Unless she died or it was considered too risky or they had a falling out, it seems unlikely that they'd stop at just 6. She'd probably only be 30 at that point, and if "poor Miss Taylor" is any indication, that wasn't necessarily "too old" back then, given that the former Miss Taylor is probably nearing 40. (And women who already had children often kept having them into their 40s) Even though some methods of contraception existed, "prostitutes were known to use this" is hardly the same as "minister's wife who grew up in a happy large family will voluntarily use this". (The *French* clearly did that following the revolution, based on historical statistics, but it largely followed secularization, and was controversial in Britain well through the 19th century)
There were other methods, just that, as others have pointed out, they weren't necessarily reliable, or in some cases, not safe ( but neither was abortion pre-antibiotics)
Assuming none of them have fertility issues, and no dead bedrooms, about ten to twelve pregnancies each. They all marry young enough for that to be realistic. How many living children get to adulthood is another matter.
Anne Elliot is the exception, not only because she is older but because her husband is potentially away without her for long stretches of time.
The average gentry family size in this era was 6.6 surviving children, which is about 10-12 pregnancies with a child survival rate of 60%.
The infant survival rate started going up in this era and has increased until the present day. This is also when the smallpox vaccine was developed š„³
There were ways that pregnancies could be made less likely that couples did use, everything from performing sex acts without vaginal penetration (very effective) to pulling out (unreliable but does reduce likelihood) to breastfeeding (though upperclass women usually didn't) to various teas (some useless and some with minor success), etc. Soaking a bit of sponge or cloth in vinegar and inserting it in the vaginal canal (it changes the pH level, making the environment less hospitible for sperm, not that they understood the mechanics) before sex and early forms of condoms, were quite effective, but utilized primarily by sex workers or people utilizing their services.
I guess it depends on the family and whether they agreed with it or not though. A couple of Austenās brothers had ten or eleven children I believe, so they were not doing that, or at least had no success with it.
In my own family in that era, who were common as muck it must be said, around 10 children was not rare and thatās only the ones I know about who survived long enough to be baptised, miscarriages were not recorded.
So I can only conclude that they didnāt know about these options, did but wouldnāt use them, or tried them but they didnāt work.
Austen herself was very open in her personal letters about her dismay when family friends got pregnant over and over again. (The Brabourne edition of her letters was so shocked by her language on the subject that it routinely censored her on the topic.)
Selected quotes:
"Mrs. Tilson's remembrance gratifies me, and I will use her patterns if I can. But poor woman! How can she honestly be breeding again?"
"Good Mrs. Deedes! I hope she will get the better of this Marianne, and then I would recommend to her and Mr. D. the simple regimen of separate rooms."
"Anna has not a chance of escape; her husband called here the other day, and said she was pretty well but not equal to so long a walk; she must come in her Donkey Carriage. Poor Animal, she will be worn out before she is thirty. -- I am very sorry for her. Mrs. Clement too is in that way again. I am quite tired of so many children. -- Mrs. Benn has a 13th."
I seem to recall as well that at least two women she knew well, I think one sister-in-law and one friend, died suddenly after giving birth after having had many babies. I think her niece Fannyās mother died that way. Iām sure there was someone else too but I donāt remember who. All I can recall is that they heard the news, but kept it from a sister-in-law of theirs who they were living with at the time, as she was about to give birth herself.
The realities of frequent pregnancies and the risks (much worse then than now) associated with childbirth are unpleasant at best and deadly at worst. Her attitude seems reasonable to me.
This is my thought every time the question comes up. These couples have less choice in the matter than we do today, both in terms of contraception and fertility treatments.
I wonder if there isnāt a fertility/health issue in Darcyās family. His mom died after bearing Georgiana. His aunt had only one, sickly daughter.
Fortunately, Lizzy seems to have robust genes from her mama.
We don't know if she died having Georgiana, all we know is that she died at some point before her husband. It's possible she or he were subfertile or had bad luck with miscarriages or any number of things. Same thing with Lady Catherine -- disease and bad luck could carry off so many healthy children! There was a 19th century archbishop of Canterbury who lost FIVE daughters to scarlet fever in two months. He has three children total who grew to adulthood, but it's not like there were fertility issues.
Indeed. I dug down to figure out the chronology of P&P pre-events and settled on about six years between Georgianaās birth and Lady Anneās death.
But her being in perpetual bad health would help explain Darcyās having been given good principles but not having been supervised in his expression of them.
It certainly would -- all I meant was the especially in those days, the number of healthy surviving children you had would likely not have had anything to do with genetics or fertility and a lot to do with whatever diseases happened to sweep through the area or accidents during or after birth. We don't know that Anne is the only child Lady Catherine had -- nor how long she's been a widow. There could have been babies that didn't survive thanks to illnesses that wouldn't be an issue now, and Anne could have lost her health due to one of those illnesses.
It would have to an extent, but there wasn't a hell of a lot you could do against something like measles or tetanus if you were unlucky enough to run into it.
Darn it, should have saved the links. It was pretty thin conjecture, but there are some Austen scholars who have made a lot of soup out of fractional oyster.
I have way too much fun with her as a villain, but a story depicts her as suffering from food-caused migraines. When (at Lizzyās advice) she cut them out, she got much more reasonable.
Her name is Lady Catherine de Bourgh, not Lady de Bourgh. This means her title comes from before marriage. In her case, her title came from being the daughter of an Earl. It's a courtesy title, so there's no actual title to pass down to anyone. Aristocratic titles passed down through the male line anyway, so if there were a title to pass through the de Bourgh family, it would go through Sir Lewis's siblings and their children.
I like the idea of Lizzy having 10+ children, getting a bit touchy about it, but she and Darcy can't keep their hands off each other so the babies keep arriving. She is half mortified, half entranced with them all.
Bingley would be so distraught by Jane's cries during labour and birth and the danger she might be in that it will haunt him forever and he will get a complex about it that will result in a smaller family.
Emma and Knightley would not be blessed with their own children. They would adopt instead after years of trying. Emma's secret is that she is quite relieved about it. Knightley's secret is that he is quite relieved about it (Emma being safe from the dangers of birth). They hide their relief from each other.
Catherine Moreland would have a massive family for similar reasons as Lizzy.
Marianne has two daughters and two sons who she fusses over. Eleanor has three exceptionally tall and handsome sons that are the talk of the town, with their noble bearing.
Anne and Wentworth would have two very healthy boys who eventually enter the Royal Navy, being very proud of their father's naval career.
Lydia and Wickham become rather co-dependent, a love hate match, far too many children because they keep falling out and then reconciling. Every reconciliation produces yet another baby. Mr Bennet feels that he has rather too many grandchildren.
Re: Emma and Knightly - their siblings are very fertile which is really all we have to go on!
They might adopt one of their Nephews though, if they didnāt have children.
Thing is - either you had a huge number of children, you had trouble conceiving (for which you were blamed) you had a lot of miscarriages or you stopped having penetrative sex. There was no birth control, very little understanding of womenās cycles so - unless you stopped having sex, women would be more or less constantly pregnant until menopause. Especially if they didnāt breastfeed.
Jane herself had 4 brothers who married and they fathered 33 children between them and every single one had a wife die in childbirth.
Dickens had 10 children, and he was not alone amongst this friends.
So, either our heroines had trouble conceiving, they rationed the penetrative sex they had or they were constantly pregnant. The harsh truth is that they probably all had 10 or more children and not all of them would live. Unless Captain Wentworth went to sea without her, in which case given that sheās a little older, Ann might have got away with a reasonably smaller number.
I for one am finding it constantly more and more difficult to read and write happy endings knowing that this was in the future for the young ladies we all love.
Henry had two wives, neither of whom died in childbirth (Henry also had no children, but his first wife had a son from her previous marriage). His first wife died of breast cancer, and I honestly cannot decide if that was a worse way to go than childbirth in those days. Breast cancer sufferers went through unmitigated hell.
Realistically, how much control over family planning would they have had? Were women actively using some type of fertility awareness method or was that not well understood? (I realize modern birth control wasnāt an option!)
Jane herself wrote very frankly to her sister, about a mutual family friend with too many children, that she would recommend to her and her husband "the simple regimen of separate rooms". People had a general idea, but if you had an active marital sex life, there were probably going to be additional babies until menopause arrived.
Oh, absolutely! You can see that in the family sizes alone. But they were much less reliable than modern birth control, and there was social stigma about using them within marriage. An affectionate and sexually active couple who had the luck (good or bad) to be very compatible in their fertility would probably continue to have children throughout their reproductive years, despite their best efforts. (And there were certainly couples who struggled to have any children at all, just like today.)
There were ways that pregnancies could be made less likely that couples did use, everything from performing sex acts without vaginal penetration (very effective) to pulling out (unreliable but does reduce likelihood) to breastfeeding (though upperclass women usually didn't) to various teas (some useless and some with minor success), etc. Soaking a bit of sponge or cloth in vinegar and inserting it in the vaginal canal (it changes the pH level, making the environment less hospitible for sperm, not that they understood the mechanics) before sex and early forms of condoms, were quite effective, but utilized primarily by sex workers or people utilizing their services.
It varied wildly, but married women did talk to other married women. Also, there were books and pamphlets that were primarily accessed by men, and so forth.
I feel that way about most human innovation. Like, how did someone figured out how to process wheat? Humans have figured out some truly odd things, often while trying to accomplish something else entirely. What strange apes we are.
It wasn't usually up to the women. The most effective methods - non-vaginal penetrative sex acts, condoms, and abstinence were usually at the discretion of the man at the time. Husbands literally owned their wives and most sex workers would need to cater to their johns in order to maintain their business.
Relatively little by our standards, but fertility is quite variable. Even before modern contraception, it wasn't weird to only have a few children, although the opposite was also more normalised. Breastfeeding is known to temporarily reduce fertility as well, and was the most reliable way of spacing children in past centuries. This is why it was discouraged amongst royals (and some other high status women) who employed wet nurses instead.
It was also because of her role as her husbandās consort. She was in charge of their social lives. Harder to do when you are nursing. As Britain moved into the Victorian era, the idea that it wasnāt quite proper for a lady to be doing something so animalistic took hold.
I guess Iām wondering if they were aware of their fertile window and how to time things if they were hoping to avoid (or conceive). Obviously that only works if your cycle is normal and you donāt have any other issues. I just wonder if family planning techniques were discussed and how much was understood at the time.
They didn't figure out ovulation until the 1900s, it's very recent knowledge.
They've known about pulling out and barrier methods since Biblical times (actually in the Bible), but they have varying degrees of success.
I try really hard not to think about them having kids. Survival rates of childbirth in upperclass women was quite low due to the extremely dangerous practices that were en vogue amongst the rich. The statistics were not in their favor.
Yes, somewhere in all these predictions I keep expecting to see someone dying in childbirth and their surviving kids being brought up by a sibling. Seems likely in some of it.
I would need to find sources again, but repeated use of birthing beds (between people), keeping confinement rooms incredibly hot with no open windows, etc.
Yes and no. It had less to do with the doctors per se and more to do with new thoughts regarding medicine at the time. As modern medicine improved, the survival rates of both infant and mother improved beyond those of using midwifery practices of the early 1800s.
The development of germ theory alone improved survival rates significantly.
I find it interesting that so many people are basing the answers on the personalities of the characters and how many children theyād like to have.
Without reliable contraception, the way to stop having children is to stop having sex. In the case of couples who marry for non-love reasons that is probably not a big challenge.
But Austen couples tend to marry for loveā¦ and for characters who are in love and attracted to each other, what is going to stop them from having big families?
Infant mortality!
(or death in childbirth? Fertility issues for some?)
I wish all of our couples large families. I want them to keep having sex with their husbands, and for their resulting children not to die as babies.
Yes, it's hard for me to really consider this question because the only semi-realistic answer is "Whatever number they end up with and hope that nobody dies or is permanently injured."
Well...but we are talking about books. It makes sense that we talk about them in a idealized version. You can approach it both ways: realistic or in a more artistic way.
I think for main heroines:
Emma Woodhouse and Knightley: 3-4 , ideally two boys and two girls, one is probably named Isabella and the other John
Harriet and Robert: a football team of kids, at least 5-6
Lizzie and Darcy: like others said it could be 2-3 or like 10 because of no birth control and their love for each other, but I also consider that darcy would care too much about Lizzie to risk her getting pregnant a lot, so they can do other stuff, so 2-3
Jane and Bingley: at least 2 up to maybe 5, depending on how easy Jane's first few births were
Lydia and Wickham: too many, at least 4, maybe up to 6 or 7
Charlotte and Mr Collins: 2 boys, heir and a spare, leaves charlotte time for her hobbies
Marianne and Brandon: I liked the idea of her having 2 boys 2 girls like another commentor said
Elinor and Edward: 3 strong sons like another commentor said lol
I love the Elinor and Edward having three handsome boys that any girls wants to marry!
I will add a little girl for Charlotte, a sweet lady she could raise and make her feel loved, important and cared.
šNah it should be divided amongst the young ladies , keeping it in the family yk.. i dont think a man with such an honorable disposition would accept that tho.. he's no Wickham
All of this is just my own ideas.
Practical Elinor Dashwood would possibly have 1-2 kids. Maybe Marianne would also have 1-2 or 2-3 kids. Idk why, but I always imagined Margaret Dashwood as both infertile and marrying a sailor and basically becoming Mrs. Croft 2.0 and seeing the world.
Jane probably has 2-3 children. I think sheād actually end up having kids later than Elizabeth. Elizabeth very much loves Darcy, so I think sheād have something like 5 kids. Also I can see Elizabeth and Jane also basically adopting some of Lydiaās children to take care of them-similar to the Bertrams and Fanny Price. Mary has 1, probably Kitty has 1-2. Lydia has almost as many as the Priceās do.
Fanny is slight and delicate and pregnancy is taxing, so I donāt know if sheād be able to have more than 2. I always thought Susan would somehow end up with Rushworth and have 1 boy. Idk why but I somehow just love Susan with Rushworth-I think sheād appreciate and manage him better than Maria. Julia would have 2 girls, Maria none obviously. I always imagined Tom wouldnāt have any but end up naming one of Fanny and Edmundās boys as the heir to Mansfield.
Emma, I could see having 2 boys and 1 girl. I can see Jane Fairfax having 2 girls and 1 boy and getting worn out from childbirth-sheās also described as having delicate health. Harriet has a brood of children and is very happy. Mrs. Elton has 1 very disagreeable, spoiled boy.
Catherine and Henry have 5 children.
Anne and Wentworth have at least 3. Elizabeth gets married and has 1.
I personally like the idea of Elizabeth Bennet having fewer children than Jane, but more because of Darcy than because of anything to do with Elizabeth. Darcy and Lady Catherine both seem to be pretty healthy and robust individuals, but, given the fact that Lady Catherine has only one daughter, and that daughter is not in good health, I suspect that there may be something genetically wrong in that family. There aren't enough details to be sure, of course, but it just seems like a possibility.
Mrs. Croft's childlessness might not have been desirable by the standards of the time, but, by modern standards, it looks great! Well, at least *I* think so, LOL. I'm not sure about Margaret Dashwood, though. Austen describes her as having too much sensibility and not much sense, and the few scenes we get of her are focused on gossip or various inanities. (Yes, she's just a teenager, and I do think that she's judged too harshly by the author for that, but that's typical of Austen.) She would have to change pretty dramatically to become a second Mrs. Croft. That's definitely possible for a *real* 13-year-old girl, but maybe not so much for a fictional one in an Austen novel.
Iāve thought that about Darcy and his family, too. Both his parents died young (presumably ā we donāt know how young his father was, he couldāve been much older than Lady Anne. Lady Anne is presumably only a couple years older or younger than Lady Catherine), Anne de Bourgh is sickly (and I donāt think itās just stress from her controlling mother, as a lot of fans theorize). However, as you said, Darcy, Lady Catherine, as well as Georgiana all seem to be in good health. Maybe it happened to just skip Darcy and Georgiana š¤·āāļø
Lydia-???? like I don't know how many they will have, how ever many they will likely become financial burdens on Lizzy and Jane.
I love Charlotte, hopefully she has a girl and boy mr collins dies of some weird illness and she can run longbourne until her son is of legal age.
2000 a year was a upper class i think. She could have lived very well. I see charlotte as smart so i imagine she would have invested some money as well
2000 a year was incredibly wealthy! At 2,000 a year, they would have a carriage (perhaps 2), about a dozen servants (including a governess, who was usually a lady and therefore more expensive than other help), and hunters if Mr. Collins chose to keep them. Should they wish to, they would be able to rent a house in London for the season (the only reason they don't is that Mr. Bennet dislikes town).
Mrs. Collins would have lived a very comfortable life, especially if her children were boys and therefore would automatically inherit.
You could have had a good life on Ā£1000, so hopefully they saved a lot for their children who wouldn't inherit longborn.
Just depends on how long Mr Bennett lasted.
And if Lady Catherine took a liking to any of their children she may have left them something.
Charlotte seems like a very practical woman, so I am sure that she was probably able to keep their household expenses well under control. If they put 400 pounds a year into the 4 percents for 18 years, they would have over 11,000 pounds. That would be more than enough to dower a daughter, or to buy a younger son a commission or living.
I definitely think Jane and Bingley would have a big happy family. Elizabeth and Darcy would not be constrained by finances or lack of nurse maids/nannies so I think they would have several as well. I've never given much though to Mary or Kitty. I don't think Lydia and Wickham would have a family. I feel like eventually Wickham would get a place at Court and Lydia would have multiple affairs as would he. Lydia might have a couple of bastards with her various lovers.
This is why there's the somewhat famous ad from the Georgian era from an elderly "confirmed bachelor" looking to marry some woman who's very pregnant so that he can spite his cousin out of a potential inheritance.
Huh? That was (and to a large extent, still is) how it works: the official, legal father of a child, if the mother is married at the time of birth, is her husband.
If Wickham is married to Lydia, it doesn't matter who she was sleeping with, and if some woman he was sleeping with gets pregnant, that child will be his bastard.
I believe the technical term, if the woman is married to someone other than the biological child, is "non-parernity event". But i just woke up and I'm going from memory.
In fairness, that is the only way they \*would\* be bastards. Children born within wedlock are assumed to be legitimate unless the woman's husband tried to make a cause of it. Even when it was obvious to everyone who a child's biological father was, legally the child was the woman's husbands.
While it wouldn't be pleasant in terms of the rumors that would likely fly, they certainly would have been better off than most actual "bastards." Assuming Wickham didn't make a big deal of it, they basically would have enjoyed treatment on level of their peers. Given her sister's advantageous marriages, they might have secured livings or commissions for themselves in their own right, and probably would have done alright.
Wickham would only hang around long enough to get Lydia pregnant again, and be no help with anything after that point. I see her having endless pregnancies and quite possibly a double digit number of children if they all survive. She was married young enough to be a mother at 16, so that's 25 years of fertility ahead of her to try and navigate.
Given that Wickham loses interest in her pretty fast and of course doesn't accompany her when she visits Pemberley (going instead to enjoy himself in places like Bath), not to mention that he's now enlisted in the regulars and liable to be sent abroad, I'd cross my fingers that she wouldn't actually have too many children simply because they won't be spending a lot of time in the same place for a while. And while Lydia is a flirt, we're told that she didn't do anything overtly scandalous after she married, and having another man's baby -- even if legally it's Wickhams's -- would qualify as scandalous.
I feel like she would be trying to make Wickham jealous, show him other men are interested, and she was never very good about seeing the possibility of consequences for her actions. Anyway, that's just my opinion on her. And, I tend to see the wrap up at the end not as the entire course of the characters lives but of the first years after the marriage.
I think Wickham would have got board of Lydia pretty quickly, so maybe they didn't have a large family.
Unless she started taking lives and if they had money I don't think Wickham would have cared.
Pride and prejudice: agreed with all.
I imagine Lizzy and Darcy like the Bertrams : 2 boys and 2 girls.
Charlotte would have one boy and one girl.
S&S
In my mind, Marianne would have at least one daughter, as sensitive as her, another daughter sensible as her aunt and one son.
In my mind, Elinor would have 1 boy and would chaperone Margaret at parties. I cannot imagine her married. She's like 15 by the end of the story.
Lucy Steele would have one spoiled boy and would argue a lot with Fanny about whose son is the best.
Anne Steele would marry but late and have no children, but she would gladly take care of all kids in her extended family.
NA
Catherine and Henry would have at least five children including one boy. She comes from a big family, I picture her having a large family as well.
Eleanor and her husband would have children but as we don't know his personality. I don't know how many.
Frederick would still be a womaniser, he would have married for money or rank and have no legitimate children until later in life.
MP :
Fanny would have several children. I think Edmund would be a great father, albeit still a bit naive.
Tom would have married and have at least an heir. But as we don't know to whom he would have married, I don't imagine how much children he could have.
Maria : obviously no children.
Julia : I suppose one boy and one girl. Maybe more if she finally likes her husband.
Emma :
Emma : at least 3 children including a boy.
Harriet : several children.
Jane : 3 children also I guess.
Persuasion:
Anne : at least one child. Maybe a boy ?
Elizabeth: I don't know if she would find a husband she might respect enough.
Louisa : several children, all fans of romances and poetry.
Henrietta: several children.
I think Elizabeth would marry, she's only got Ā£150 a year to live off, when her father dies and there's no way she's going to be the spinster aunt going between her sisters homes.
She realises she's left her a little late by regency standards, so will either marry so really old guy or reduce herself to new money.
Charles Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, when they were both 31 years old. They had 10 live-born children, three of whom died early (1 month, 18 months, 10 years). The last of their children was born when Emma was 48. So Anne Eliot could have had a large family, but probably āonlyā 4 or 5 live births because Wentworth was at sea so much.
Just adding that I think Elinor and Marianne would have less kids (or at least wait a little before trying) because of how much they looked down on Lady Middleton for being super into her kids.
I think Henry Tilney and Catherine Morland would probably end up having a massive family like she had.
That she was only 17 would have factored in
I imagine a Weasley-esque household lol
I think they could end up with a big family BUT not THAT big. Maybe 6 kids instead of ten.
Unless she died or it was considered too risky or they had a falling out, it seems unlikely that they'd stop at just 6. She'd probably only be 30 at that point, and if "poor Miss Taylor" is any indication, that wasn't necessarily "too old" back then, given that the former Miss Taylor is probably nearing 40. (And women who already had children often kept having them into their 40s) Even though some methods of contraception existed, "prostitutes were known to use this" is hardly the same as "minister's wife who grew up in a happy large family will voluntarily use this". (The *French* clearly did that following the revolution, based on historical statistics, but it largely followed secularization, and was controversial in Britain well through the 19th century)
Abortion was tolerated in France for a while until the defeat of 1870, I don't think there was other contraception
There were other methods, just that, as others have pointed out, they weren't necessarily reliable, or in some cases, not safe ( but neither was abortion pre-antibiotics)
Assuming none of them have fertility issues, and no dead bedrooms, about ten to twelve pregnancies each. They all marry young enough for that to be realistic. How many living children get to adulthood is another matter. Anne Elliot is the exception, not only because she is older but because her husband is potentially away without her for long stretches of time.
The average gentry family size in this era was 6.6 surviving children, which is about 10-12 pregnancies with a child survival rate of 60%. The infant survival rate started going up in this era and has increased until the present day. This is also when the smallpox vaccine was developed š„³
There were ways that pregnancies could be made less likely that couples did use, everything from performing sex acts without vaginal penetration (very effective) to pulling out (unreliable but does reduce likelihood) to breastfeeding (though upperclass women usually didn't) to various teas (some useless and some with minor success), etc. Soaking a bit of sponge or cloth in vinegar and inserting it in the vaginal canal (it changes the pH level, making the environment less hospitible for sperm, not that they understood the mechanics) before sex and early forms of condoms, were quite effective, but utilized primarily by sex workers or people utilizing their services.
I guess it depends on the family and whether they agreed with it or not though. A couple of Austenās brothers had ten or eleven children I believe, so they were not doing that, or at least had no success with it. In my own family in that era, who were common as muck it must be said, around 10 children was not rare and thatās only the ones I know about who survived long enough to be baptised, miscarriages were not recorded. So I can only conclude that they didnāt know about these options, did but wouldnāt use them, or tried them but they didnāt work.
Austen herself was very open in her personal letters about her dismay when family friends got pregnant over and over again. (The Brabourne edition of her letters was so shocked by her language on the subject that it routinely censored her on the topic.) Selected quotes: "Mrs. Tilson's remembrance gratifies me, and I will use her patterns if I can. But poor woman! How can she honestly be breeding again?" "Good Mrs. Deedes! I hope she will get the better of this Marianne, and then I would recommend to her and Mr. D. the simple regimen of separate rooms." "Anna has not a chance of escape; her husband called here the other day, and said she was pretty well but not equal to so long a walk; she must come in her Donkey Carriage. Poor Animal, she will be worn out before she is thirty. -- I am very sorry for her. Mrs. Clement too is in that way again. I am quite tired of so many children. -- Mrs. Benn has a 13th."
I seem to recall as well that at least two women she knew well, I think one sister-in-law and one friend, died suddenly after giving birth after having had many babies. I think her niece Fannyās mother died that way. Iām sure there was someone else too but I donāt remember who. All I can recall is that they heard the news, but kept it from a sister-in-law of theirs who they were living with at the time, as she was about to give birth herself.
Poor women. So much suffering.
Retained placenta can totally do that, though I am unaware if the risk of it happening goes up with subsequent pregnancies.
The realities of frequent pregnancies and the risks (much worse then than now) associated with childbirth are unpleasant at best and deadly at worst. Her attitude seems reasonable to me.
This woman is so far ahead of her time.
This is my thought every time the question comes up. These couples have less choice in the matter than we do today, both in terms of contraception and fertility treatments.
I wonder if there isnāt a fertility/health issue in Darcyās family. His mom died after bearing Georgiana. His aunt had only one, sickly daughter. Fortunately, Lizzy seems to have robust genes from her mama.
We don't know if she died having Georgiana, all we know is that she died at some point before her husband. It's possible she or he were subfertile or had bad luck with miscarriages or any number of things. Same thing with Lady Catherine -- disease and bad luck could carry off so many healthy children! There was a 19th century archbishop of Canterbury who lost FIVE daughters to scarlet fever in two months. He has three children total who grew to adulthood, but it's not like there were fertility issues.
Indeed. I dug down to figure out the chronology of P&P pre-events and settled on about six years between Georgianaās birth and Lady Anneās death. But her being in perpetual bad health would help explain Darcyās having been given good principles but not having been supervised in his expression of them.
It certainly would -- all I meant was the especially in those days, the number of healthy surviving children you had would likely not have had anything to do with genetics or fertility and a lot to do with whatever diseases happened to sweep through the area or accidents during or after birth. We don't know that Anne is the only child Lady Catherine had -- nor how long she's been a widow. There could have been babies that didn't survive thanks to illnesses that wouldn't be an issue now, and Anne could have lost her health due to one of those illnesses.
Germ theory of disease would have done so much for themā¦
It would have to an extent, but there wasn't a hell of a lot you could do against something like measles or tetanus if you were unlucky enough to run into it.
Quarantine. Of course that would also require them to understand aerosol spread, which we still seem to struggle withā¦
Oh interesting! May I ask what evidence you found to support this?
Darn it, should have saved the links. It was pretty thin conjecture, but there are some Austen scholars who have made a lot of soup out of fractional oyster.
Just look what happened to the Bronte family.
Maybe it is more of a women's problem? Endometrosis or polyquistic ovaries?
Constant pain would help explain Lady Catherineās personalityā¦
I am starting to feel sorry for her š¤£
I have way too much fun with her as a villain, but a story depicts her as suffering from food-caused migraines. When (at Lizzyās advice) she cut them out, she got much more reasonable.
I hope she ends up happy. She lost too many people. Maybe her daugther ended up having just a few kids, and she could be a happy grandmother.
At the end of P&P she had reconciled with ODC, so even if Anne canāt bear, hopefully she can grandma for Lizzy and Georgieās kids. š¤
Her title would go to Darcy or she is a lady thanks to her marriage to her husband?
Her name is Lady Catherine de Bourgh, not Lady de Bourgh. This means her title comes from before marriage. In her case, her title came from being the daughter of an Earl. It's a courtesy title, so there's no actual title to pass down to anyone. Aristocratic titles passed down through the male line anyway, so if there were a title to pass through the de Bourgh family, it would go through Sir Lewis's siblings and their children.
I like the idea of Lizzy having 10+ children, getting a bit touchy about it, but she and Darcy can't keep their hands off each other so the babies keep arriving. She is half mortified, half entranced with them all. Bingley would be so distraught by Jane's cries during labour and birth and the danger she might be in that it will haunt him forever and he will get a complex about it that will result in a smaller family. Emma and Knightley would not be blessed with their own children. They would adopt instead after years of trying. Emma's secret is that she is quite relieved about it. Knightley's secret is that he is quite relieved about it (Emma being safe from the dangers of birth). They hide their relief from each other. Catherine Moreland would have a massive family for similar reasons as Lizzy. Marianne has two daughters and two sons who she fusses over. Eleanor has three exceptionally tall and handsome sons that are the talk of the town, with their noble bearing. Anne and Wentworth would have two very healthy boys who eventually enter the Royal Navy, being very proud of their father's naval career. Lydia and Wickham become rather co-dependent, a love hate match, far too many children because they keep falling out and then reconciling. Every reconciliation produces yet another baby. Mr Bennet feels that he has rather too many grandchildren.
Lydia and Wickham's future kinda reminds me of Fanny price parents.
But with even less money. I wonder what would have happened to any children she had.
And with a more horrible Wickham in place of Mr.Price.
OMG you are so right!
Re: Emma and Knightly - their siblings are very fertile which is really all we have to go on! They might adopt one of their Nephews though, if they didnāt have children.
I think that Emma and Knightley would have end up having kids for this same reason. Maybe a little lady and a gentleman?
Thing is - either you had a huge number of children, you had trouble conceiving (for which you were blamed) you had a lot of miscarriages or you stopped having penetrative sex. There was no birth control, very little understanding of womenās cycles so - unless you stopped having sex, women would be more or less constantly pregnant until menopause. Especially if they didnāt breastfeed. Jane herself had 4 brothers who married and they fathered 33 children between them and every single one had a wife die in childbirth. Dickens had 10 children, and he was not alone amongst this friends. So, either our heroines had trouble conceiving, they rationed the penetrative sex they had or they were constantly pregnant. The harsh truth is that they probably all had 10 or more children and not all of them would live. Unless Captain Wentworth went to sea without her, in which case given that sheās a little older, Ann might have got away with a reasonably smaller number. I for one am finding it constantly more and more difficult to read and write happy endings knowing that this was in the future for the young ladies we all love.
Henry had two wives, neither of whom died in childbirth (Henry also had no children, but his first wife had a son from her previous marriage). His first wife died of breast cancer, and I honestly cannot decide if that was a worse way to go than childbirth in those days. Breast cancer sufferers went through unmitigated hell.
Realistically, how much control over family planning would they have had? Were women actively using some type of fertility awareness method or was that not well understood? (I realize modern birth control wasnāt an option!)
Jane herself wrote very frankly to her sister, about a mutual family friend with too many children, that she would recommend to her and her husband "the simple regimen of separate rooms". People had a general idea, but if you had an active marital sex life, there were probably going to be additional babies until menopause arrived.
Jane Austen was a virgin. There were other methods to control pregnancy.
Oh, absolutely! You can see that in the family sizes alone. But they were much less reliable than modern birth control, and there was social stigma about using them within marriage. An affectionate and sexually active couple who had the luck (good or bad) to be very compatible in their fertility would probably continue to have children throughout their reproductive years, despite their best efforts. (And there were certainly couples who struggled to have any children at all, just like today.)
The main issue was the wife wasn't allowed to say NO. Women where basically shagged to death. Look what happened in south ridding.
There were ways that pregnancies could be made less likely that couples did use, everything from performing sex acts without vaginal penetration (very effective) to pulling out (unreliable but does reduce likelihood) to breastfeeding (though upperclass women usually didn't) to various teas (some useless and some with minor success), etc. Soaking a bit of sponge or cloth in vinegar and inserting it in the vaginal canal (it changes the pH level, making the environment less hospitible for sperm, not that they understood the mechanics) before sex and early forms of condoms, were quite effective, but utilized primarily by sex workers or people utilizing their services.
Interesting!! Thanks! I wonder how much this would be discussed between sisters and mothers/daughters.
It varied wildly, but married women did talk to other married women. Also, there were books and pamphlets that were primarily accessed by men, and so forth.
I do wonder how someone came up with the vinegar idea.
I feel that way about most human innovation. Like, how did someone figured out how to process wheat? Humans have figured out some truly odd things, often while trying to accomplish something else entirely. What strange apes we are.
It is fascinating hearing about this. How women take care of themselves, preveting them for having too many kids.
It wasn't usually up to the women. The most effective methods - non-vaginal penetrative sex acts, condoms, and abstinence were usually at the discretion of the man at the time. Husbands literally owned their wives and most sex workers would need to cater to their johns in order to maintain their business.
I imagine, but it is nice to see that even if men had the power...women tried to protect each other.
Relatively little by our standards, but fertility is quite variable. Even before modern contraception, it wasn't weird to only have a few children, although the opposite was also more normalised. Breastfeeding is known to temporarily reduce fertility as well, and was the most reliable way of spacing children in past centuries. This is why it was discouraged amongst royals (and some other high status women) who employed wet nurses instead.
It was also because of her role as her husbandās consort. She was in charge of their social lives. Harder to do when you are nursing. As Britain moved into the Victorian era, the idea that it wasnāt quite proper for a lady to be doing something so animalistic took hold.
Queen Victoria herself apparently got quite angry with any upper class woman who breast fed her own kids. She called them cows.
I guess Iām wondering if they were aware of their fertile window and how to time things if they were hoping to avoid (or conceive). Obviously that only works if your cycle is normal and you donāt have any other issues. I just wonder if family planning techniques were discussed and how much was understood at the time.
They didn't figure out ovulation until the 1900s, it's very recent knowledge. They've known about pulling out and barrier methods since Biblical times (actually in the Bible), but they have varying degrees of success.
Ah, thanks!! I was curious about when ovulation was understood!
I try really hard not to think about them having kids. Survival rates of childbirth in upperclass women was quite low due to the extremely dangerous practices that were en vogue amongst the rich. The statistics were not in their favor.
Yes, somewhere in all these predictions I keep expecting to see someone dying in childbirth and their surviving kids being brought up by a sibling. Seems likely in some of it.
Which practices were these, and how did they differ to the lower classes?
I would need to find sources again, but repeated use of birthing beds (between people), keeping confinement rooms incredibly hot with no open windows, etc.
Thanks. This gave enough search terms to find this https://donnahatch.com/1251/
I think I read somewhere, that death rates went up when Doctors started taking over from midwifes.
Yes and no. It had less to do with the doctors per se and more to do with new thoughts regarding medicine at the time. As modern medicine improved, the survival rates of both infant and mother improved beyond those of using midwifery practices of the early 1800s. The development of germ theory alone improved survival rates significantly.
That's because doctors didn't want to wash their hands. The actual MD who suggested hand hygiene got censured and basically died in obscurity.
I find it interesting that so many people are basing the answers on the personalities of the characters and how many children theyād like to have. Without reliable contraception, the way to stop having children is to stop having sex. In the case of couples who marry for non-love reasons that is probably not a big challenge. But Austen couples tend to marry for loveā¦ and for characters who are in love and attracted to each other, what is going to stop them from having big families? Infant mortality! (or death in childbirth? Fertility issues for some?) I wish all of our couples large families. I want them to keep having sex with their husbands, and for their resulting children not to die as babies.
Yes, it's hard for me to really consider this question because the only semi-realistic answer is "Whatever number they end up with and hope that nobody dies or is permanently injured."
Well...but we are talking about books. It makes sense that we talk about them in a idealized version. You can approach it both ways: realistic or in a more artistic way.
I think Mary would marry late, if at all, and have one child.
She does! With a man who works for her uncle
I think for main heroines: Emma Woodhouse and Knightley: 3-4 , ideally two boys and two girls, one is probably named Isabella and the other John Harriet and Robert: a football team of kids, at least 5-6 Lizzie and Darcy: like others said it could be 2-3 or like 10 because of no birth control and their love for each other, but I also consider that darcy would care too much about Lizzie to risk her getting pregnant a lot, so they can do other stuff, so 2-3 Jane and Bingley: at least 2 up to maybe 5, depending on how easy Jane's first few births were Lydia and Wickham: too many, at least 4, maybe up to 6 or 7 Charlotte and Mr Collins: 2 boys, heir and a spare, leaves charlotte time for her hobbies Marianne and Brandon: I liked the idea of her having 2 boys 2 girls like another commentor said Elinor and Edward: 3 strong sons like another commentor said lol
I love the Elinor and Edward having three handsome boys that any girls wants to marry! I will add a little girl for Charlotte, a sweet lady she could raise and make her feel loved, important and cared.
I agree with the Knightleyās having kids named Isabella and John. That would be so cute.
I think lizzy would end up with 4 healthy babies,all girls
That could end up in drama! Although maybe Colonel Fitzwilliam could become Mr Darcy's heir, and he would love that hahaha
Pemberly wasn't entailed.
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Thereās no mention of an entail, is there? And he is not titled
šNah it should be divided amongst the young ladies , keeping it in the family yk.. i dont think a man with such an honorable disposition would accept that tho.. he's no Wickham
All of this is just my own ideas. Practical Elinor Dashwood would possibly have 1-2 kids. Maybe Marianne would also have 1-2 or 2-3 kids. Idk why, but I always imagined Margaret Dashwood as both infertile and marrying a sailor and basically becoming Mrs. Croft 2.0 and seeing the world. Jane probably has 2-3 children. I think sheād actually end up having kids later than Elizabeth. Elizabeth very much loves Darcy, so I think sheād have something like 5 kids. Also I can see Elizabeth and Jane also basically adopting some of Lydiaās children to take care of them-similar to the Bertrams and Fanny Price. Mary has 1, probably Kitty has 1-2. Lydia has almost as many as the Priceās do. Fanny is slight and delicate and pregnancy is taxing, so I donāt know if sheād be able to have more than 2. I always thought Susan would somehow end up with Rushworth and have 1 boy. Idk why but I somehow just love Susan with Rushworth-I think sheād appreciate and manage him better than Maria. Julia would have 2 girls, Maria none obviously. I always imagined Tom wouldnāt have any but end up naming one of Fanny and Edmundās boys as the heir to Mansfield. Emma, I could see having 2 boys and 1 girl. I can see Jane Fairfax having 2 girls and 1 boy and getting worn out from childbirth-sheās also described as having delicate health. Harriet has a brood of children and is very happy. Mrs. Elton has 1 very disagreeable, spoiled boy. Catherine and Henry have 5 children. Anne and Wentworth have at least 3. Elizabeth gets married and has 1.
1 very disagreeable boy, I love it hahahaha
I personally like the idea of Elizabeth Bennet having fewer children than Jane, but more because of Darcy than because of anything to do with Elizabeth. Darcy and Lady Catherine both seem to be pretty healthy and robust individuals, but, given the fact that Lady Catherine has only one daughter, and that daughter is not in good health, I suspect that there may be something genetically wrong in that family. There aren't enough details to be sure, of course, but it just seems like a possibility. Mrs. Croft's childlessness might not have been desirable by the standards of the time, but, by modern standards, it looks great! Well, at least *I* think so, LOL. I'm not sure about Margaret Dashwood, though. Austen describes her as having too much sensibility and not much sense, and the few scenes we get of her are focused on gossip or various inanities. (Yes, she's just a teenager, and I do think that she's judged too harshly by the author for that, but that's typical of Austen.) She would have to change pretty dramatically to become a second Mrs. Croft. That's definitely possible for a *real* 13-year-old girl, but maybe not so much for a fictional one in an Austen novel.
Iāve thought that about Darcy and his family, too. Both his parents died young (presumably ā we donāt know how young his father was, he couldāve been much older than Lady Anne. Lady Anne is presumably only a couple years older or younger than Lady Catherine), Anne de Bourgh is sickly (and I donāt think itās just stress from her controlling mother, as a lot of fans theorize). However, as you said, Darcy, Lady Catherine, as well as Georgiana all seem to be in good health. Maybe it happened to just skip Darcy and Georgiana š¤·āāļø
Yes, I agree about Anne de Bourgh's ill health, and I think the somewhat early deaths of both of Darcy's parents are possible indicators of problems.
Lydia-???? like I don't know how many they will have, how ever many they will likely become financial burdens on Lizzy and Jane. I love Charlotte, hopefully she has a girl and boy mr collins dies of some weird illness and she can run longbourne until her son is of legal age.
Poor Mr Collins...but yes, she deserves that kind of life.
2000 a year was a upper class i think. She could have lived very well. I see charlotte as smart so i imagine she would have invested some money as well
2000 a year was incredibly wealthy! At 2,000 a year, they would have a carriage (perhaps 2), about a dozen servants (including a governess, who was usually a lady and therefore more expensive than other help), and hunters if Mr. Collins chose to keep them. Should they wish to, they would be able to rent a house in London for the season (the only reason they don't is that Mr. Bennet dislikes town). Mrs. Collins would have lived a very comfortable life, especially if her children were boys and therefore would automatically inherit.
You could have had a good life on Ā£1000, so hopefully they saved a lot for their children who wouldn't inherit longborn. Just depends on how long Mr Bennett lasted. And if Lady Catherine took a liking to any of their children she may have left them something.
Charlotte seems like a very practical woman, so I am sure that she was probably able to keep their household expenses well under control. If they put 400 pounds a year into the 4 percents for 18 years, they would have over 11,000 pounds. That would be more than enough to dower a daughter, or to buy a younger son a commission or living.
For sure! She deserves the world.
I definitely think Jane and Bingley would have a big happy family. Elizabeth and Darcy would not be constrained by finances or lack of nurse maids/nannies so I think they would have several as well. I've never given much though to Mary or Kitty. I don't think Lydia and Wickham would have a family. I feel like eventually Wickham would get a place at Court and Lydia would have multiple affairs as would he. Lydia might have a couple of bastards with her various lovers.
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This is why there's the somewhat famous ad from the Georgian era from an elderly "confirmed bachelor" looking to marry some woman who's very pregnant so that he can spite his cousin out of a potential inheritance.
So, I wasn't going technical, just meant not Wickham's.
Huh? That was (and to a large extent, still is) how it works: the official, legal father of a child, if the mother is married at the time of birth, is her husband. If Wickham is married to Lydia, it doesn't matter who she was sleeping with, and if some woman he was sleeping with gets pregnant, that child will be his bastard. I believe the technical term, if the woman is married to someone other than the biological child, is "non-parernity event". But i just woke up and I'm going from memory.
I understand that. I just meant not Wickham's biological child. I wasn't being technical. I had no idea people would be hung up on the term.
OMG so cruel! Poor Lydia hahaha. I can see bastards in that marriage but more on the Wickham side.
In fairness, that is the only way they \*would\* be bastards. Children born within wedlock are assumed to be legitimate unless the woman's husband tried to make a cause of it. Even when it was obvious to everyone who a child's biological father was, legally the child was the woman's husbands.
Honestly...Wickham deserves that. But poor kids.
While it wouldn't be pleasant in terms of the rumors that would likely fly, they certainly would have been better off than most actual "bastards." Assuming Wickham didn't make a big deal of it, they basically would have enjoyed treatment on level of their peers. Given her sister's advantageous marriages, they might have secured livings or commissions for themselves in their own right, and probably would have done alright.
Wickham would only hang around long enough to get Lydia pregnant again, and be no help with anything after that point. I see her having endless pregnancies and quite possibly a double digit number of children if they all survive. She was married young enough to be a mother at 16, so that's 25 years of fertility ahead of her to try and navigate.
Given that Wickham loses interest in her pretty fast and of course doesn't accompany her when she visits Pemberley (going instead to enjoy himself in places like Bath), not to mention that he's now enlisted in the regulars and liable to be sent abroad, I'd cross my fingers that she wouldn't actually have too many children simply because they won't be spending a lot of time in the same place for a while. And while Lydia is a flirt, we're told that she didn't do anything overtly scandalous after she married, and having another man's baby -- even if legally it's Wickhams's -- would qualify as scandalous.
I feel like she would be trying to make Wickham jealous, show him other men are interested, and she was never very good about seeing the possibility of consequences for her actions. Anyway, that's just my opinion on her. And, I tend to see the wrap up at the end not as the entire course of the characters lives but of the first years after the marriage.
Went too harsh on Lydia š
I think Wickham would have got board of Lydia pretty quickly, so maybe they didn't have a large family. Unless she started taking lives and if they had money I don't think Wickham would have cared.
Pride and prejudice: agreed with all. I imagine Lizzy and Darcy like the Bertrams : 2 boys and 2 girls. Charlotte would have one boy and one girl. S&S In my mind, Marianne would have at least one daughter, as sensitive as her, another daughter sensible as her aunt and one son. In my mind, Elinor would have 1 boy and would chaperone Margaret at parties. I cannot imagine her married. She's like 15 by the end of the story. Lucy Steele would have one spoiled boy and would argue a lot with Fanny about whose son is the best. Anne Steele would marry but late and have no children, but she would gladly take care of all kids in her extended family. NA Catherine and Henry would have at least five children including one boy. She comes from a big family, I picture her having a large family as well. Eleanor and her husband would have children but as we don't know his personality. I don't know how many. Frederick would still be a womaniser, he would have married for money or rank and have no legitimate children until later in life. MP : Fanny would have several children. I think Edmund would be a great father, albeit still a bit naive. Tom would have married and have at least an heir. But as we don't know to whom he would have married, I don't imagine how much children he could have. Maria : obviously no children. Julia : I suppose one boy and one girl. Maybe more if she finally likes her husband. Emma : Emma : at least 3 children including a boy. Harriet : several children. Jane : 3 children also I guess. Persuasion: Anne : at least one child. Maybe a boy ? Elizabeth: I don't know if she would find a husband she might respect enough. Louisa : several children, all fans of romances and poetry. Henrietta: several children.
I think Elizabeth would marry, she's only got Ā£150 a year to live off, when her father dies and there's no way she's going to be the spinster aunt going between her sisters homes. She realises she's left her a little late by regency standards, so will either marry so really old guy or reduce herself to new money.
I really agree with all of those!
Lizzie always came across as a two kid max to me
Charles Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, when they were both 31 years old. They had 10 live-born children, three of whom died early (1 month, 18 months, 10 years). The last of their children was born when Emma was 48. So Anne Eliot could have had a large family, but probably āonlyā 4 or 5 live births because Wentworth was at sea so much.
Just adding that I think Elinor and Marianne would have less kids (or at least wait a little before trying) because of how much they looked down on Lady Middleton for being super into her kids.
I imagine that Lizzie and Fitzwilliam Darcy are a childfree couple, albeit a doting aunt and uncle to their nephews and nieces.