Why is Mr Darcy so rich? Jane Austen Economics 101

My name is Ellie Dashwood and this is my channel where I answer modern-day questions about classic literature.

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🕰 Watching Guide
00:00 Why is Mr Darcy so rich? [Intro]
00:47 Primary Source of Income in Jane Austen's Novels
01:37 How did the Gentry make money from owning land?
02:21 How did fortunes and investments work in the Regency Period?
03:29 Why was marrying rich important?
04:48 So how did Mr Darcy and his family get so rich?

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📚Books Talked About In This Video

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility

Persuasion

Northanger Abbey

Emma

Mansfield Park

#janeausten #prideandprejudice #mrdarcy #regencyera #senseandsensibility #mansfieldpark #janeaustenemma #persuasionbyjaneausten #classicbooks #englishliterature #northangerabbey

[glendodds]

One of the interesting things about Pride and Prejudice is that Jane Austen did not give Darcy a title. On the other hand, she tells us that he was very rich for £10, 000 was a vast annual income in 1813 and we are later told that he had a large estate and belonged to an ancient landed family. Moreover, his mother was from an even grander background for her family belonged to the nobility.
In contrast, although the father of Charlotte Lucas had a title, he was a newcomer to high society and had ‘made a tolerable fortune’ in trade at Meryton. Mr Bingley likewise belongs to a family new to exalted social circles and and a large annual income of £4, 000 or £5, 000.
For his part, Mr Bennet (like Fitzwilliam Darcy) was born into the landed gentry and we are told that he had an annual income of £2, 000. In other words, he was very comfortably off. For example, seven years after Pride and Prejudice was published a middle-aged clergyman named Patrick Bronte had a much smaller annual income of £170. (This salary is mentioned by Juliet Barker in her book, The Brontes). Furthermore, Patrick Bronte’s income was more than double that of most working men.
Consequently, Mr Bennet’s annual income of £2, 000 was a mouth-watering sum for the vast majority of people and a respectable income for a member of the landed gentry, the largest tier of the British upper class. In Sense and Sensibility, for example, we are told that another country gentleman, Colonel Brandon of Delaford House, also had £2, 000 per annum whereas the small estate of John Willoughby of Combe Magna (another member of the gentry in Sense and Sensibility) only gave him around £600 to £700 a year.

[onloop]

"His family probably took it from poor people hundreds of years ago by force." Yep - interestingly, the name Darcy would originally have been a French surname - D'Arcy (meaning From Arcy, a place in France). In the year 1066 AD, the Norman French invaded Britain and seized the land, dividing it up among their own nobles. Darcy's ancestors probably came over with the Norman Conquest eight centuries earlier and may have taken the land that would become Pemberley from a local Angle, Saxon or Danish lord.

[ianmacdonald]

Consider that Darcy’s mother (Lady Anne) was the daughter of an Earl (sister to the very grand Lady Catherine) & so we assume brought her own dowry to Pemberly on her marriage to Darcy’s father. Georgiana, (Darcy’s only sibling) we are told, has £30, 000 so this could have been the amount of Lady Anne’s dowry (allowing for interest over the period) on the same basis as the Bennett sisters dividing their mother’s much smaller dowry between them?🤔

[vincecaruso]

£10, 000 / year in 1813 (when Pride & Prejudice was written) would be £41, 580, 000 in 2018 ($54, 215, 080 USD)when reflecting relative output.

[TJAllenwood]

I wish I would’ve found your channel before I started reading Jane Austin. It would’ve helped greatly to know the economics, terminology, etiquette, social structure ahead of time. I learned much of it along the way but I do enjoy your videos because it adds additional insight into the period. I wish Jane Austen would have Made more of a mention about Mr. Knightley’s fortune.

[ChristianDLindsey]

"His family probably took it from poor people like hundreds of years ago by force." The way you stated that so nonchalantly was great. Your videos are fabulous. I was looking for the difference between an earl and a viscount and stumbled upon your channel. Rural 19th century Britain held a fascinating culture. To this day the place and period still seems to set the bar to a certain degree for what world defines as high culture, at least in the minds of romantics.

[alfriedjohnsson]

The reason why I am intrested in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is that it occured in the middle of The First Industrial Revolution. Men like Mr. Darcy with a surplus of financial resources are probably the ones who financed enterpreneurs and innovators like John Kay, James Hargreaves, Richard Arkwright, Abraham Darby, Benjamin Huntsman, Henry Cort and Henry Bessemer and a slew of other movers and shakers of a revolution that caused the Western Nations to be the hegemons of the whole planet Earth.

[truthseeking]

1 pound sovereign had 7.32 g of gold. Darcy's 10, 000/yr adds up to 73, 200g of gold.
In today's prices 73, 200g x $57.5(approx) = $4.2 million.

[katehurstfamilyhistory]

Another possibility that occurs to me is that, being on the fringes of the aristocracy, if (a few generations back) some of Darcy's ancestors may have married heiresses from neighbouring estates (or even just girls who were given land as well as money as part of their dowries), which could easily increase the amount of land that the family held, and which Darcy also inherited. Great point about the interest rates, too; if you imagine that for even four or five generations back from Darcy (which maybe gets you back to the generation that were adults when the Bank of England was set up in 1694), they had been investing the dowries of any woman who married into the family, alongside any other profits from investments - Darcy's father could have been a teenager when they started on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal in 1770, for instance, so having shares in related companies, coal mines and other industries are one way that the family could have earned dividends every year - then over the years, that lump sum in the bank would be making a very nice bit of interest to live on!

[ediniznorde]

I’m from Antigua. I secretly hate Mansfield Park as a result. However I love Jane Austin, so...

[lian]

Your channel is absolutely wonderful.😍😍🤗🤗

[Seraphina-Rose]

Darcy isn't "worth 10, 000 pounds". He has an annual income of 10, 000 pounds.

[ladykatietx]

These videos still make me so happy. Anything really that let's me live in the Jane Austen-o-sphere ❤

[val_nightlily]

Mr. Darcy could sit around drawing rooms, shoot, etc., because he had a steward managing his estate for him. He still had to talk to him sometimes.

[captainjaneway]

I like your theocratic library in the background :)

[annabelle]

Just found your channel and had to go back to your earliest listed video.

[angelwhispers]

It should be noted that mr. Darcy's mother and her Fortune probably saved his father from bankruptcy if they had a bad crop failure to many years in a row. That's why Lady Catherine is so confident that Darcy is a complete freaking idiot for not marrying the girl she thinks he should. Because Lizzie is not bringing enough money to the marriage to see them through bad years. When your Society is still pretty much agriculture-based it was expected that these rich landowners would be awesome and let their tenant Farmers keep living on the land and working on the land even if their crops failed due to some crop disease going through the area and not put them out the first year that they had a problem. Unless they could prove that the tenants were being stupid and it was their poor management that caused the cops to fail.

But you have to remember already in this time; They know about things like boll weevils and aphids and all kinds of other crop pests that could destroy an entire Harvest and there was just not much you can do about them before the Advent of commercial pesticide. So the reason landowners had to be rich and had to have Investments was so that one year if their tenants couldn't pay the rent cuz, "Oh no their crops failed and they're trying really hard to not starve to death." The landlord could be like "here's some food to get you through the winter. don't worry about the rent. We will square it away next year when we get a good harvest. Chillax we're going to get through this together, I have plenty of Investments to keep us going don't worry about it." They understood that dead tenants plow no Fields And if the tenants aren't plowing the fields, they ain't going to stay Rich for long on their Investments alone.

Now don't get me wrong the charity food a landowner would give his tenants during a bad year would be things like onions, potatoes and carrots. Stuff thats going to last long time and keep you alive it's not going to taste good but you'll figure it out. The other thing was it agricultural pests generally wouldn't wipe out absolutely everything that was planted. So there could still be some herbs and stuff. The little plot next to each cottage that they tended to feed themselves; would have things like mint and rosemary and some other herbs that are pretty disease-resistant. The landowner could just expect that the lady of the tenant Farmers house would be keeping this things to flavor their food if they fell on hard times. "I'm sure she's got plenty of these herbs stashed. If I just give them some onions and potatoes and a ham hock once a month. they'll be fine! Then in the spring we just try again it's not a big deal." The aristocracy of this time and particularly the Gentry still had obligations to their tenants legally. Then there were things that their tenants wanted and expected to be upheld by tradition. Things tenants could reliably expect the landlord to do for them if they had a bad crop year, being the most common.

Much more back then than now they understood that sometimes bad things happen, even to good people. So the point of living on land owned by some big landowner was that his Investments are so Diversified that he can afford to give you the onions, carrots and potatoes to help you get through a bad year so that your children don't die and can keep working the land for him.

That's why landowners would often have children from their tenants come by and play with his son. So that the children of these tenants understand the system and understand that this is going to be the person that takes care of us when we get older and want to get married and want to rent a place of our own to have our own family. Being friends with the landowner's son is important cause he's going to eventually take over. This means that the oldest son of the Tenants can look forward to going up to his childhood buddy and saying "hey look my dad getting elderly we need to negotiate the Tenant agreement to transfer to me. So that I can take care of my dad and keep working the land." And the childhood friend Rich Boy be like, "okay no problem let me get my lawyer in here and will draw up the paperwork so you can take over the farm you live at. Your dad did a really good job on that land for a long time. So I'm going to make sure you get to keep living there. Also bt-dubs I'm going to award your dad this pension for his old age so that you can take care of him without stretching your own budget too hard." And the Tenant boy will be like, "you are super awesome I'm so glad we are friends and I can keep living here! Hey when we're done with this contract I'm going to go talk to my girlfriend's parents and get our wedding arranged! I will send you an invitation. I don't expect you to come, but I want you to know that I'm super grateful!"
And the rich boy will be like yeah that's great you need to have a family to continue working that land. So I hope the parents say yes so that you can get married to the girl you like. good luck dude! Yeah I'll probably send out a cheese wheel for the wedding or something" and the Tenant will be like, "yeah that's great! We love of cheese."
They negotiate the contract he gives them the first stipend of the new pension for his dad. And he goes off contract in hand. Secure that he can keep living in the place that his family's been living.

The way in which this was better than slavery is that if the contrary happened and your landlord was an you had the right at the end of the Harvest to say, "you know what Mr Arrogant landlord dude? Deuces! I'm out of here! Go fluff yourself! get someone else to work this land and put up with your arrogant ass cuz I'm not doing it anymore! bye bye." And the landlord be like, "fine I didn't like you anyway... turn in your Harvest and the keys to the cottage when you're done and be on your way."

And if too many tenants thought a particular landlord was an insufferable he wouldn't have enough people to work his land and eventually he would be not rich anymore and he would have to sell off to someone else who wasn't such a 💩 monster to his tenants.

So the peasant Farmers weren't is powerless in this situation as you seem to describe because they had the power to turn a Rich Man into a Poor man if they got together on the subject.

[nobirahim]

Completely unrelated, but that music always reminds me of these siblings and marshmallows 😬 and making me feel sick 🤢 I wonder if anyone else has watched that video 🤔 Besides that, I love your videos, Ellie 😄 I appreciate it even more now that I know how much work you put into them. I'm currently watching the Regency Economics playlist. I need to stop watching the one about Henry Tilney 😅 So I'm watching a playlist without him in it. I'm currently writing a sort of... I'm turning _Northanger Abbey_ into a poem essentially. I've used something you said in it 😄

[unaanguila]

Thanks for sharing the analysis and for the subs.

[lindsayalexander]

I really love this, it's so accurate and I really love it! Thank you ❤️❤️