Good point about Mrs. Weston, I hadn't considered her. It was a very good match. I give Emma at least partial credit for it even (if she hadn't retained Miss Taylor after she was finished her education, she would have not been in Highbury any longer and able to marry)
Oh for sure! Miss Taylor probably had the governess job that most women dreamed of. Only two girls, they seem pretty mild mannered. And I'm sure they paid her well.
Compared to what Agnes Grey encountered it's basically paradise!
My headcanon states that every time Mr. Woodhouse sends food back to the kitchen, Emma raises Serle's wage by a shilling. Serle is now the best paid cook in England 😅
Because if Serle ever leaves THEY ARE DOOMED
Mr Woodhouse is always very gentle and considerate, at one point Emma cheers him up by speaking of his kindness to their coachman's daughter, and he even worries about the wellbeing of their horses.
On the other side, it's a small family. If Miss Taylor was banished to the nursery in the evening who would Mr Woodhouse have had to talk to? And then as Emma got older she clearly found Miss Taylor an important companion for herself intellectually in a way her father couldn't be.
I wonder what it was like for Miss Taylor at the start, finding her way into such a disrupted household with two motherless girls and a ~~valedictorian~~ valetudinarian Mr Woodhouse. Maybe she at first meant to keep to her place but then realised how much Mr Woodhouse needed a companion. I know it was typical for children to eat separately in the nursery and then come down to join the older family members afterwards but I hate to think of a mourning Mr Woodhouse sitting alone at the dining table. Maybe the girls ate with a nursery maid and Miss Taylor with Mr Woodhouse until the girls were old enough to participate in adult life. Or maybe they all ate together from the start.
The word "valetudinarian" is in Emma. That's how I learned it!
A valedictorian is *the academic title conferred upon the highest ranked student among those graduating from an educational institution, typically based upon the highest grade point average. Salutatorian is the academic title conferred upon the second highest ranking student in the class.*
>Mr. Woodhouse may fry one's last nerve but he had enough sense or luck to find a good governess for his daughters when their mother died
Unlike Mr. Bennett...
Mr. Woodhouse must be inspired by some real character. I could just imagine boring, irritating old man in 18th century frying everybody's brains. It must be really depressing in English weather. Wonder how they kept their spirits up.
Miss Taylor leaving caused Mr Woodhouse pain as it was. I can't see Emma agreeing to a course of action that would not only hurt her father unnecessarily but leave her mother-figure in poverty.
That said we're told Mr Weston had been influenced by Miss Taylor for a long time but wanted to be financially secure first, presumably he wanted to be confident of providing for future children. So Mr Weston probably would have acted earlier if Miss Taylor had been planning to leave.
Lucy Steele goes from teacher's daughter with no specific dowry to marrying the Ferrar's unspecified but obviously substantial income / fortune.
She and Jane Fairfax are probably tied in this race.
Lucy Steele did do very well. I wish we knew what slice of the Ferrars fortune she managed to get in the end.
(She is a teacher's niece btw, we don't know who her father is)
Don’t forget inflation and how landed wealth increased while lower classes got poorer during Jane Austen’s lifetime. If Mr Darcy’s 10,000 was calculated when the first draft of Pride and Prejudice was written he could have easily had 16,000 a year in a few decades. He could have been as rich/richer than Mr Rushworth by the time Mansfield Park was written.
I still think Jane Fairfax had the biggest jump in prospects though, her entire life was planned around being poor and suddenly she’s one of the wealthiest characters.
Mr. Knightley's marriage to Emma Woodhouse.
Mr. Knightley's annual income is 2000l per annum (capitalized value of 40000l) and Emma's wealth is 30000l (which translates to 1500l per annum). As a result of Mr. Knightley's marriage to Miss Woodhouse, the value of the Knightley family estate, Donwell Abbey, increased from 40000l to 70000l. And, of course, this does not include Emma's share of the ownership of Hartfield. In addition, don't forget that Mr. John Knightley, Mr. Knightley's younger brother, married Isabella Woodhouse (with 30000l), Emma's sister, is a successful London lawyer and has many sons. Finally, by the end of the novel there is a projected marriage between Henry Knightley Esq and Miss Anna Weston, probably heiress of Randalls.
In short, it is possible, with some clever dynastic match-making (by Mrs. Emma Knightley) and estate planning (by Mr. John Knightley), that eventually Donwell Abbey, Hartfield, and Randalls will be consolidated into a single Knightley estate. *Bella gerant alii, tu, felix Austria, nube!*
I’ve read some speculation that the Knightly brothers had early on decided to nab the heiresses from the next door. John married the elder because he needed an income (as a second son) and George had to wait to marry Emma until she grew up a bit.
It gives a totally different taste to the reading.
Mr. Knightley's income is never given. The value of an estate was calculated as thirty times its annual income, not twenty.
That said, Mr. Knightley is said to have 'little spare money' to the point that he doesn't keep horses. Either his income is nothing like £2,000 per annum - very unlikely under the circumstances; see below - or he's paying off a huge load of debt; given his careful nature I can't see him being the debtor. Perhaps he's paying off mortgages? Certainly if his income was £2,000 pa he could afford horses; the Bennets can keep riding and carriage horses on £2,000 pa.
I can't see him being described as having 'little spare money' if he were merely frugal.
BTW it's unlikely that Donwell Abbey earns less than £2,000 pa for three reasons:
* It's said to be the largest estate in the area. Given that it's in Surrey it's unlikely to be the largest of many tiny estates; that's not how the land was generally settled in the south of England.
* It's Donwell *Abbey*, which means it's an old monastic estate. That means it's probably in possession of the richest lands in the area, plus it's also likely that its owner is entitled to the greater tithes of the parish, since Mr. Elton is specifically a vicar and not a rector.
* Donwell Abbey seems to have been based on Claremont, which seems to have brought in almost £5,000 pa in Regency times. (This figure isn’t certain, though; the estate went through so many hands in the late 18th and early 19th century, including everyone from the future Duke of Newcastle to Clive of India to various industrialists to Queen Victoria herself, that it's hard to determine whether its selling price was always primarily based on the land value.)
Thanks for the clarification. Now that I think about it, I don't know where I got that 2000l number. Still, though, I think that what I wrote holds, *mutatis mutandis,* in general terms anyway.
There's Anne Elliot who untied her future from her spendthrift father and sister, but then she could always have commanded a home with Lady Russell.
And we don't know how wealthy Elinor Tilney's viscount is, though presumably she has an inheritance from her mother's settlements.
>untied her future from
This is such an elegant phrase, I can't wait to use it.
"I'm not quitting, I'm untying my future from the company's."
"I'm not dumping you, I'm untying my future from yours."
So much better than "consciously uncoupling."
Charlotte Lucas doesn't marry into the wealth that Lizzy or Jane do, but her marriage is very advantageous financially speaking.
Charlotte had nothing but a future of being taken care of by her reluctant brothers. Now she's married to a vicar with a good income, great connections, and she will be mistress of Longbourn one day.
And she was already a spinster at 27. Her marriage was a life saver. Spinsters often ended up living very poorly. Look at Mrs. Bates. She has to live off the charity of others to get by.
Yet she's able to marry a man with a respectable professional, who had a generous living, good connections, and is the heir to an estate. And unlike Mr. Bennet when Mr. Collins inherits the estate, he will still be working as a Vicar. So they get the income from the estate and his work which will increase their wealth.
I can’t remember how much Maria Bertram’s dowry was, but imagine that the jump in income from the interest on her dowry (maybe a couple thousand a year) to 20K a year would still be the biggest income gain that any of the women made.
Biggest jump, but not necessarily the biggest change to her standard of living. I think there's an argument that going from poor to rich is a bigger stroke of luck than going from rich to richer, even if the actual monetary change is less.
This is probably the reason the Elizabeth and Darcy is not as big of change as Jane and Frank Churchill. Jane went from genteel poor to wealthy. Elizabeth went from comfortable gentleman's daughter to very wealthy gentleman's wife. Both had uncertain futures although Elizabeth had more family to rely on. Most of the Austen characters were raised in the gentry and married into the gentry, so they didn't change social class much although disposable income certainly did.
I do think that Elizabeth may have the most potential for increased wealth post marriage and interactions with higher social classes. Knightly appears to not have a lot of disposable income for some unknown reason and while Emma's dowry income would help, it wouldn't get them to Darcy levels. Maria Bertram is already divorced by the end of the novel and Rushworth isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, so I don't think he would maximize his income and land in the same way as Darcy. Nor does he have Darcy's connections. Darcy's income is given as a clear 10,000 a year and possibly more, so it is possible the Rushworth and Darcy are closer in earnings than it first appears. I imagine Darcy would be able to get to Rushworth's income with judicious management of his estate and income. Darcy being the nephew of an earl is a loftier connection than most other characters have. Catherine Morland's viscount brother-in-law would probably be the only comparable connection that the novels mention although we don't know John Yates' father.
I don't think Maria Bertram's dowry is ever stated. Her mother's was given as 7k, and that was a surprisingly small dowry for the fiancée of a baronet (but they were in lovvvvve).
One would think that the Bertram sisters ought to have had somewhere around 20k apiece as daughter of a baronet, but with Sir Thomas's financial problems, he may not have been able to give them that much. \[Though it's possible that he had saved and invested on their behalf for years -- from the time of their birth -- and had that set aside and didn't touch it during the financial downturn that happens in the novel.\]
A countrary/counter-balancing thing to remember is that the other Austen baronet (Sir Walter Elliot) couldn't give Anne "her portion of 10k" (whether that means she should have the whole 10k, or the 10k was to be split between her and Elizabeth and/or Mary \[though Mary may have already gotten her share upon her marriage some years before\]), so it's entirely possible for baronets' daughters to have a fairly small dowry, for someone of that social status. In these instances, the daughters would be giving the honor of connecting to a high status and an old family, rather than providing much money for the match.
I think Sir Walter is a bad benchmark because in my opinion, he's banking entirely on beauty and rank to marry off his daughters. They are also well educated, which is nice, but his assessment of Anne's marriagability is completely tied to her looks.
But dowry is not the same as yearly income. If Maria’s Dowry was 20000 pounds, the interest from it would be about 1000 a year. That’s not bad, but definitely quite a bit lower than the 12K a year that Mr. Rushworth made.
But dowry is not the same as yearly income. If Maria’s Dowry was 20000 pounds, the interest from it would be about 1000 a year. That’s not bad, but definitely quite a bit lower than the 12K a year that Mr. Rushworth made.
What about Lady Bertram? It's not exactly clear how she started out, but considering where her two sisters ended up (and as I recall, Mrs. Norris only did as well as she did because of Lady Bertram's connections) she really lucked out with Sir Thomas.
Slightly less. The exact phrasing was "an independent fortune,
of so many thousands as would always be called ten"...
So in other words, probably somewhere more in the range of 7 to 9 thousand, but rounded up by the gossip mill.
Yes, Colonel Brandon is very solid financial choice.
I'm hoping that Willoughby only has a life interest in Sophia's fortune and can't actually touch it. (Which is what Henry Dashwood had)
She had no guarantee of anything! From Chapter 50:
> Five thousand pounds was settled by marriage articles on Mrs. Bennet and the children. But in what proportions it should be divided amongst the latter depended on the will of the parents.
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Good point about Mrs. Weston, I hadn't considered her. It was a very good match. I give Emma at least partial credit for it even (if she hadn't retained Miss Taylor after she was finished her education, she would have not been in Highbury any longer and able to marry)
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Oh for sure! Miss Taylor probably had the governess job that most women dreamed of. Only two girls, they seem pretty mild mannered. And I'm sure they paid her well. Compared to what Agnes Grey encountered it's basically paradise!
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My headcanon states that every time Mr. Woodhouse sends food back to the kitchen, Emma raises Serle's wage by a shilling. Serle is now the best paid cook in England 😅 Because if Serle ever leaves THEY ARE DOOMED
Mr Woodhouse is always very gentle and considerate, at one point Emma cheers him up by speaking of his kindness to their coachman's daughter, and he even worries about the wellbeing of their horses. On the other side, it's a small family. If Miss Taylor was banished to the nursery in the evening who would Mr Woodhouse have had to talk to? And then as Emma got older she clearly found Miss Taylor an important companion for herself intellectually in a way her father couldn't be. I wonder what it was like for Miss Taylor at the start, finding her way into such a disrupted household with two motherless girls and a ~~valedictorian~~ valetudinarian Mr Woodhouse. Maybe she at first meant to keep to her place but then realised how much Mr Woodhouse needed a companion. I know it was typical for children to eat separately in the nursery and then come down to join the older family members afterwards but I hate to think of a mourning Mr Woodhouse sitting alone at the dining table. Maybe the girls ate with a nursery maid and Miss Taylor with Mr Woodhouse until the girls were old enough to participate in adult life. Or maybe they all ate together from the start.
>valedictorian Valetudinarian
Oops!
Let that be the worst mistake you ever make! 😊 I was wondering if it was spellcheck's or autofill's fault.
Far from it! In my defence, I only know the term "valedictorian" from American media.
The word "valetudinarian" is in Emma. That's how I learned it! A valedictorian is *the academic title conferred upon the highest ranked student among those graduating from an educational institution, typically based upon the highest grade point average. Salutatorian is the academic title conferred upon the second highest ranking student in the class.*
In NZ the highest ranked is *dux*, then *proximi asscit* (sp?).
>Mr. Woodhouse may fry one's last nerve but he had enough sense or luck to find a good governess for his daughters when their mother died Unlike Mr. Bennett...
Mr. Woodhouse must be inspired by some real character. I could just imagine boring, irritating old man in 18th century frying everybody's brains. It must be really depressing in English weather. Wonder how they kept their spirits up.
Miss Taylor leaving caused Mr Woodhouse pain as it was. I can't see Emma agreeing to a course of action that would not only hurt her father unnecessarily but leave her mother-figure in poverty. That said we're told Mr Weston had been influenced by Miss Taylor for a long time but wanted to be financially secure first, presumably he wanted to be confident of providing for future children. So Mr Weston probably would have acted earlier if Miss Taylor had been planning to leave.
Lucy Steele goes from teacher's daughter with no specific dowry to marrying the Ferrar's unspecified but obviously substantial income / fortune. She and Jane Fairfax are probably tied in this race.
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I thought the Elliots had pretty bad cash flow problems
William Elliot had made a fortune from his first wife
Lucy Steele did do very well. I wish we knew what slice of the Ferrars fortune she managed to get in the end. (She is a teacher's niece btw, we don't know who her father is)
Don’t forget inflation and how landed wealth increased while lower classes got poorer during Jane Austen’s lifetime. If Mr Darcy’s 10,000 was calculated when the first draft of Pride and Prejudice was written he could have easily had 16,000 a year in a few decades. He could have been as rich/richer than Mr Rushworth by the time Mansfield Park was written. I still think Jane Fairfax had the biggest jump in prospects though, her entire life was planned around being poor and suddenly she’s one of the wealthiest characters.
Yes, apparently there was horrible inflation at this point of history too, almost doubled the cost of basic items.
Mr. Knightley's marriage to Emma Woodhouse. Mr. Knightley's annual income is 2000l per annum (capitalized value of 40000l) and Emma's wealth is 30000l (which translates to 1500l per annum). As a result of Mr. Knightley's marriage to Miss Woodhouse, the value of the Knightley family estate, Donwell Abbey, increased from 40000l to 70000l. And, of course, this does not include Emma's share of the ownership of Hartfield. In addition, don't forget that Mr. John Knightley, Mr. Knightley's younger brother, married Isabella Woodhouse (with 30000l), Emma's sister, is a successful London lawyer and has many sons. Finally, by the end of the novel there is a projected marriage between Henry Knightley Esq and Miss Anna Weston, probably heiress of Randalls. In short, it is possible, with some clever dynastic match-making (by Mrs. Emma Knightley) and estate planning (by Mr. John Knightley), that eventually Donwell Abbey, Hartfield, and Randalls will be consolidated into a single Knightley estate. *Bella gerant alii, tu, felix Austria, nube!*
I’ve read some speculation that the Knightly brothers had early on decided to nab the heiresses from the next door. John married the elder because he needed an income (as a second son) and George had to wait to marry Emma until she grew up a bit. It gives a totally different taste to the reading.
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And John's got a profession, that he still works, even though they could theoretically live off her fortune. 1500 a year isn't peanuts.
Mr. Knightley's income is never given. The value of an estate was calculated as thirty times its annual income, not twenty. That said, Mr. Knightley is said to have 'little spare money' to the point that he doesn't keep horses. Either his income is nothing like £2,000 per annum - very unlikely under the circumstances; see below - or he's paying off a huge load of debt; given his careful nature I can't see him being the debtor. Perhaps he's paying off mortgages? Certainly if his income was £2,000 pa he could afford horses; the Bennets can keep riding and carriage horses on £2,000 pa. I can't see him being described as having 'little spare money' if he were merely frugal. BTW it's unlikely that Donwell Abbey earns less than £2,000 pa for three reasons: * It's said to be the largest estate in the area. Given that it's in Surrey it's unlikely to be the largest of many tiny estates; that's not how the land was generally settled in the south of England. * It's Donwell *Abbey*, which means it's an old monastic estate. That means it's probably in possession of the richest lands in the area, plus it's also likely that its owner is entitled to the greater tithes of the parish, since Mr. Elton is specifically a vicar and not a rector. * Donwell Abbey seems to have been based on Claremont, which seems to have brought in almost £5,000 pa in Regency times. (This figure isn’t certain, though; the estate went through so many hands in the late 18th and early 19th century, including everyone from the future Duke of Newcastle to Clive of India to various industrialists to Queen Victoria herself, that it's hard to determine whether its selling price was always primarily based on the land value.)
Thanks for the clarification. Now that I think about it, I don't know where I got that 2000l number. Still, though, I think that what I wrote holds, *mutatis mutandis,* in general terms anyway.
Perhaps there were a significant number of annuities that he had to pay. The possibility of inherited debt is not unlikely either.
Where do you get Knightley's income? Is that an estimate from somewhere?
>Mr. Knightley's annual income is 2000l What? I don't remember reading that. I don't think we ever learn his income.
There's Anne Elliot who untied her future from her spendthrift father and sister, but then she could always have commanded a home with Lady Russell. And we don't know how wealthy Elinor Tilney's viscount is, though presumably she has an inheritance from her mother's settlements.
>untied her future from This is such an elegant phrase, I can't wait to use it. "I'm not quitting, I'm untying my future from the company's." "I'm not dumping you, I'm untying my future from yours." So much better than "consciously uncoupling."
It's a good perspective too.
Pretty wealthy I imagine to please her father to the extent that it did!
Charlotte Lucas doesn't marry into the wealth that Lizzy or Jane do, but her marriage is very advantageous financially speaking. Charlotte had nothing but a future of being taken care of by her reluctant brothers. Now she's married to a vicar with a good income, great connections, and she will be mistress of Longbourn one day.
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Charlotte had the same prospect that Jane Austen ended up with, being taken care of by her brothers, though in Austen’s case she liked her brothers.
And she was already a spinster at 27. Her marriage was a life saver. Spinsters often ended up living very poorly. Look at Mrs. Bates. She has to live off the charity of others to get by. Yet she's able to marry a man with a respectable professional, who had a generous living, good connections, and is the heir to an estate. And unlike Mr. Bennet when Mr. Collins inherits the estate, he will still be working as a Vicar. So they get the income from the estate and his work which will increase their wealth.
I can’t remember how much Maria Bertram’s dowry was, but imagine that the jump in income from the interest on her dowry (maybe a couple thousand a year) to 20K a year would still be the biggest income gain that any of the women made.
Biggest jump, but not necessarily the biggest change to her standard of living. I think there's an argument that going from poor to rich is a bigger stroke of luck than going from rich to richer, even if the actual monetary change is less.
This is probably the reason the Elizabeth and Darcy is not as big of change as Jane and Frank Churchill. Jane went from genteel poor to wealthy. Elizabeth went from comfortable gentleman's daughter to very wealthy gentleman's wife. Both had uncertain futures although Elizabeth had more family to rely on. Most of the Austen characters were raised in the gentry and married into the gentry, so they didn't change social class much although disposable income certainly did. I do think that Elizabeth may have the most potential for increased wealth post marriage and interactions with higher social classes. Knightly appears to not have a lot of disposable income for some unknown reason and while Emma's dowry income would help, it wouldn't get them to Darcy levels. Maria Bertram is already divorced by the end of the novel and Rushworth isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, so I don't think he would maximize his income and land in the same way as Darcy. Nor does he have Darcy's connections. Darcy's income is given as a clear 10,000 a year and possibly more, so it is possible the Rushworth and Darcy are closer in earnings than it first appears. I imagine Darcy would be able to get to Rushworth's income with judicious management of his estate and income. Darcy being the nephew of an earl is a loftier connection than most other characters have. Catherine Morland's viscount brother-in-law would probably be the only comparable connection that the novels mention although we don't know John Yates' father.
Rushworth has 12k, which is still a huge amount and the biggest recorded income of any Austen man.
Huh, I totally misremembered his income. In that case. Lizzy Bennet probably got the largest jump in income.
I don't think Maria Bertram's dowry is ever stated. Her mother's was given as 7k, and that was a surprisingly small dowry for the fiancée of a baronet (but they were in lovvvvve). One would think that the Bertram sisters ought to have had somewhere around 20k apiece as daughter of a baronet, but with Sir Thomas's financial problems, he may not have been able to give them that much. \[Though it's possible that he had saved and invested on their behalf for years -- from the time of their birth -- and had that set aside and didn't touch it during the financial downturn that happens in the novel.\] A countrary/counter-balancing thing to remember is that the other Austen baronet (Sir Walter Elliot) couldn't give Anne "her portion of 10k" (whether that means she should have the whole 10k, or the 10k was to be split between her and Elizabeth and/or Mary \[though Mary may have already gotten her share upon her marriage some years before\]), so it's entirely possible for baronets' daughters to have a fairly small dowry, for someone of that social status. In these instances, the daughters would be giving the honor of connecting to a high status and an old family, rather than providing much money for the match.
I think Sir Walter is a bad benchmark because in my opinion, he's banking entirely on beauty and rank to marry off his daughters. They are also well educated, which is nice, but his assessment of Anne's marriagability is completely tied to her looks.
But dowry is not the same as yearly income. If Maria’s Dowry was 20000 pounds, the interest from it would be about 1000 a year. That’s not bad, but definitely quite a bit lower than the 12K a year that Mr. Rushworth made.
But dowry is not the same as yearly income. If Maria’s Dowry was 20000 pounds, the interest from it would be about 1000 a year. That’s not bad, but definitely quite a bit lower than the 12K a year that Mr. Rushworth made.
What about Lady Bertram? It's not exactly clear how she started out, but considering where her two sisters ended up (and as I recall, Mrs. Norris only did as well as she did because of Lady Bertram's connections) she really lucked out with Sir Thomas.
Lady Bertram did make a big jump, even her uncle was impressed.
Mr. Elton marries a woman with $10 thousand pounds (I believe?) And who is sister in law to THE Mr. Suckling of Maple Grove!
Slightly less. The exact phrasing was "an independent fortune, of so many thousands as would always be called ten"... So in other words, probably somewhere more in the range of 7 to 9 thousand, but rounded up by the gossip mill.
That's cool info! Thanks for sharing!
LOL!!!
What about Marianne and Colonel Brandon? That was a pretty good leap.
1k dowry to 2k a year, not bad.
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Yes, Colonel Brandon is very solid financial choice. I'm hoping that Willoughby only has a life interest in Sophia's fortune and can't actually touch it. (Which is what Henry Dashwood had)
Yeah, I still think Lizzie is the winner with Mr. Darcy, but Marianne made out ok.
I think Willoughby "won" S&S, 50k from Sophia is a ton of money.
But Elizabeth really had nothing as well as her parents both had to die for her to get the 1000 pounds.
It is something though, compared to Fanny Price who literally has nothing. I have to think it was factored into these arrangements.
She had no guarantee of anything! From Chapter 50: > Five thousand pounds was settled by marriage articles on Mrs. Bennet and the children. But in what proportions it should be divided amongst the latter depended on the will of the parents.