Tea at Trianon: Wealth in Jane Austen’s Fiction

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, July 21, 2022

Wealth in Jane Austen’s Fiction

From Wondrium Daily:

Austen’s own personal philosophy of class, economics, and money remains much debated. Whether we look into her stories and see a ratification of her era’s emerging market capitalism, or whether we see a deep skepticism of it, one must agree that her novels manage to raise enduring economic questions.

Austen does this successfully as her fiction focuses on the proper role of wealth, landownership, and social status in relationships and in communities, as well as on whether or how wealth ought to be passed down from generation to generation. Her fiction imagines a world in which moral worth, and economic value, aren’t strictly tied together. Qualities of character and mind might matter more than the class one was born into.

Jane Austen’s fiction also makes us look closely where all the wealth is going, how it’s being moved around and consolidated, used and misused. She looks at how young men and women are compelled to serve as economic carriers and pawns in their families and communities. Austen shows us how wealth is structurally tethered to social status, yet need not be tethered to opinions about character and moral worth. (Read more.)