Jane Austen discussion

What does this say about how women as descendents were viewed by society at the time?

What is your opinion?

Inheritance arrangements should be in writing and not left to the good will of brothers. It is amusing and yet horrifying to see how the brother is swayed by his rich wife to finally give the sisters nothing regardless of what their father wanted. Women were property. They had to marry, become a governess, or be supported by their brothers in order not to starve and you can see how badly the brother treated them in S & S. Only in the last half century did inheritance laws change in England. For a woman to be independent or unmarried was a disaster.

I think Jane used her own situation in her writing. Elinor and Marinanne...like so many other heroines, are not rich and rely on others and a good marriage, Yet they don't want to marry for money. Being independent is important to them as well as Jane herself. Although it was hard and not common. To be poor, a woman and single...well, that was probably the worst thing.

I think Jane's disapprobation is aimed at the uncle as much as at the brother. He should have left his estate to E & M's father, who (with his second family) had given him so much loving care, and who really needed the money. It was considered the duty of wealthy families to settle money (albeit a good deal less) on their daughters as well as their sons; see, for example, Georgiana Darcy's £30,000.

But of course this depended on the person leaving the money behaving properly. Women were at the mercy of the goodwill and sense of honour of the men who held the purse-strings.

Jane must have been acutely aware of this in her own life. Fortunately she had decent, kind brothers to see that she and Cassandra and their mother were looked after.

I thought it was strange that the uncle wrote the will to make it only good for Mr. Dashwood's (E&M father) for his life and the rest to go towards their brother's son who made him laugh the one time he met the small boy. That was just too weird. But it does show how the general population thought women as being possessions/property. They were duties. By the brother doing nothing for his sisters shows also how many also treated half-siblings and poorer relations as barely a step above that of servant. Women I hate to say it were chattel.

From the little bit of web searching I did, the property entail, is not necessarily the choice of the uncle or in Pride and Prejudice of Mr. Bennett or Mr. Elliott in Persuasion.

In feudal England, land was granted to families for service to the crown or a local lord. To create a base of supporters who had some power, their were limits placed on the inheritance of the property granted:

- The property can not be subdivided or split between heirs.

-The entails were most frequently along the male, line, though not always.

-The first son (or oldest surviving son) inherited the property. (I think this meant that the first son could not be dis-inherited, even if they deserved it.) Part of the reason those second sons were joining the clergy or causing trouble.

So, yes, for the most part women were not valued. But when this was set up during feudal times, women weren't putting on the armor, hopping on their chargers and going off to battle. But fot the time of Austen's heroines, it was an unfortunate hold over.

Leslie - Their brother's wife played a big role in how the women inherited nothing. I think he would've given them something to live on (less than they deserved, but something) if she hadn't gotten involved. Amazing how the fate of the 4 women was determined by another woman.

Jamie-
I think that you make some very interesting points. How the Dashwood ladies inheritance was in essence determined by Fannie! Too bad John couldn't be a stronger character than his wife...maybe Elinor and Marianne may have gotten more money.

Shayne, I agree with everything you said.

Andrea, that was such a helpful snippet. It was very seldom that women could inherit property in the late eighteenth century. I think in many cases most of the male line had to be dead or disinherited.

I think just as much as not having inheritence, was the ideology that the Bennet girls were raised under. That had to maintain a certain style of living to be deemed respectable. They could not seek work (even gentile work, like governessing), they could not show their want to friends, requests for help were only acceptable from family (remember John Middleton was a cousin or some sort), and even then polite venom from Fanny made John unavailable to their needs. They needed a man to get them "things". They needed a "respectable house". THEY couldn't get them.

John not only withdrew financial support, he didn't even offer fillial support. They were adrift without a protector, until John Middleton takes his place as a protector.

I understand why it is that way but i dont think it should be that way, but that is how it was then so we dont really have a say in it, but if we did i would have split it up with the people who needed it the most.

i also think that becoming property of your husband is stupid. i would hate to be called property.

Was the 19th c. English wife the property of husband or was her position more compared to that of minor children -- limited rights? I would like to know more about this.

I have been absorbed in reading The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (1860) and this issue comes to mind to me in the storyline. The wife runs into difficulties with her husband, but HER restrictions in acting upon the problem make me think she is confined more due to propriety and social constraints. The wife even has her own lawyer to advise her, so she has some legal protection. It also brings up the issue of entailment and the male line of the family.

Married women weren't property per se, in 18th and 19th century England. At least, not in the same way that slaves, for example, were in the US (as decided by court cases like the Dred Scott decision). Their position would have been more akin to wards or minors. One of the major difficulties for married women was that they couldn't sue, make wills, or dispose of or own property (such as land) in their own right; they needed a husband to appear for them in court and to authorize their wills. In addition to this, any property they did own as a single woman would legally become their husband's after marriage (or after divorce--the only means by which a woman could reclaim her property as her own was as a widow). A few of these restrictions changed in 1857 and 1870, when Parliament passed the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act and the Married Women's Property Act.

That said, a wise father or guardian could protect a woman's property for her by including clauses in a marriage settlement. In The Woman in White, Mr. Gilmour is appalled because Mr. Fairlie refuses to take any steps to safeguard Laura's fortune from her husband. Laura's actions are, as Sarah says, dictated more by propriety than by law. Her signature is necessary for her husband to control of her 20000 L instead of simply having access to the annual interest, but propriety dictates that she should obey her husband command for her to sign the document. While Laura herself does not have legal protection, her money does because the original marriage settlement was drawn up so that the principal would be preserved for any children she and her husband might have.

I am not sure that women were totally restricted from business transactions during this time period.

I know the passages in Persuasion that you point to. I wondered if she meant that William Elliot would not carry out his duty as executor in settling business and debts for the deceased Mr. Smith.

Mrs. Smith specifically mentions property under "sequestration" in West Indies that might be cleared and provide her with income. The situation seems to mean that she didn't have the knowledge to take this on herself and had been ill and couldn't afford to hire an agent or lawyer to investigate this.

When Frederick Wentworth steps in at the end ("determined friend") it seems to emphasize that he was helping her sort it all out, rather than stepping in as a legal necessity.

The other point (in reference to the story line in Collins' Woman in White) was that married women could receive a personal estate as opposed to a land estate. Laura's fortune, around which some of the story focuses, is her inherited money (hers to keep) and the income from the family estate (hers to use during her lifetime -- I believe they called it the life-interest). So she had 20,000 pounds in her legal right that she didnt have to relinquish to her husband. Since her signature was needed to give him rights, it does seem that she had legal power of her own. (And anything more here by me would be a spoiler to that novel!)

So to bring this all back around to our Dashwood ladies, they did have some rights and some property, they just didn't have much. They couldn't inherit the land estate, but they did inherit a small income from the estate, but bless their hearts, not even enough to keep a carriage! What a downfall for ladies of their social position.

So does anyone remember why they didnt inherit much money from the estate? Was the Dashwood estate not prosperous? Had Mr. Dashwood just not provided very well in the will?

Yes, Laura's situation in The Woman in White is a tricky one, since her 20000 L is put in such a precarious position due to her marriage settlements. What I find interesting in that particular novel is whether or not her husband has the legal right to force her to sign the documents. I'm not sure that he does, but I think that in terms of social norms, Laura runs a great risk in not signing the papers. That is, her husband suggests that her refusal to sign is a gross breach of propriety and could lead to a separation. Such a separation would be extremely damaging to Laura; much more so than to her husband.

In S & S I think the situation is quite different. The ladies don't inherit much money because their father had little to give them. He passes along the 10000L in his possession, but the estate and its income goes to Mr. John Dashwood and his son, which was secured for them by the uncle's original will.

The narrator clearly finds the settlement of the estate and money onto the little boy to be something of a cruel joke. But that said, it is interesting that this initial disinheritance by the grand-uncle, and then later by Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood, is revenged through the marriages of Elinor and Marianne. Elinor marries Mrs. John Dashwood's brother (thus rendering all that woman's maneuverings totally futile) while Marianne is saved from a disreputable marriage with Willoughby by the very fact that she is too poor.

I think this whole subject of rights and property may be one reason I find these novels so interesting! Just like Austen and Collins built their stories with the struggles that society had with this issue. And look at Dickens -- money, property, greed -- they are all through his books.

Great comments about Marianne and Elinor's outcome. I guess Fanny had to learn to live with Elinor as a "double" inlaw. Justice!

Yeah, poor Elinor! Well, at least Fanny has her new sister Lucy to console her.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that 19th century married women didn't suffer from an incredible double-standard, or legal, social, cultural, and political hardship. I do think it is interesting, though, that Austen's novels, no matter how much we love them, offer women so little in terms of solutions to the problems the author poses. As Anna points out, the opening to S&S presents the women with a terrible situation--their father can give them only 10000L on his death and the rest of the property passes to his son. Even though the terms of the will are vague and quickly set aside, the entire novel hinges on this document. The lives of Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret are all grossly affected, the narrator hints, because of the whims of a five year old boy.

The novel's solution seems only to be that you must be very careful about who you chose to marry--select a partner not necessarily by wealth, but who won't beat you, cheat on you, ignore you, or disinherit you. But even as Austen's novels repeat this caution over and over, they also criticize a woman who is too practical in her decision. Poor Charlotte, from P&P, makes a choice that even cynical Lizzy can't condone, and as readers there are many of us who probably feel similarly. And yet Charlotte's choice, according to the novel, awards her more independence and freedom than she would have as an older, unmarried daughter in a large family. With the exception of Mr. and Mrs. Gardner in P&P, or the Admiral and his wife in Persuasion, I can think of very, very few marriages outside of those that the heroines make that seem to be equitable, happy, and successful (although I'd be happy to be proven wrong!). Not exactly a hopeful picture for women.