Meowthra

And that he's mad his slave is now in a higher social position then him?

by George Frederic Watts

And run straight into the ambush of a different kind of predator. It's far taller and has longer limbs than the other one, this one *is* built for the chase, but a whole group of you popping up out of the ground one by one means it barely has to put in effort at all. It will eat well for weeks.

You realise, too late, that this is no unfortunate coincidence. The surface predator was working with the burrower to drive you out here. These creatures may not be sapient, but they appear to have a strategy. Some kind of symbiotic relationship, perhaps?

You never stood a chance.

Anyway, you just met the sci-fi horror version of these guys:

the original intention behind this before i got carried away and kind of went a bit too hard on qht was more to state that i think qiu haitang was unconsciously part of the whole horrific trauma that shen jiu went through (a pawn if you will), because even if someone is technically blameless, being forcibly engaged to someone you don't want to marry is a huge trauma in itself and i think it probably messed with shen jiu's perception of himself... what he was allowed to say no to, whether or not he was 'wrong' for being 'ungrateful' for the chance to marry haitang... i think there's a tiny part of me that feels like the fact i read sj as a gay man forced into an engagement to a woman is also part of it, but it's really the fact he was a child who got no say in marriage plans that's the traumatic part. and qiu jianluo is the one responsible for this, but qiu haitang ended up being a source of trauma just by virtue of being another tool qiu jianluo used to control shen jiu. like... she's not one of his abusers and she wouldn't have wanted to be the reason for any of his pain, but she was all the same, and i want to recognise that she's not at fault or really 'complicit' but this doesn't erase or mitigate the fact that the trauma of forced child marriage still happened all the same.

(in a way i think this is really interesting because this would also cause qiu haitang more pain and suffering when she found out about it; not only does she have to witness her brother abusing shen jiu and her entire life and any sort of cognitive dissonance she had managed to achieve in order to survive comes tumbling down, but her words to him are specifically "why didn't you kill me?!" and i always wondered why she said this. like... did she mean why didn't you kill me so i'd never have to hunt you down for revenge and find out the truth, i would have preferred that, it would hurt less? or did she mean "why didn't you kill me? i was also treating you like an object and holding you back from your freedom").

What if the four children had been raised at Foxworth Hall, all pampered and spoiled in the outside, yet terrified in the inside. Because Malcolm is not above hurting that what he claims to love or thinks pretty. Olivia would, no doubt, punish them often in non-physical ways until she catches Cathy and Chris kissing and lashes out. Then Corrine kills her for hurting her children and she has to bury her and get rid of the evidence with the help of fourteen year old Cathy and sixteen year old Chris. Then Malcolm dies and everything goes to Cathy, while everything Olivia had goes to Corrine.

Cathy from the time she was 10 to 16

So in one of the unpublished manuscripts for Petals on the Wind, there are various alternate endings. One of wich involves Cathy ending up in a psych ward instead of Corrine!

paranoid fear of accidental grooming

Poor Yang Yixuan doesn't have it easy on Bai Zhan. No one ever did, the peak was rough and unforgiving to its disciples since the beginning, but his shizun is a special case – very hard to make sense of.

Saving is very hard and so few people do it. The government in my country has forced pensions that come right out of people's wages for a good reason. A lot of the inheritances we see in Austen are just money being passed on, saved by someone who had the will to do it and then paid forward. A mother's dowry was placed in trust and protected, then split between her daughters and etc. Recycled inheritances.

Mrs. Bennet going from "middle class" to upper class as a very young woman, it must have seemed like the money was endless and would never run out. Her husband didn't even have to work for it like her father! With so much wealth, saving must have just seemed unnecessary.

Mr. Bennet being born into wealth... I remember my parents teaching me to think about all money in terms of my minimum wage. I used to calculate how many hours as a cashier it took to buy this pair of jeans or that book I wanted to buy. Mr. Bennet never worked. He knew the money would keep coming until he died, barring some major disaster. The motivation to save must be so hard to inspire in those circumstances. He knew he should set some aside for emergencies, but he never actually did.

So many people live up to their incomes, no matter their wealth. So many people save nothing, despite knowing they should. I wonder what percentage of the gentry actually managed to save for their daughters (and extra sons) and how many failed at it.

And it makes me think, is one of the things that made Darcy so attractive to Elizabeth the fact that he could come up with £3000 twice at the drop of a hat, indicating that he has both savings and an emergency fund?

I think this is why she remains a largely unsympathetic character. Mr. Bennet understands that he's in a loveless marriage and he wants to save at least his favourite child from the same fate. Mrs. Bennet seems to genuinely believe that as long as her daughers have money, they'll be fine.

She married for money and position and she got both. With 3 wonderful and 2 strange daughters on top of that bargain. Has her husband prepared their daughters or even herself for the future without him in it? nope. but that's what children are for! either the beautiful or the lively one will marry well and take care of her forever. So yeah, Mr. Bennet isn't perfect. He's a curmudgeon, he doesn't give a shit about her nerves and he always makes jokes nobody thinks are funny. But she is never hungry, she always has new clothes, she can go to balls and goddamnit - she made her marriage work, even if he has become more and more irritating the longer this goes on. She is still a youngish woman, and yes, thank you for asking, she and Jane could be sisters!

Her life isn't perfect - but then again, where does love take you at the end of the day really? love goes away but acres are to stay! And then her strange second daughter refuses that very same security? Yes, Mr. Collins is an acquired taste. But hell, every man is. Lizzy will have her house, 2000 a year and nobody needs to worry another day of her life.

She's very excited by the idea of it, and it alters her opinion favourably of those with it, but she never actually expresses concern for the lack of it (as we can see by her excitement over Lydia's marriage and complete lack of awareness over what their income could be). She's doing the exact opposite of what she should, which is being worried about her daughters falling for penniless men and not being noticeably obsessed even in public with the fortunes of rich ones and attempting to strong-arm a child into marrying a man she dislikes for wealth.

I think how thrilled Mrs Bennet is with Lydia's marriage basically tells us everything: he's not rich, she knows of his debts, hears about his "seductions" in Meryton, his and Lydia's selfishness almost ruined all the Bennets' reputations, and no mature and careful man who respected/loved a woman would elope with her because of the danger to her reputation and lack of fiscal protection having no marriage articles means for a woman. There are zero actual benefits to the marriage other than saving face socially, and yet Mrs Bennet's excitement and pride in the match and her son-in-law are excessive and genuine.

Wealth is a great added factor that influences her opinion greatly, and is why her own marriage is such an achievement, but she seems to care about marriages in and of themselves above not only the happiness of her daughters and characters of their husbands, but also above wealth.

She's getting an F in parenting class.

And, arguably, the reason Mrs Bennet hasn't learnt anything from the failures in her own marriage is because she doesn't see them.

Her marriage is an INSANE achievement. She jumped up a social class, top 0.2% of society in terms of income (and LANDED income, at that), and honestly I think she sees her relationship as pretty great. We see he isn't affectionate, and feels that "Respect, esteem, and confidence had vanished for ever" between them, and is happy in both "exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children" (and the public) by making a fool of her and letting her do it herself. But does she notice??

In a bad mood, she complains her nerves are being mistreated, but she levels those accusations at everyone no matter how unfair and hyperbolic the claim is, and in a good mood forgets it all, sees his behaviour as a joke, and doesn't seem to notice mistreatment or her husband's real opinion of her.

In my favourite example of that she even shows that she believes she has the power to influence his behaviour and decisions:

How good it was in you, my dear Mr. Bennet! But I knew I should persuade you at last. I was sure you loved your girls too well to neglect such an acquaintance. Well, how pleased I am! and it is such a good joke, too, that you should have gone this morning and never said a word about it till now.

It might even be true! Mr Bennet doesn't seem fond of society, but Mrs Bennet is regularly seen entertaining large parties at home and they attend all the premier social events as a family, and when Jane was going to Netherfield Mr Bennet went from a non-committal "[the horses] are wanted in the farm much oftener than I can get them" to "an acknowledgment that the horses were engaged."

Even when it definitely isn't, like when he goes from saying "Into one house in this neighbourhood [Lydia and Wickham] shall never have admittance. I will not encourage the impudence of either, by receiving them at Longbourn" to then receiving them - Mrs Bennet might not know it was "Jane and Elizabeth, who agreed in wishing, for the sake of their sister's feelings and consequence, that she should be noticed on her marriage by her parents, urged him so earnestly yet so rationally and so mildly, to receive her and her husband at Longbourn, as soon as they were married, that he was prevailed on to think as they thought" instead of her own influence. In this light, Mrs Bennet is very justified in thinking she can persuade (or wear down) her husband.

And, though Mr Bennet absolutely failed his wife and daughters emotionally, financially, socially, and with their educations he also "was not of a disposition to seek comfort for the disappointment which his own imprudence had brought on, in any of those pleasures which too often console the unfortunate for their folly or their vice." So he wasn't a drinker, wasn't having affairs (and thus bringing that risk of STDs back), and wasn't spending money gambling or on said affairs or town, which left Mrs Bennet without the usual glaring red flags of having a bad husband. And she must've had significant control of the purse strings, if Mr Bennet's "love of independence had alone prevented their exceeding their income."

Nor do we have any indication that he was violent or angry - when his patience is wearing thin he leaves the room. He also isn't solely getting annoyed or wearied by her behaviour, we're told "her ignorance and folly had contributed to his amusement" and so she might often see him smiling at her, not knowing it's because he's laughing at her. There is no fear of Mr Bennet, nor excessive respect of his authority as head of the household, in his wife or any of his daughters. Mrs Bennet argues with him, scolds him, sulks at him, pressures him, etc without ever worrying how he will react. Her behaviour towards him doesn't seem to be curtailed at all, she's got a lot of leeway in that respect.

It all paints a picture that (for the time) Mrs Bennet actually had considerable freedom in their marriage and over her own life - to my recollection the only things we see getting definitively vetoed and not just complained about but eventually complied with (aside from the aforementioned exceeding their income and not pressuring Elizabeth to marry Mr Collins - two very reasonable pushbacks) is giving money for Lydia's wedding clothes, and the Brighton scheme. The latter of which, given the travelling and destination expenses, may have been rendered impossible due to their spending habits without saving a bit first even if Mr Bennet wasn't disinclined. Perhaps also historically trips to London have been vetoed, but as Elizabeth says "My mother would have had no objection, but my father hates London" which doesn't seem like Mrs Bennet has been expressing a strong opinion either way, it was likely never big conflict she noticed.

We also know that "Five daughters successively entered the world, but yet the son was to come; and Mrs. Bennet, for many years after Lydia's birth, had been certain that he would." The phrasing of which doesn't include Mr Bennet in this hope, which implies he was still sleeping with his wife when he didn't think anymore children could be conceived. Even though her "weak understanding and illiberal mind had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her" so there's no way affection was playing a part in his choice at least a decade into their marriage. Given her beauty played a huge part of why he married her, it's a reasonable assumption that the lust is still there even though the love isn't. They could very well still be sleeping together, occasionally or often, at the time of the novel. Another reason Mrs Bennet might not notice how little he thinks of her.

As far as husbands go in that era (the bar was on the FLOOR) that isn't actually a bad deal from Mrs Bennet's POV. She has so many benefits from the marriage, and almost no drawbacks that she notices. Ignorance is bliss. And most of the drawbacks that she does notice - their impeding 'ruin' should Mr Bennet die, not travelling to Brighton, his complaints about paying welcome calls to Bingley - are, respectively: also her responsibility and fault and forgotten as soon as she's happy again and she continues spending money; unfeasible; or forgotten as soon as Mr Bennet does what she wanted and she's inclined to see it all as a joke. We see her both happy and annoyed at her husband, but never feeling hurt by him.

I'd say that, even though it's objectively a dumpster fire of a union, Mrs Bennet is very happy in her marriage and justifiably self-satisfied. It's a far better life than anyone would usually predicted for the pretty daughter of a country attorney, faults and all.

1. "Elizabeth Bennet represents romantic* idealism; Charlotte Lucas represents pragmatism"

*Where "romantic" is used in its modern sense roughly meaning "eros." This take also usually has reference to Elizabeth's younger age, as something that is causing or allowing her to be idealistic.

This take I regard as purely nonsense. Elizabeth never says or implies that she will only marry for "love." She says something of this sort in a couple of the adaptations—but it doesn't appear anywhere in the novel.

For another thing: if the point of this character comparison were that Elizabeth demanded erotic, romantic love, while Charlotte was happy merely with a practical arrangement, wouldn't Mr. Collins's characterisation be very different? He would be a reasonable, sensible, respectable man, who was nevertheless very boring. Elizabeth might respect, but not love or feel attraction to him, and would make it clear that she was rejecting him for this reason.

This isn't the case. Elizabeth rejects him because she doesn't respect him, and she sees all of his pompousness, selfishness, and ridiculousness; Charlotte accepts him despite the fact that doesn't respect him, and has pretty much the same opinion that Elizabeth does of his mind. The disagreement between them isn't about whether they need to love their husband to be content, but whether they need to respect him.

2. What does Elizabeth think of Charlotte's engagement?

Elizabeth doesn't merely act like what Charlotte is doing is too self-sacrificing, or unpleasant, or boring, or not what she would do. She acts like it is indelicate, improper, and even immoral. Whether or not you agree with Elizabeth is of course up to you—I just want to try to lay out why, in her historical context, she thinks this way, because I don't think I've ever seen anybody address it.

What does Elizabeth think about this engagement (and remember, in her defence, that she never actually says any of this to Charlotte 😅)? She implies that accepting Mr. Collins means that Charlotte is lacking in "merit" or "sense." Jane advises her to "be ready to believe, for every body’s sake, that she may feel something like regard and esteem for our cousin”—but Elizabeth rejects this idea, as she believes that Charlotte's "understanding" precludes her from feeling "regard" for Mr. Collins. She tells Jane:

"Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man: you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who marries him cannot have a proper way of thinking. You shall not defend her, though it is Charlotte Lucas. You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of danger security for happiness."

So Elizabeth thinks Charlotte accepting Mr. Collins is a decision that shows a want of "merit," "principle," and "integrity"; she rejects the idea that accepting Mr. Collins is a prudent choice (i.e. she does not believe the take that Charlotte has made a pragmatic decision); she thinks it is an improper, a selfish, and a dangerous choice.

3. What is the danger in marrying a man you don't respect?

"Dangerous" in what respect? Charlotte is in "danger" of what, exactly?

Elizabeth is speaking guardedly, but a clue to what she means can be found in Mr. Bennet's wariness about Elizabeth marrying Mr. Darcy, when he believes she doesn't respect him:

"I know your disposition, Lizzy. I know that you could be neither happy nor respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband, unless you looked up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage. You could scarcely escape discredit and misery. My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life. You know not what you are about.”

So we see a theme of suitable versus unsuitable marriages in Pride and Prejudice. In the repetition of the word "esteem," a comparison is perhaps being drawn between Charlotte's engagement to Mr. Collins, and Elizabeth's engagement to Mr. Darcy; in Mr. Bennet's emphasis on the word "you," a comparison is certainly being drawn between his engagement to Miss Gardiner and Elizabeth's engagement to Mr. Darcy.

But I digress. The "danger" for a woman in a marriage that is unequal as to sense and understanding, wherein she does not respect or esteem her husband, is that she will face a temptation to lose her "credit" (basically, her reputation) and enter into a state of "misery," by engaging in an adulterous affair. (Here we might consider Maria and Mr. Rushworth.) A woman's affections, her mind, her ambitions and energies, her sexual pleasure and activity, are (by this way of thinking) only to be routed through the conduit of her home life in a heterosexual, reproductive marriage. Any other state of affairs (no pun intended) is an assault against religion, morality, and the very fabric of society.

As a piece of nonfictional context here, The Lady's Miscellany for February, 1812 includes an article "Upon Female* Infidelity, and the Corruption of the Present Age," which, like P&P seems to, attributes the cause of female infidelity to an injudiciousness in choosing a husband to begin with. It should also give you a sense of what at least one contemporary thinker belives the stakes of adultery to be:

Marriage seems [by the ladies of the present times] to be sought for to be despised, and the conjugal oath is taken to be violated. Yet it is acknowledged on every hand, that adultery is an heinous crime, and that nothing tends in so great a degree to disfigure society. [...] Adultery is not only allowed to be a crime by all polished nations, but it has been classed as the next in atrocily to homicide. It is a theft, of all others, the most cruel. It is an outrage that may lead to assassination and murder. Nor indeed is there any excess so deplorable, to which it may not give rise. [...] The husband, when he is informed of the infidelities of his wife, loses all affection for her; a whicnd she has already renounced all love to him. For her children she entertains no maternal tenderness; and her husband disdains an issue that is spurious. The children [...] grow up without education, and without manners; and when of age they are thrown upon the world to dirturb their fellow creatures, and to add to human calamity and wretchedness. The pleasures which the Almighty has annexed to the marriage-bed, are the means of multiplying the human species; and this effect is the certain consequence of marriage when regulated by virtue. On the contrary, irregular loves and disorderly embraces are pernicious to population. They preduce barrenness; and while they lead to remorse and shame, they diminish the numbers of mankind.

So women who "seek for" marriage without having the appropriate reverence either for their husbands or for the institution, are in danger of violating the conjugal oath, which is immoral, and leads to the degeneration of all society (maybe it sounds silly to put it like that—but even the modern attitude towards "cheaters" and "home-wreckers" is not precisely positive...). And Charlotte does, indeed, meet the description of a woman who wishes to be married despite not having a high opinion of her husband, or the institution of matrimony:

Charlotte herself was tolerably composed. She had gained her point, and had time to consider of it. Her reflections were in general satisfactory. Mr. Collins, to be sure, was neither sensible nor agreeable: his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must be imaginary. But still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object: it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and, however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.

*The title addresses female infidelity in particular because it is printed in a magazine intended to be read by young ladies; but the text of the article does lambast the immorality of "men of fashion," and call for "both sexes" to preserve their "virtue."

4. But why esteem your husband "as a superior"?

cw: misogyny, domestic violence, implication of marital SA

Wives must obey their husbands in every respect, unless their husband orders them to do something which goes against a higher law—namely, that of God. It is ordained by religion ("your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you"), and by morality, and by nature, and whatever, that wives are naturally, rightly, justly, and properly in a state of religious, moral, and legal subjection to their husbands. When Eve sinned by attempting to gain preeminence over Adam, this subjection was the punishment. A husband ought to avoid giving orders his wife finds insupportable, if he can; he may choose to yield in trifles for the sake of domestic peace, or because he's a real nice guy, or because he's improperly weak (depending on the opinion of the writer in question)—but the final decision always rests with him, as a matter of the law.

Henry Venn, in The complete duty of man or, A system of doctrinal & practical Christianity (1811), writes:

If it be urged, that the wife has frequently more understanding and ability to govern than the husband, and on this account ought to be excused from living in subjection, the answer is obvious: she hath liberty to use her superior wisdom in giving counsel. But if her advice is not accepted, subjection is her duty. Suppose a servant, as is often the fact, endued with more capacity than his master, would it not be insufferable insolence, should he urge this as a reason for refusing to be any longer under control, which, on another account, was indisputably his duty, viz. from his station in life? An attempt, therefore, to gain the ascendency is an attempt to subvert the order which the sovereign Giver of all wisdom has appointed. Base return for his bounty! The Christian rule is positive against such an usurping spirit: the command is, "Let the wife see that she reverence her husband." In opposition to natural pride, let her carefully check the first desire to have her own will, and see she be not wanting in submission; for this behaviour is most becoming a woman professing godliness. Let her remember that God, the author of the marriage state, has appointed this subordination.

You owe your husband your obedience, and have pledged it to him before man and God. Your only choice is the choice of husband in the first place—your only power is the power of veto. If you did not feel that your husband merited your obedience, and was suited to be to you what Christ is to the Church ("For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church")—the intermediary between yourself and God, the person who is charged with ensuring your understanding of and compliance with the precepts of religion, your Saviour—then your chance of not electing him to that position was before you married.

You cannot file for divorce unless you can prove desertion or cruelty (and the bar here is high—your husband is allowed to inflict "corporal chastisement" for your own good if you are disobedient). Even then, you cannot remarry—once you have gotten married, you have chosen your one and only sexual partner for life, unless he dies. You owe him your body, you need a very exceptionally good reason to deny him that right, and you cannot re-transfer that right to anybody else while he lives.

This is why young ladies are advised so particularly to mind that any man they accept be virtuous, industrious, sober, & without a colourful past.

I think it's also why Jane urges Elizabeth to "Consider Mr. Collins’s respectability, and Charlotte’s prudent, steady character." Mr. Collins is at least not likely to physically harm his wife, or drink to excess, or gamble away household funds; and Charlotte is too "steady" to be likely to engage in an adulterous affair. She's telling Elizabeth that at least the most dramatically bad effects of an unequal (in terms of sense and understanding) marriage are unlikely to apply here.

The point remains, though, that Charlotte does not believe Mr. Collins to be capable of guiding her, or even collaborating with her, in her religion, her housekeeping, childrearing, or any other aspect of life. She knows him to be her inferior in understanding, and yet is electing him to be her superior according to the law and the Church.

For Henry Venn, when husbands are not obliged to rule over their wives with "benign influence," but find their wives sensible enough that they may collaborate in religion, then

Their spiritual good will be a chief and mutual concern. They will be tender-hearted inspectors of each other's conduct, meekly correcting errors, which unnoticed would have struck root, or pointing out faults before they are confirmed into habits. [...] As the nuptial union gives the parties much influence to be either greatly serviceable or hurtful to each other's eternal interests, they must look upon themselves as bound in conscience to use all their weight against the corruptions of the heart, against pride, unbelief, and wordly lusts, through which their salvation is most endangered.

But Mr. Collins is too prideful to accord with these precepts, and too foolish to be corrected in this way. When Charlotte is able to influence his behaviour, it is through more underhanded means, and is usually in an effort to avoid his company (encouraging him to be out in his garden; choosing for her sitting-room a room which he does not value).

This is the kind of context we have to keep in mind when evaluating Elizabeth's statement that "the woman who marries [Mr. Collins] cannot have a proper way of thinking." Mr. Collins is not competent to the role of spiritual guide: the woman who marries him either believes that he is so competent, and is thus lacking in "understanding"; or she marries him even though she knows that he is not so competent, and is thus lacking in "integrity" (because she swears her obedience despite knowing she may be unable to keep the oath).

My argument isn't so much that Elizabeth necessarily believes women's subjugation to be natural and right—rather that, since the reality is that you are legally obligated to obey this man (and to have sex with him), it is more sensible, more moral, and more practical and prudent (!!!) to select a man you have a reasonable chance of being able to abide doing those things with. It saves you the trouble, and the dishonesty, involved in trying to finagle your way around a husband you don't respect.

5. Does P&P agree with Elizabeth?

Hopefully you can see that "the implied author's perspective," "Elizabeth's perspective," and "the reader's perspective" are all different things. In this post I have tried to explain (as I see it) what Elizabeth's position is and why: this is distinct from arguing that P&P argues that Elizabeth is right, which is distinct again from saying that I think Elizabeth is right.

What do we know about P&P's perspective on Charlotte's marriage? We have the above-quoted Mr. Bennet conversation. We have a pattern of equal marriages contracted through mutual respect and esteem, in which each partner may influence the other for the better (the Gardiners, the Bingleys, the Darcys); and unequal marriages, contracted for reasons of lust, pride, security, acquisitiveness, or social climbing (the Bennets, the Wickhams, the Hursts, the Collinses).

Regarding Wickham's courtship of Mary King, it is said that:

The sudden acquisition of ten thousand pounds was the most remarkable charm of the young lady to whom he was now rendering himself agreeable; but Elizabeth, less clear-sighted perhaps in this case than in Charlotte’s, did not quarrel with him for his wish of independence. Nothing, on the contrary, could be more natural; and, while able to suppose that it cost him a few struggles to relinquish her, she was ready to allow it a wise and desirable measure for both, and could very sincerely wish him happy. (emphasis mine)

This might support the case that the implied author feels Elizabeth to be seeing clearly when it comes to Charlotte—then again, it may mostly emphasise her lack of clear-sightedness when it comes to Wickham. But either way, the implication seems to be that this sort of "prudence" without affection is not wise or desirable, and Elizabeth is not seeing clearly when she thinks it is. In Wickham's case, but not in Charlotte's, Elizabeth is fooled into thinking that "selfishness is prudence."

We know Mrs. Gardiner to be a sensible woman, to whom Elizabeth and Jane owe much of their own good conduct. Mrs. Gardiner does not seem to approve of Wickham's engagement:

“But, my dear Elizabeth,” she added, “what sort of girl is Miss King? I should be sorry to think our friend mercenary.” “Pray, my dear aunt, what is the difference in matrimonial affairs, between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does discretion end, and avarice begin? Last Christmas you were afraid of his marrying me, because it would be imprudent; and now, because he is trying to get a girl with only ten thousand pounds, you want to find out that he is mercenary.” “If you will only tell me what sort of girl Miss King is, I shall know what to think.” “She is a very good kind of girl, I believe. I know no harm of her.” “But he paid her not the smallest attention till her grandfather’s death made her mistress of this fortune?” “No—why should he? If it were not allowable for him to gain my affections, because I had no money, what occasion could there be for making love to a girl whom he did not care about, and who was equally poor?” “But there seems indelicacy in directing his attentions towards her so soon after this event.” “A man in distressed circumstances has not time for all those elegant decorums which other people may observe. If she does not object to it, why should we?” “Her not objecting does not justify him. It only shows her being deficient in something herself—sense or feeling.”

Everyone, including Elizabeth, admits that Wickham does not care about Mary King. His match with her is not, to Mrs. Gardiner, better than his match with Elizabeth would have been. For Miss King to accept him even with the evidence before her that he does not care for her (i.e., he switched from Elizabeth to Marry after she gained a fortune) means that she is not thinking or behaving rightly. This is pretty much what Elizabeth thought of Charlotte for accepting Mr. Collins—who also switched his affections, in a short period of time, from Elizabeth to her (& recall that Charlotte feels Mr. Collins does not really care for her). It seems like, for Mrs. Gardiner to approve of a marriage, we need both: the partners need to respect or care for each other (Mrs. G does not say which); and the couple need something to live on. All of the "good" marriages in P&P meet these requirements.

We do not, however, see Charlotte Collins sinking into distress and misery. P&P is a novel uninterested in real, lasting calamity (even Lydia manages to cling onto respectability). When Elizabeth sees Charlotte in Kent, we read that:

[The Parsonage] was rather small, but well built and convenient; and everything was fitted up and arranged with a neatness and consistency, of which Elizabeth gave Charlotte all the credit. When Mr. Collins could be forgotten, there was really a great air of comfort throughout, and by Charlotte’s evident enjoyment of it, Elizabeth supposed he must be often forgotten. [...] Elizabeth, in the solitude of her chamber, had to meditate upon Charlotte’s degree of contentment, to understand her address in guiding, and composure in bearing with, her husband, and to acknowledge that it was all done very well.

In the end, Charlotte is making the best of a bad situation. When she reflects that marriage "was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and, however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want," it is an acknowledgement that, however desirable it may be for women who don't have a high opinion of men or matrimony to get married, it isn't always practicable, because a genteel woman making any other provision for herself (e.g., by going into service, or doing sex work) is varying degrees of un-respectable or dishonourable.

6. In Summation

Elizabeth does not see the decision of accepting Mr. Collins as a decision between romance and practicality. Romance doesn't enter into her thoughts here, and she does not think that accepting Mr. Collins would be a practical thing to do.

The ideological / historical context of Elizabeth's world helps to explain why she thinks this. Other characters seem to agree with Elizabeth (Mr. Bennet; Mrs. Gardiner; even Jane, when trying to make the best of the situation, does so by arguing "that [Charlotte] may feel something like regard and esteem for our cousin," not that it doesn't matter whether she does).

@oldguardians making this answer a separate post because it’s kind of interesting*!

‘‘I cannot bear to hear that mentioned. Pray do not talk of that odious man. I do think it is the hardest thing in the world, that your estate should be entailed away from your own children; and I am sure if I had been you, I should have tried long ago to do something or other about it.’’

Jane and Elizabeth attempted to explain to her the nature of an entail. They had often attempted it before, but it was a subject on which Mrs. Bennet was beyond the reach of reason; and she continued to rail bitterly against the cruelty of settling an estate away from a family of ve daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about.”

(In the interest of not getting bogged down in legal minutiae, I’ll keep this pretty general. Please note that I am vastly oversimplifying some legal concepts here for the sake of explaining the issue clearly. If you’re an attorney/barrister/whatever, don’t @ me - I KNOW it’s all much more nuanced than this.)

Pride & Prejudice is set somewhere around 1811. In the novel, the Bennets’ ownership interest in the family estate is famously said to be “entailed” away from the Bennet girls in favor of their cousin, Mr. Collins. This is specifically explained to be because Mr. Bennet has no sons, and thus his estate reverts back to his closest male relative.

In the real world, entailment could (and usually did) work that way. But there is an enormous, glaring issue: English entailments have long been very VERY easy to defeat** through a remedy called Common Recovery. If Longbourn was truly entailed away from the female descendants, as the novel indicates, Mr. Bennet could have hired an attorney (his brother-in-law?) to start the Common Recovery process at any time. Within a few months, the court would render a judgment giving Mr. Bennet the property outright and free from any entailment, allowing him to leave the property to his daughters upon his death*** and make them independently wealthy women. And this wasn’t just a possibility - it was a very common legal mechanism that would have been almost expected of a gentleman interested in preserving his family’s comfort. There are hundreds of cases in the English Chancery records (featuring many families that were much less wealthy than the Bennets!) invoking this very remedy whenever fathers failed to produce sons.

So entailment makes no sense - it had basically no power over landowners by the Regency Period.

Let’s talk alternatives. In 1811, the primary way of keeping property in the male line was through another estate planning technique called strict settlement. To GREATLY simplify a complicated form of ownership, strict settlement had the present possessor of property always hold a life estate interest (they own it only until their death), with their male primogeniture descendants holding a remainder fee tail interest (read: eventual outright ownership upon their father’s death). Each generation of life estate owner would then force their young male descendants (the fee tail owner) upon their coming of age to give the young descendant’s unknown future male sons the remainder interest, retaining a life estate for themselves (which they would receive upon their father’s death). Thus the ownership system perpetuates down a male line of descendants, each generation demanding the same restrictive ownership system of their own children.

If you followed that - and I don’t blame you if you didn’t, as this is all very deliberately obtuse - you might think “wait okay. That kind of sounds like the Bennets’ situation. Austen called it an entailment but maybe it was actually a strict settlement!” Several academics have tried to argue that, but it also fails for several reasons:

(1) With the Bennets’ seemingly comfortable current income, strict settlement would have provided for significant lifetime income + dowries for Mr. Bennet’s female descendants. But in P&P, it’s made very clear that the girls’ only possible inheritance is a tiny amount from their mother’s side and nothing from their father’s. If they do not marry, they will be destitute. That is extremely unlikely and would be very shameful in strict settlement ownership..

(2) It would have been inconceivable for Mr. Bennet’s father to have forced him to benefit a cousin over his own descendants, even if they were women. One of the fundamental points of strict settlement was to avoid this outcome (aka to avoid the entailment system). People did NOT want a distant male cousin to inherit property simply because there wasn’t a primogeniture male descendant - they knew that if anything, their own female descendants could always produce a male heir in their marriages. Plus, Mr. Bennet’s and Mr. Collin’s fathers apparently hated each other (ref Mr. Collins’ initial letter) - why would Mr. Bennet’s father force his son to benefit the son of a man he himself hates?

(3) For many many other reasons, a strict settlement does not match how the family talks about/treats the estate in the novel. There’s literally a whole law review article on this topic (cited below), and I’ll defer to that for a full discussion.

So we’re left with two possibilities: the land is entailed, and for some reason Mr. Bennet isn’t willing to pay a small amount in attorney’s fees to undo the entailment for the enormous benefit of his daughters (extremely unlikely, robs the story of all its tension), or the land is subject to a bizarre + shameful strict settlement that goes directly against everything that would have been normal at the time, and none of the characters know that (makes no sense in the story).

And then, of course, there’s the truth: the “entailment” is simply a narrative device that does not reflect actual law or historical transfer of property at death, which is perfectly fine. Jane Austen was not writing a law textbook or even a legal drama. And her underlying point remains clear: Regency-era women were often in economically precarious positions and forced to marry to maintain their social and economic standings.

((If you do want a version in your head that works under the law, maybe we imagine that Mr. Collin’s father actually owned the home but was in debt to Mr. Bennet so he gave him some kind of strange lifelong leasehold interest with income from the property included. And then we ignore the passage saying Mr. Bennet having a son would have “avoided” the home passing to Mr. Collins + pretend that the family lied to everybody about the home being entailed to save face))

For additional reading, I highly recommend A FUNHOUSE MIRROR OF LAW: THE ENTAILMENT IN JANE AUSTEN’S PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Peter A. Appel (linked). His analysis reflects my own reading of Regency inheritance law, and I think his conclusions are generally sound. There is significant other scholarship on this subject, but I find Appel’s work the most persuasive.

—-

* At least to me, who admittedly studies this for a living

** For fun War of the Roses reasons!

From left to right: 1795 Michał Jerzy Mniszech with his daughter Elżbieta - Marcello Bacciarelli; Christopher Anstey and his daughter Mary Ann by William Hoare 1776; A Musician and His Daughter by Thomas de Keyser 1629; The Geography Lesson (Portrait of Monsieur G. and His Daughter), 1812; Jean-baptiste Isabey And His Daughter; Portrait of a Young Girl and Older Man by William Harrison Scarborough

in fact often if it was kind of safe dads had the babies in their workshops for just that reason as we can see in these paintings:

First Lesson by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865 - 1931)

Un Coup De Main (The Helping Hand) by Émile Renouf (1845 – 1894)

Zygmunt Trembecki (1847-1922)

Image 7: painting of a man sitting down reading something, he holds one young child who is trying to climb on his back while a second child lays in a crib and cries. There is a toy laying on the floor. Image 8: painting of a man sitting down and painting porcelain while a child sleeps in a crib.

Image 9: painting of a man and a child working on netting together. Image 10: painting of a man and a child rowing a boat with the same oar. The man is smiling at the child. Image 11: painting of a man sitting down, he holds a glass and a wine bottle while a child leans against him, with grapes and bread in her apron.

His good looks earned him the nickname "the Handsome" or "the Fair".

Many contemporaries noticed Philip's physical attractiveness. Vincenzo Querini, the Venetian ambassador, described Philip as "physically beautiful, vigorous and rich" (bello di corpo, gagliardo e prospero). Peter Martyr d'Anghiera and Lorenzo de Padilla also noted his good looks. When Louis XII of France saw him, the king said, "What a handsome prince!" (Que voilà un beau prince)."

He was a slim sportsman who liked to dress in a sumptuous style and knew how to impress women. His skills in knightly exercises and the hunt was such that even as a youth, he acted as teacher of the princes sent to his court.

But this is all wasted beauty, as he was a massive dick to his wife:

Although Joanna was deeply in love with Philip, their married life was rendered extremely unhappy by his infidelity and political insecurity, during which time he constantly attempted to usurp her legal birthright of power. This led in great part to the rumours of her insanity from reports of depressive or neurotic acts committed while she was being imprisoned or coerced by her husband, rumors that benefited Philip politically... But his education, which was influenced by Franco-Burgundian traditions, contributed to a model of rulership "exclusively male", thus he never saw Joanna as his political equal and could not accept that she tried to forge her own political identity. Maximilian tried to reconcile the couple, telling Philip that he could only succeed as a ruler if husband and wife acted as "una cosa medesima" (one and the same), but despite Philip's efforts, Joanna would not cooperate in his power struggle against her own father. In the end, his controlling and manipulative behaviours, together with Ferdinand's ambitions and Joanna's depression, ruined the marriage and led to Joanna's personal tragedies.