The third (and final) part of Pride & Prejudice airs this Sunday on PBS. Before we get into some more serious discussion of Pride & Prejudice, I thought I would pay tribute to Mr. Darcy with this little video I found on You Tube:

Now, back to the scholarly stuff . . .

All throughout her life, Austen was exposed to nearly every level of society from royalty to poverty. Through these experiences, she learned the importance of money and social connections to make one upwardly mobile. While England has always been seen as a country where “climbing the social ladder” was nearly impossible, it was during Austen’s lifetime that the combination of the war between England and France and the Industrial Revolution brought “persons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honors which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of” (Persuasion 14). Men of “obscure birth” entered the Royal Navy and could, if they were intelligent and caught the notice of their commanding officers, rise quickly through the ranks. The higher a sailor’s rank, the greater the share of profits he received from the bounties paid by the government for capturing French warships—not to mention a share of any cargo the French ship might carry (this is seen in the character of Captain Frederick Wentworth in Austen’s last novel, Persuasion). Additionally, due to the changing economy brought on by the Industrial Revolution, merchants and tradesmen who would have otherwise been among the lower classes, made considerable amounts of money and established themselves amongst the landed country gentry, as did Mr. Bingley’s father in PP.

It is his pride in his own higher social status that leads to Darcy’s “ungentlemanly” first proposal halfway through the novel. “’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?’” Darcy asks Elizabeth upon her outrage at his denigration of her family and connections (PP 127). He also admits to her that he has separated his friend Bingley from her sister because of these low connections. “’Towards him I have been kinder than towards myself’” (PP 126).

In the end, however, Austen leads her readers to understand that “human worth is to be judged by standards better and more enduring than social status” (McMaster 129). Even before his poorly-executed first proposal, Darcy recognizes the “ill breeding” of his aunt (PP 115). He takes Elizabeth’s accusations to heart when she first refuses him and begins to examine his own character and the way in which he has acted toward those around him. He not only encourages Bingley to marry Jane Bennet, he goes to considerable expense find his nemesis, George Wickham (who had tried to elope with Darcy’s own sister a year earlier), and Elizabeth’s sister Lydia, who have run off together. Darcy pays off Wickham’s considerable debts in an amount exceeding £10,000 (an entire year’s income for Darcy), and witnesses their forced marriage.

Elizabeth’s connections are, at the end of the novel, lower than they were to begin with; however, Darcy admits to her that he acted only out of his love for her and confesses that his feelings are still “unchanged,” that he still loves her (PP 239). Throughout the last half of the novel, Austen delves deeper into Darcy’s character and at this point, the reader realizes that it truly is not Darcy whose feelings have changed, but Elizabeth’s. He fell in love with her in spite of her social connections. Even knowing that her status has changed for the worse, his love for her is more important and has helped him overcome all of his internal objections. Elizabeth has learned to overcome her prejudice against a man she saw as haughty and conceited and learned to love him in spite of his overt pride in his rank in society.

Even though Elizabeth is a “gentleman’s daughter” and Mr. Bennet is closer to being Darcy’s equal in rank, being a landed gentleman, it is not Mr. Bennet but Mr. Gardiner, the humble tradesman living in Cheapside, whom Darcy comes to admire: “With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth really loved them” (PP 254).

In fact, the Gardiners played a key role in bringing Darcy and Elizabeth together. It was the Gardiners’ idea that they visit Pemberley when on their summer tour, and it is on this visit that Elizabeth learns to see that some of Darcy’s pride in his place in society is warranted, especially when she compares the seriousness with which he takes his responsibilities to her father’s flippant attitude. It is also on this visit that she sees Darcy in his natural, more comfortable environment and realizes that she has truly come to love him and realizes that much of his pride is not misplaced. On the subsequent visits during the Gardiners and Elizabeth’s stay in Derbyshire, Darcy comes to see Mr. Gardiner as a man of intelligence, wit, and good humor with whom he shares a love of the outdoors, especially fishing. While not his equal in rank, Darcy realizes he has found an equal in mind and disposition.

It is through the contrast of these relationships—by showing Lady Catherine to be not only ill bred but “every bit as ludicrous as Mrs. Bennet” (Johnson 354), by depicting Elizabeth as much more interesting and loveable than Miss de Bourgh, and by making Mr. Gardiner more worthy of respect than Mr. Bennet—that Austen created her most poignant commentary on the importance of social status when considering marriage. “The importance assigned to class distinction is the source of much of her comedy and her irony, as of her social satire” (McMaster 129). She doesn’t discount the importance of rank or connections; indeed, in none of her novels does she have someone marry completely outside of their social realm. What she does is ask the reader to see “with a critical eye” the “automatic social responses” for what they are: prejudice (Duckworth 309). Once Darcy overcomes his pride in his own perceived greatness and his prejudice against Elizabeth’s assumed lowness, he realizes that while her connections may be poor, she is his equal in mind and temperament, and she is the wife he wants.

Works Cited

The second part of the Pride & Prejudice miniseries airs Sunday evening on PBS. This week, I wanted to delve a little further into this book with which I’ve spent so much time. Yes, this will be somewhat academic, as these are excerpts from the paper I wrote my senior year of undergraduate studies entitled, “Wealth and Social Status as a Theme in Pride and Prejudice.”

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man, in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. 

Thus begins what is considered to be Jane Austen’s ultimate commentary on the social condition of her era, Pride and Prejudice (hereafter, PP). Yet it is not just the “possession of a good fortune” which made a man worthy of an Austenian heroine; in PP, Austen paints a vivid picture of how “connections” or social status had as much, if not more, bearing on a man’s or woman’s eligibility as a marriage partner.

Austen’s stories in general, PP in particular, are often compared to the Cinderella fairytale: the poor young girl must be rescued from deprivation by the handsome and wealthy hero. . . .

“Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor,” Austen wrote in a letter to her niece Fanny Knight (qtd. MacDonagh 49). She could just as easily have written that it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of no fortune must definitely be in want of a wealthy husband.

Austen went from being an Elizabeth Bennet, a young and pretty girl in the middle of the social scene in her small country neighborhood to a Miss Bates (Emma), the spinster daughter of the now-deceased parson, caring for her elderly mother and depending on the charity of family for a place to live and to make ends meet.

Two years after moving into Chawton Cottage, Austen’s first novel, Sense and Sensibility, was published. The publisher, Thomas Egerton of Whitehall, took it “upon commission” for publication, meaning it was to be published at Austen’s expense. Unsure the book would be successful, Austen saved as much as she could from her meager income to cover the losses she expected (LeFaye 34-35).

Sales of the book surpassed expectations and went into a second printing in the summer of 1813. Austen cleared a profit of £140 (or about $7,500–8,000 in today’s currency*) from Sense and Sensibility (Gray 404). After that success, she returned to a manuscript she’d written nearly twenty years before. Since another novel with the title First Impressions had been recently published, Austen changed the name to Pride and Prejudice. This time, Egerton bought the copyright from her for £110 (about $6,000), meaning she would earn no additional profits from the book (LeFaye 35). . . .

Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy
In PP, the main male protagonist, Fitzwilliam Darcy, is descended on his mother’s side of the family from a “noble line; and on the father’s, from respectable, honourable, and ancient, though untitled families” (PP 232). His income is rumored to be approximately £10,000 per year (between $500,000–600,000—an income “in the four percents” or four percent of the value/earnings of his entire estate for the year), and when Elizabeth reports her engagement to Darcy, her mother replies, “What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages you will have…Ten thousand a year, and very likely more! ‘Tis as good as a Lord!” (PP 247). Darcy inherited a magnificent estate, Pemberley, in Derbyshire, and has a home in London, as well. He lacks nothing that money can buy.

Darcy is related to the highest “ranking” character in the book, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Lady Catherine, sister to Darcy’s mother Lady Anne, is the daughter of an Earl. She married a wealthy gentleman of no rank but of good social connections. Edward Ahearn points out the irony of Austen’s choice of last name for Darcy’s aunt: the etymology of the name Bourgh leads to the same root word from which the French term bourgeois is derived. “Her name . . . belies the purity of class hierarchies to which she is devoted” (401). As Lady Catherine’s character is revealed throughout the novel, her bourgeois tendencies toward poor manners, selfishness, and snobbery become clear.

While his grandfather was an Earl, Darcy is himself untitled due to the system of primogeniture. Although not detailed in the novel, it is suspected that much of the Darcy money came from mineral mining, as that was prevalent throughout the area of Derbyshire where the fictional Pemberley is located (Ahearn 401). As a wealthy landowner with aristocratic roots and connections, he is the second-highest ranking member of the cast.

Mr. Charles Bingley
In contrast, Darcy’s good friend, Charles Bingley, is nouveaux riches, as his family’s money was acquired through business rather than legacy, and gained only a generation earlier. While Bingley is reported to have an income of £4,000-5,000 (between $200,000–300,000) a year, he is not yet a landowner, and his sisters, who “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,” tried to forget that “their brother’s fortune and their own had been acquired by trade” (PP 11). Miss Bingley is determined to marry Mr. Darcy, as she sees him as being of a much higher social status than her own. She discourages her brother from marrying Jane Bennet as she is horrified by Jane’s low family connections and the degradation such a match would bring to her own hopes of attaining a high social rank.

The Bennets
Mr. Bennet is the hereditary owner of Longbourn estate, although with five daughters and no son, the estate is entailed upon a distant cousin, Mr. Collins. Mr. Bennet has an income of approximately £2,000 (just over $100,000) per year, yet because of the entailment, each of his daughters can claim a legacy of only £50 ($2,500) per year which will come from the £4,000 ($250,000) Mrs. Bennet brought to the marriage as her legacy. Mr. Bennet is seen as a gentleman who has not lived up to his responsibility: “Mr. Bennet had very often wished . . . that, instead of spending his whole income, he had laid by an annual sum for the better provision of his children, and of his wife” (PP 200). In contrast, Darcy is portrayed vividly by his housekeeper as being “‘the best landlord, and the best master . . . that ever lived. . . . There is not one of his tenants or servants but what will give him a good name’” (PP 161).

While on her father’s side, Elizabeth Bennet can claim to be “a gentleman’s daughter” (PP 232) when Lady Catherine pays a visit to demand a promise from Elizabeth that she will not accept a proposal of marriage from Darcy, Lady Catherine points out the lowness of the connections on Mrs. Bennet’s side of the family: her brother Mr. Gardiner is in trade in London and lives near “Cheapside,” and her sister, Mrs. Phillips, married a country lawyer. Lady Catherine sees these connections as placing Elizabeth well below Darcy in rank who will ruin the Pemberley family socially. This, however, is not Lady Catherine’s only objection. The “patched-up business” of Elizabeth’s youngest sister’s “infamous elopement” is well known to Lady Catherine. “’And is such a girl to be my nephew’s sister? Is her husband, the son of his late father’s steward, to be his brother?’” Lady Catherine asks (PP 233). It is unclear as to whether Lady Catherine sees the fact that Wickham is the son of a steward as worse than the fact that he is an “infamous” eloper, but in this instance, both cases support her argument that by marrying Elizabeth, “the shades of Pemberley [would] be . . . polluted” (PP 233).

Elizabeth & Miss de Bourgh (& Darcy)
Austen draws a comparison between Elizabeth and Anne de Bourgh, Lady Catherine’s only daughter whom Darcy is expected to marry. “’She looks sickly and cross,’” Elizabeth comments upon first seeing Miss de Bourgh (PP 106). Austen further contrasts the two women: Elizabeth, while claiming not to be accomplished, does play the piano and sing while Miss de Bourgh never had a strong enough constitution to take lessons; Elizabeth is vibrant and enjoys lively conversation while Austen does not record a single word as being spoken by Miss de Bourgh. Austen purposely brings Darcy into this setting where he has the visual contrast of the two women before him – Elizabeth, on the one hand with no wealth to speak of, and of low origins and connections; and Miss de Bourgh on the other, who will inherit Rosings, an estate to rival Pemberley for size and income. With his choices so clearly laid out in front of him, is it any wonder that Darcy proposed to Elizabeth against his will, against his reason, and even against his character? (PP 126)

Works Cited
*Click here for more details on calculating Austenian currency into today’s values.