display pride and prejudice." The phrase 'pride and prejudice" had been used over the preceding two centuries by Joseph Hall, Jeremy Taylor, Joseph Addison, and Samuel Johnson. Austen is thought to have taken her title from a passage in Fanny Burney's Cecilia (1782), a novel she is known to have admired:
"The whole of this unfortunate business," said Dr. Lyster, "has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE. ... if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination."
A theme in much of Austen's work is the importance of environment and upbringing in developing young people's character and morality. Social standing and wealth are not necessarily advantages in her works, and a further theme common to Austen's work is ineffectual parents. In Pride and Prejudice, the failure of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet as parents is blamed for Lydia's lack of moral judgment. Darcy has been taught to be principled and scrupulously honourable, but he is also proud and overbearing. Kitty, rescued from Lydia's bad influence and spending more time with her older sisters after they marry, is said to improve greatly in their superior society.
The American novelist Anna Quindlen observed in an introduction to an edition of Austen's novel in 1995:
Pride and Prejudice is also about that thing that all great novels consider: the search for self. And it is the first great novel that teaches us this search is as surely undertaken in the drawing room, making small talk, as in the pursuit of a great white whale or the public punishment of adultery.
Marriage and the Family Name
The opening line of the novel announces: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." This sets marriage as a motif and a central idea in the novel. Readers are poised to question whether or not these single men need a wife, or if the need is dictated by the "neighbourhood" families and their daughters who require a "good fortune". According to American Book Review, the opening line of Pride and Prejudice is considered second on their list of top 100 greatest opening lines in English literature after Moby Dick's "Call me Ishmael".
Marriage is a complex social activity that takes political and financial economy into account. In the case of Charlotte Lucas, the seeming success of her marriage to Mr Collins lies in the comfortable financial circumstances of their household, while the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet serves to illustrate bad marriages based on an impulsive attraction and surface over substance (economic and psychological).
The novel is concerned with the marital prospects of the heirs of three historic landed estates: Longbourn, represented by five daughters; Pemberley, represented by a son and daughter; and Rosings Park, represented by a single (and no longer young) daughter. Only one of these appears assured of male succession in the family name. This prospect of the failure of male succession had become a common theme across rural England in the 18th century, arising in almost all family estates at one time or another; and in response to this, landowners and their lawyers had developed legal instruments - entail and strict settlement - to balance the consequential conflicts of interest. To be sufficiently confident of producing a son to maintain an estate in the family name, it was better if an heir did not need to wait for their father's death before marrying; but there must then be provision for an assured and substantial income from the estate to that heir during their father's life to be committed in a legal marriage settlement. In order to ensure that inheritance of the estate could be maintained in the family, even were a future heir to produce no sons, there must be provision for portions from the estate to be paid for current younger sons' education and marriages into 'gentlemanlike' careers in the Army, Church, and Law, so that these sons might raise gentlemanly cousins within the family who might if needed, continue succession of the estate in the family name. To ensure that daughters from the family could marry gentlemen, they must be provided with settled dowries from the estate to commit to their legal marriage settlement. Provisions in all these forms would commonly be expected to be spelled out in the strict settlement that each heir would enter into on coming of age; though in the case of Longbourn it appears that no provision had been made in Mr Bennet's strict settlement for daughters' dowries, Mrs Bennet's own dowry of £5,000 being settled for this purpose instead (albeit only after her death). Mrs Bennet rails repeatedly at the unfairness of the Longbourn entail; unable to realise, though her older daughters do, that it was only through that entail that she and Mr Bennet could have married as young as they did.
Of the other two landed estates that figure in the novel, Rosings Park and Pemberley, the reader is to understand that Pemberley is also entailed with a strict settlement, as Georgiana Darcy is stated as being provided with a settled dowry of £30,000 from it. In respect of Rosings, Lady Catherine states that it is not entailed away from the female line; "it was not thought necessary in Sir Lewis de Bourgh's family"; though this statement prompts the likelihood that the Rosings estate nevertheless is entailed by strict settlement in the de Bourgh family to the direct descendants of an ancient forbear, whether male or female. Anne de Bourgh is identified by Mr Collins as "the heiress of Rosings," so indicating an inheritance that has already happened. Consequently, if the estate is entailed, then it may be inferred that the current 'tenant in possession' and legal owner of the Rosings estate is Lady Anne de Bourgh; and that Anne's yet unborn heir would 'tenant in tail'. This would explain why it would be necessary for Mr Darcy and Lady Anne to marry if the two ancient estates are to be united in their children. But in any case, assuming Mr Collins is correct, Lady Catherine cannot be the current owner of Rosings. Under all the bluster of Lady Catherine's outburst to Elizabeth in the garden at Longbourn, the reality is that Lady Catherine has been scheming to detach Rosings Park from a branch of the ancient de Bourgh family and convey it into a branch of the Darcy family. Which is precisely the sort of dynastic larceny by marriage that the legal institutions of marriage in the English landed gentry in this period sought to forestall.
Wealth is a strong theme in the novel where the male characters of marrying age are usually described, first and foremost, by their annual income. For example, Mr. Bingley is introduced as a 4000 pounds-a-year person, similar to the initial mentions of Mr. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam.
Money plays a fundamental role in the marriage market for the young ladies seeking a well-off husband and for men who wish to marry a woman of means, as Georgiana Darcy, for her settled dowry, and Colonel Fitzwilliam states that he will marry someone with wealth.
Inheritance of landed wealth was by descent but could be further restricted by entailment, which, in the case of the Longbourn estate, restricted inheritance to male heirs only; Mr. Collins was to inherit the family estate upon Mr. Bennet's death in default of there being a son. The procedure of entail ensured that family estates of ancient creation were very rarely sold outright, typically passing instead to another branch of the same family where there was no male heir, or where the estate had fallen heavily into debt. Recently created estates were much more likely to come onto the market.
Inheritance laws benefited males because married women did not have independent legal rights until the second half of the 19th century. For the upper-middle and aristocratic classes, marriage to a man with a reliable income was almost the only route to security for the woman and the children she was to have. The irony of the opening line is that generally within this society, it would be a single woman without a good fortune who must be in want of a wealthy husband to have a secure life and children.