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CHAPTER 1
Marriage, Wealth and Breeding
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
So begins one of the best-known books in the canon of English literature. Of all Jane Austen's novels probably no sentence says more than this one (which opens Pride and Prejudice) about the author's single most obsessive concern: marriage. This venerated institution formed the very heart of Georgian England, the key to a strong and stable society. Its binding laws safeguarded the nation's network of privileged landownership and ensured that ancestral estates passed undiminished from one generation to the next. The eldest son, heir and possessor of good fortune, to which Jane Austen refers, naturally became the coveted prize every respectable female dreamed of winning.
With the man came pride, high status, and much else besides. The principle of primogeniture spawned all manner of complexities and anxieties about inheritance and the plight of family relations who did not have the luck to be a first-born male. Marriage was the concern, therefore, of not just the matrimonial couple but of all members of the two families involved, especially unmarried sisters and yet-to-be-widowed mothers who might, with certainty, come to depend on such a liaison for financial security.
Pride and Prejudice accurately portrays a world beset with anxiety about securing suitable marriage partners. The story is set in Hertfordshire in the mid-1790s and revolves around the Bennets, a family of five daughters. Their concerns, and the dilemmas they face, would have been typical of the time. There being no son as heir, the property is due to pass to the next nearest male descendant of the ancestor. In the Bennets' case this is a distant cousin. The manor has about a thousand acres and produces a modest income, which could all disappear into the hands of Mr Bennet's cousin should Mr Bennet die. His wife's nervousness about the future – a state no doubt common to the women on whom her character is modelled – takes a fresh turn when she hears of an interesting new tenant at grand Netherfield Park. She raises the subject with her somewhat apathetic husband:
'Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.'
'What is his name?'
'Bingley.'
'Is he married or single?'
'Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!'
'How so? How can it affect them?'
'My dear Mr. Bennet,' replied his wife, 'how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.'
'Is that his design in settling here?'
'Design! nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.'
... [Mrs. Bennet] was a woman of mean understanding ... The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.
Marriage certainly was a business. Mr Bingley's income of £4,000 a year derives from the interest on his inheritance of £100,000. These sums would have been typical for a man of high status and large landholding, though in Mr Bingley's case the wealth has accrued from his father's successful trade (we know not what) in the north of England. Compared with the Bennet girls, who would each have a dowry of just £1,000 to take away with them after their mother's death, Mr Bingley's income must have seemed highly attractive. However, he is not the only big fish in the sea. A friend of the Bingley family by the name of Fitzwilliam Darcy comes down to one of the balls held in the local assembly rooms and turns out to be even better endowed, being in possession of a large ancestral estate:
Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien; and the report which was in general circulation, within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year. The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley.
Traditionally, both in the real world and in the world of Jane Austen's fiction, aristocratic families did not leave to chance such important matters as whom their sons and daughters would marry. It was important for families within the same social stratum to maintain connections with each other, and parents felt it their duty to facilitate a union of social equals. Not to do so, and to allow into their circle a person from a lower background, would be a betrayal of their own. It might even jeopardize their own jealously guarded position in society and, by opening the door to an unknowable quantity, could also threaten the very fabric of their privileged world. Hence Darcy's outrage (expressed to Elizabeth) when he later finds himself in love with her, a mere Bennet girl:
Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?
Match-Making
It was commonplace in the 18th century for marriages to be arranged by the parents of aristocratic families. Even as late as the 1780s the tradition was still in evidence. This was what Harriet Spencer, daughter of Lord Spencer, had to say when she became engaged to the son and heir of the Earl of Bessborough:
I had not the least guess about it till the day papa told me. I wish I could have known him a little better first, but my dear papa and mama say that it will make them the happiest of creatures, and what would I not do to see them happy ... I have a better chance of being reasonably happy with him than with most people I know.
Many daughters married simply to please their parents. It happened in Jane Austen's own family early in the 1780s, when she herself was a young girl. Her cousin Eliza Hancock met a dashing young Frenchman, reputedly one of the finest officers in France, rich, and a count into the bargain. Before long they were married. In Eliza's words:
It was a step I took much less from my own judgement than that of those whose councils & opinions I am the most bound to follow, I trust I shall never have any reason to repent it.
The counsels and opinions were those of her mother (her father having died), who found the prospect of hooking up to the French aristocracy irresistible and did everything she could to expedite the union. This included persuading the trustees (one of whom was Jane's father, George Austen) of a trust fund set up for Eliza by her godfather, the colonial administrator Warren Hastings, to release the proceeds early and 'pay them over into the French Funds', for the Comte de Feuillide was expected to inherit a good fortune, 'but at present but little'. Smelling a rat, the trustees baulked at such recklessness and rushed letters off to Warren Hastings alerting him:
Mr Austen [Jane's father] is much concerned at the connection which he says is giving up all their friends, their country, & he fears their religion ...
I wrote Mrs Hancock ... who is in France where I believe she intends to end her days, having married her daughter there to a gentleman of that country, I am afraid not very advantageously, although she says it is entirely to her satisfaction, the gentleman having great connections & expectations. Her uncle Mr Austen, and Brother don't approve of the match. The latter is much concerned at it; they seem already desirous of draining the mother of every shilling she has.
The circumstances were made complicated by the various relationships of Warren Hastings. George Austen had known him as a friend when a young man and it was to George, in the capacity of a tutor, that Hastings sent his infant son to receive an English education. When Hastings' wife died in childbirth, his friendship in India with George's sister Philadelphia Hancock grew into something more serious, and it is thought likely that Eliza was their love child, though officially acknowledged as his goddaughter.
While Eliza's mother boasted to her Parisian friends of the young couple's wealth and must have frequently dined out on her connection with Lord Hastings, who was by then Governor-General of India, Eliza eventually confided in her cousin Phylly Walter that her match with the Comte was not one made in heaven. Phylly noted:
The Countess has many amiable qualities, such as the highest duty, love and respect for her mother: for her husband she professes a large share of respect, esteem and the highest opinion of his merits, but confesses that Love is not of the number on her side.
Eventually political circumstances would decide Eliza's fate. Her aristocratic husband became a victim of the French Revolution and was guillotined in 1794. Eliza returned to England a released woman, happy to indulge once again in the pleasures of London society, an environment as likely as not to produce a new husband.
Throughout the 18th century a series of institutions had been set up to facilitate courting. Every county town had its assembly rooms where balls were staged regularly during a season for the specific purpose of matching couples. At the same time a sea-change in attitudes to marriage was occurring. Greater prominence was being given to that radical new idea, 'freedom of choice'. Parental authority was no longer the primary force in determining who the spouse should be. Even financial and political considerations, though they were important, might not always override a daughter's will.
Many parents felt unsure of what exactly their priorities should be. Their daughter's happiness was their first consideration but they certainly were not going to abandon her to a whim. If the practice of formally arranging marriages was becoming less commonplace, it was being replaced by a rise in the more subtle art of match-making, though the degree of subtlety varied considerably. The problem of ambitious parents overplaying their hand in the process was identified by society magazines of the time. A spoof letter appeared in The Lady's Monthly Museum in 1798 expressing a young lady's dismay at the whole sorry business:
Now as my papa and mamma have been trying for the last three years to match me, and have for that purpose carried me from our country seat to London, from London to Brighton, from Brighton to Bath, and from Bath to Cheltenham, where I now am, backwards and forwards, till the family carriage is almost worn out, without my having more than a nibble, for I have never yet been able to hook my fish, I begin to be afraid that there is something wrong in their manner of baiting for a husband, or in mine of laying in the line to catch him.
O! how my heart did beat with joy when my mamma first acquainted me with the thought I ought no longer to be buried in the country, where there was scarcely a chance of my ever having an offer beyond a foxhunting squire or a card-playing parson; and that I might, like other young ladies of my birth and station, pick up a man of rank and fortune!
... to confess the truth, dear Goody, I was tired of lawns and trees, fish ponds and walled gardens, horses and hounds, and all the rusticities of life; and I wished to escape from them. But though I have, by the indulgence of my parents, seen all that is to be seen of the beau monde, and have never acted the prude, but at every proper advance have looked as much as to say, Come on, if you dare; no one has ever offered me any thing beyond a fashionable compliment. I rather suspect that my parents are the real and genuine cause of my disappointment; for no sooner had we taken up our residence in town, than my mamma hinted to all our female married acquaintances the object of our journey; and no sooner did a man to their mind pay me the least attention, than, in their over-anxiety to engage him, they gave such broad hints, as left him nothing to fear as to their approbation, and therefore made him more indifferent about mine. They wished me to win hearts, and yet they never allowed any of my supposed admirers time enough to disclose their sentiments, before they shifted the scene; for, according to their maxim, love is improved by distance, and the effect of a first impression is heightened by difficulty of access. — Several gentlemen, indeed, who were put to this test, pursued the route we took, and a kind of acquaintance was renewed; but this was never suffered to arrive at any maturity; for if a lord only smiled at me, I was cautioned to avoid inferior persons, and throw out all my lines to catch him. This conduct probably defeated its own purpose, as I lost the respect of my equals, and was not likely, when the motive was so obvious, to gain the affection of my superiors. If this season at Cheltenham proves untoward I have reason to apprehend I shall be doomed to Rusty Hall for life; unless some kind, worthy creature of a man will deign to come and look after me, instead of my looking after him. As my heart is still disengaged, I think, at the age of twenty three, I could love any man who had pretensions to my regard, and who was neither old, ugly, nor ill-natured.
Your friend and admirer Biddy, Willing
Added to the anxiety of finding Mr Right was the perception (and reality) that eligible bachelors were thin on the ground. The high cost of maintaining a wife and household put a lot of men off the idea of marriage. This, coupled with an increasing surplus of females over males as the century drew to a close, partly the result of war and partly because of a higher infant mortality among males, created near-hysteria. In Jane's social milieu, matchmaking had become almost a profession among some women who had little else to think about, as the author highlights in Sense and Sensibility:
Mrs Jennings was a widow with an ample jointure. She had only two daughters, both of whom she had lived to see respectably married, and she had now therefore nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the world. In the promotion of this object she was zealously active, as far as her ability reached; and missed no opportunity of projecting weddings among all the young people of her acquaintance. She was remarkably quick in the discovery of attachments, and had enjoyed the advantage of raising the blushes and the vanity of many a young lady by insinuations of her power over such a young man ...
Society magazines condemned the antics of over-eager mothers and fathers, saying that such avid manhunts were reprehensible and that they contributed to a decline in the popularity of marriage, especially among men living in London, as The Lady's Monthly Museum commented:
Railing at matrimony is become so fashionable a topick that one can scarcely step into a Coffee-house or a Tavern but one hears declamations against being clogged with a wife and family, and a fixed resolution of living a life of liberty, gallantry, and pleasure as it is called; the consequence of this must prove injurious.
When a young man accidentally falls into the company of a girl whose temper, beauty, and circumstances are really calculated to attract his regard, and finds her father and mother striving with mutual art to cajole him into a connection with her; when he sees them exerting all the grimace and cant of an auctioneer to engage purchasers, by puffing the lot, and expatiating upon qualities, which every lover is fond of discovering with his own eyes, he begins to suspect that there is some latent deception in character, disposition, or fortune; and, as is common in ordinary affairs, shrinks back from the purchase, which is offered too cheap to be good.
Not all parents, of course, involved themselves so counterproductively in their daughters' fortunes. Some, with a nod to progressive thinking, left the whole thing up to the individuals. Jane's own parents make an interesting case. Her mother, Cassandra Leigh, came from an aristocratic family. One ancestor, Sir Thomas Leigh, was Lord Mayor of London at the time of Queen Elizabeth I's coronation, a later Sir Thomas Leigh had sheltered Charles I during the Civil War, and Cassandra's grandmother, Mary Brydges, was sister to the Duke of Chandos. Jane's father George Austen, on the other hand, was an orphaned boy whose own grandmother had been a lowly school housekeeper. Though the match on paper looked one-sided, George had attributes in his favour. He was tall, handsome and intelligent. At the age of 16 he went up to St John's College, Oxford, performed well, and could easily have chosen a comfortable career as an academic (Cassandra's father was also at Oxford). But the life of an Oxford don was not for him. A mid-century rhyme by Tom Wharton may have summed up his feelings:
These fellowships are pretty things, We live indeed like petty kings: But who can bear to waste his whole age Amid the dullness of a college, Debarr'd the common joys of life, And that prime bliss – a loving wife.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Voices from the World of Jane Austen"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Malcolm Day.
Excerpted by permission of F+W Media, Inc..
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