Me Reading One Of The Most Famous Books Ever Written: Do People Know About This Book. Do They Know.

me reading one of the most famous books ever written: do people know about this book. do they know.

A Mourning dove gets cozy, and settles in, to experience the sunset.

1812-1815 Dress (England)

muslin embroidered in wool

(Victoria and Albert Museum)

This is excellent clarification! Also remember that Darcy’s aunt is a lady. She’s a lady by marriage but that connection to a title alone elevates him in the hierarchy of the time.

I've been trying to think of a less harsh way to put it, but every time I see an ostensible expert say that Mr Bennet and Darcy have the same social position and the only difference between them is that Darcy has more money, it's like ... um, either this person doesn't know what they're talking about or assumes their audience is so unsophisticated and ignorant that they can't handle the slightest degree of nuance.

Yes, it's obvious why this always comes up with P&P specifically, and explaining all the many differences and gradations in socioeconomic hierarchies between then and now is a steep task and not always necessary or useful. But Darcy and Mr Bennet are both untitled hereditary landowners. This means they have the same rank, yes—the technicality Elizabeth uses with Lady Catherine—but it also means that their status, incomes, reach of influence, and general consequence in their world are going to be primarily based on their inherited land, not that all these things except income would be functionally identical in their social world.

Awhile ago, I quoted a fairly concise description of England's class system at the time by the historian Dorothy Marshall, made decades ago, but—unusually—managing to convey some of the RL complexity around social position without belaboring the point too much. One of the most critical points she makes is this:

In spite of the number of people who got their living from manufacture or trade, fundamentally it was a society in which the ownership of land alone conveyed social prestige and full political rights.

The difference between someone like Mr Bennet and someone like Darcy in terms of socioeconomic power and status (often termed "consequence" at the time) is inevitably going to be more about hereditary land ownership than any other factor, including incomes and connections. Their incomes provide important information about the scale and value of the land they own, but wealth alone only tells a portion of the story here.