I thought women could not inherit.. so when they are talking of women with pounds, are they talking dowry?
Willoughby marries the woman with 50,000 pounds... in P&P, Georgianna's suitors are looking for her inheritance. So is it just the dowry they are speaking, or were the inheritance laws different for a higher station of women?
WOMEN COULD INHERIT!
Sorry for shouting. And in capital letters too! But women have always been able to inherit property. People are very confused over this point because they don't understand the concept of entails and why they were enacted or don't realize that entails were used primarily by those who owned landed estates and not by the rest of the population. In film production the directors find it simpler to just say "women can't inherit" without explaining why, so it's grossly misleading. In Austen's day she didn't need to explain entails because her audience knew about them intimately.
In Austen's books, she does have women who inherited properties from their families. In Pride and Prejudice, Anne de Bourg is the heiress to her family's fortune and estates.
Anyway, a dowry is a marriage settlement settled on a woman when she married. The amount of the dowry would be generally well known as it was a way of helping her find a suitable husband. Dowries were usually cash settlements tied up in securities, which would provide an annual income. Sometimes an estate would be settled on a woman lieu of a dowry. In short, a dowry/marriage settlement was basically getting your inheritance in advance. Sometimes there might be more left when the parent died, other times not because you already received your dowry.
Willoughby married Miss Grey with her 50,000 pounds. I can't recollect correctly but it seemed like she'd already inherited the money outright as there's no mention of a surviving parent. And she was free to pick Willoughby as a suitor. Parents could control their daughter's prospective suitors by threatening to withdraw the promised dowry.
Georgiana has 30,000 pounds settled on her via her father's will. That was an inheritance, which formed her "dowry." It was pivotal in Pride and Prejudice because Wickham attempted to elope with her and had he been successful he would have received full control of the money due to the law of the land. But had the late Mr. Darcy still been alive, he could have withheld the promised dowry from Georgiana if she eloped. Even if Georgiana insisted on marrying Wickham and the late Mr. Darcy was willing to relent, he wouldn't have settled the dowry on her without ensuring the proper marriage papers (prenuptial contracts) that neatly stipulated the control over the dowry and what should happen to the money to limit Wickham's access to it.
In Austen's day she didn't need to explain entails because her audience knew about them intimately.
I almost pounced on this thread as OP gave it a title and opening line that made it quite easy to do so, but instead decided to read the responses, and as always I'm glad I did.
As Tomatish hinted, it would seem apparent that Thompson wanted to kvetch about how oppressed women were (and therefore, still are). I left college with my head stuffed full of feminist garbage (in spite of my avatar, I'm a woman) and it took me about five years of deprogramming to get over it all.
I still run into gender discrimination (women can't be programmers, women can't tie knots, women make lousy sailors, horrible women drivers, women are augmenters while men are repressers), but it's nothing like what they tried to force us to believe at UCLA.
It appalls me to realise how much twaddle the whole movement spewed into the culture, and continues to spew.
"Oooo, lookee, a Sneerfest I can jump in on!!!"
took me about five years of deprogramming to get over it all
Willoughby marries the woman with 50,000 pounds... in P&P, Georgianna's suitors are looking for her inheritance. So is it just the dowry they are speaking, or were the inheritance laws different for a higher station of women?There is this great website mastersslave that sorta explains it all. Take a look here:
Of course, any property that a woman possessed before her marriage automatically becomes her husband's, unless it is "settled" on her; this leads to the "fortune-hunter" phenomenon: men who marry a woman only for the sake of the woman's fortune -- after the marriage, the woman and her money are legally in the husband's power (without any of the limitations of pre-nuptial legal "settlements", which the wife's family might have insisted upon if she had married with their approval) -
In the context of marriage, a "settlement" is a legal document that usually ensures that some or all of the property that the wife brings to the marriage ultimately belongs to her, and will revert to her or her children (though she does not necessarily have personal control over it during her marriage); otherwise it would basically belong entirely to her husband.
I'd like to add a couple of things to this discussion.
First, when we talk about men's money, it's his per annum income. So, Darcy has 10,000/year. Bingley has 5,000/year. Brandon has 2,000/year. Etc. In Bingley's case, since he does not own his own estate, the money is likely all from investments. Most people of their class invested in government bonds called gilts. The gilts paid 4% or 5%. In Darcy and Brandon's cases however, the money comes from investments and from rents received from tenant farmers, etc. on their respective estates.
But when we talk about women, it's their TOTAL amount of money. Georgiana has 30,0000 TOTAL. Elizabeth Bennet has 1,000 TOTAL. So, if Elizabeth Bennet's inheritance is in the "five percents," this means that her 1,000 pounds will pay 50 pounds per year. Georgiana's 30K will earn 1,500 pounds per year. This shows us right away that Elizabeth and her sisters truly will be destitute if they do not marry well.
Last, but not least, when the American "Dollar Princesses" came onto the scene in the later part of the 19th century, their fathers did not want their daughters' dowries to go directly to their husbands. So the fathers often insisted that the brides got to keep some of their money for their own. This had been unheard of in England, but the British men who so desperately needed that infusion of cash had no choice but to agree. It didn't always work out that way, as we saw in Downton Abbey, where Cora's fortune was immediately tied up into the DA estate and was therefore entailed upon Robert's heir.
http://currentscene.wordpress.com
"So the fathers often insisted that the brides got to keep some of their money for their own. This had been unheard of in England, but the British men who so desperately needed that infusion of cash had no choice but to agree."
Not quite true. Marriage settlements were instruments widely used to allow the female spouse some control over the assets she brought to the wedding. The settlements could be written in a way that gave her close to full control, as long as the husband was willing to abide by the contract.
Women's property and ownership rights were strongly enhanced throughout the 19th century so that by the time the dollar princesses burst upon the scene, English married women were already owning their own properties outright. The Married Women's Property Act was passed in 1870 (long before Cora would have married Robert).
Yes, Cora refers to signing away her rights to her money in the first season when she says to Violet, “that paper your husband made me sign.” Cora agreed to it so she could marry Robert because she was in love with him.
shareAfter her marriage, Cora’s father continued to give her an annual sum, referred to as her “dress allowance.” Shirley MacLaine/Cora’s mother refers to it when she tells her she can increase her dress allowance, but is unable to offer the large amount of cash needed to save Downton (again).
shareWhat would £500 a year be today allowing for inflation?
share