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Becoming Jane

February 5th, 2010

Becoming Jane (2007) IMDB rating: 6.70 Plot: The year is 1795 and young Jane Austen is a feisty 20-year-old and emerging writer who already sees a world beyond class and commerce, beyond pride and prejudice, and dreams of doing what was then nearly unthinkable – marrying for love. Naturally, her parents are searching for a wealthy, well-appointed husband to assure their daughter’s future social standing. They are eyeing Mr. Wisley, nephew to the very formidable, not to mention very rich, local aristocrat Lady Gresham, as a prospective match. But when Jane meets the roguish and decidedly non-aristocratic Tom Lefroy, sparks soon fly along with the sharp repartee. His intellect and arrogance raise her ire – then knock her head over heels. Now, the couple, whose flirtation flies in the face of the sense and sensibility of the age, is faced with a terrible dilemma. If they attempt to marry, they will risk everything that matters – family, friends and fortune.

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Actors: McAvoy James,Cromwell James,Anderson Joe,Fox Laurence,Richardson Ian,Bill Leo,Ford Michael James,Vaughan-Lawlor Tom,Biography,Drama,Romance,

Women owning property in Jane Austen books – Emma vs. Pride & Prejudice.?
No, this is not a homework question – I’m just curious.
In Pride & Prejudice, the daughters all had to get married off to avoid becoming paupers since women could not inherit property. But in Emma, she was not concerned about getting married and said that even if she did not get married, at least she would be a wealthy spinster.

Why the discrepancy? Didn’t they take place about the same time so the same laws would apply? Could Emma inherit her father’s estate?

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Actually, there is no true discrepancy. The circumstances were different for the Bennet girls than they were for Emma. It is incorrect that women could never inherit. It was the entailment which kept the Bennet girls from inheriting the estate. There was wealth for Emma to inherit, there was no wealth for the Bennet girls to inherit.

In Pride and Prejudice, the family estate was entailed, meaning it would be inherited by the closest male relative when Mr. Bennet died. Therefore, the Bennet girls would not inherit the estate. However, if you recall, Anne de Bourgh was the one who was going to inherit the estate when Lady Catherine passed away. You see, there was no entail on Mr. Darcy’s uncle’s estate in Pride and Prejudice. In the same book, you see Caroline Bingley and her sister, both of whom inherited a large sum of money from their father – as did Georgiana Darcy from her father.

As I said, it was not that a woman never could inherit, it was merely that the Bennet girls had nothing to inherit. Mr. Bennet’s estate was entailed, so the girls would not benefit from it, and there was only a small amount of money available to be settled on each from the money their mother had inherited (the amount settled on their mother when she married/her dowry).

As far as Emma was concerned, the real point was she was an heiress with 30,000 pounds. The Bennet girls, like the Dashwoods in Sense and Sensibility, did not have the expectation of a large amount of money. With very little money to inherit and with the estate entailed away from the women in the family, the Bennets had to marry well in order to live in the relative luxury to which they were accustomed. Had the previous generation, probably Mr. Bennet’s father, not entailed the estate, the girls could have inherited it and remained in their present circumstances after Mr. Bennet’s death.

Both books are set in the same era. There was no mention of an entail on the Woodhouse estate. If it wasn’t entailed, Emma could, in fact, inherit it.

Note: Entailing the property, you see, was a choice. There was no law saying the property had to be entailed in order to keep the property in male hands, only. I’m no expert on entailment, but from what I’ve read, once the property was entailed, the next male to inherit was left with no choice about whom to leave the property. The entailment meant the closest male relative inherited from the one who began the entail and had to pass the property on to the next closest male heir. As far as I can figure out, the second generation male inheritor could break the entail. Mr. Bennet, however, could not. See http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/pptopi c2.html#entail for more indepth information about entails.

Does this explain it for you? Since I did a quantity of rambling, I’ll pare it down:
1. A woman could inherit an estate, provided it was not entailed.
2. A woman could NOT inherit an estate, if it had been entailed. In this case, only a male relative could inherit. Such was the case with the Bennets.
3. A woman could be an heiress, provided her parents were wealthy and had the money to settle on (or provide for) her. Such was the case with Emma. Unfortunately for the Bennets, this was not the case for them.

| Feb 02, 2010

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