Pride and Prejudice: Was Elizabeth Poor?

Whilst reading Pride and Prejudice published in 1813, it is often difficult to tell exactly how wealthy the characters were in comparison to each other and in comparison to the general population of England at that time. It is therefore quite tempting to be misled by Elizabeth’s interpretation of her own poverty and the confirmation of it by other characters because she was relatively poor to most of the other characters she came across who were members of her elevated social class, but she certainly was not poor in comparison to the vast majority of people, both male and female, children and adults, who worked in menial jobs, chattel slavery or in service in Britain and across the vast British Empire.

Before reading any historical work, fictional or otherwise, we should remember that it likely was not written for an audience reading it hundreds of years later in an unknown future. Jane Austen and other novelists of her time were writing for a contemporary audience who understood their time, possibly better than we understand our own.

The majority of people in any population are lower class, since social stratification goes from low to high, with the vast majority on the bottom. Unfortunately Pride and Prejudice and all of Jane Austen’s other works, are set at a time before the abolition of slavery, (1833 in Britain) when enslaved people and indentured servants were working for little to nothing so that real people in a similar situation to the fictional Elizabeth Bennet, could whinge about being poor. In Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth is so bone idle that she could not even be bothered to attend to her lessons on the pianoforte and was not a “great reader” nor even an accomplished young lady according to Mr Darcy and Miss Bingley’s definition, admissions she makes in the book that are often misrepresented in dramatizations.

An example of the Bennet’s belief in their “poverty” can be found in Chapter 41 when Mr Bennet says,

“We shall have no peace at Longbourn if Lydia does not go to Brighton. Let her go, then. Colonel Forster is a sensible man, and will keep her out of any real mischief; and she is luckily too poor to be an object of prey to anybody.”

Mr Bennet meant that his daughter was poor to anyone of her social class, the members of the landed gentry and above, but given that Lydia could expect an income of about £40 a year when her mother died, or ...one thousand pounds in the 4 per cents. which will not be yours till after your mother’s decease” (Mr Collins to Elizabeth, Chapter 19), and that was without even having to work, that would be very attractive to a man of the lowest social class who could have lived on £4 for 10 weeks. Apparently Mr Bennet did not consider people of the lower classes to be, “anybody”.

In Chapter 7, it is plainly explained that:

“Mr Bennet’s property consisted almost entirely in the estate of two thousand a year, which unfortunately for his daughters, was entailed, in default of heirs male…”

Whilst Mrs Bennet had £4000 from her father. As Austen writes, “...their mother’s fortune, though ample for her situation in life, could but ill supply the deficiency of his.”

Mrs Bennet’s fortune was “ample” as in “more than enough” according to the Cambridge Dictionary. dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ample

This means that Mr Bennet’s property was worth more than £2000 per year but he could expect it to produce an annual income of £2000.

This article by Ian Mortimer, Historian, Regency Inequality: The Gap Between Rich And Poor In Georgian Britain - HistoryExtra, gives a very good understanding of how realistic the Bennet’s poverty was in the wider social context of their time, for example Mortimer writes that whilst a workman who built the homes of the wealthy could be considered well paid earning 15 shillings per week (£0.75), a gentleman with £2000 could afford a country home and a house in London, both well furnished and staffed with servants.

The difference between the haves and the have-nots in Georgian (Regency) Britain was very stark and well known when Austen was writing, but since her audience were only likely to be those who could read, Austen could write with impunity of people with more money than the majority of their fellow countryman could dream of earning in a lifetime, as being “poor”.

This article by Dr. Michael White Poverty in Georgian Britain – Brewminate: We're Never Far from Where We Were, goes into more detail about the life of the impoverished in Georgian Britain. The Regency era was part of the Georgian period.

What About In Comparison to Other Characters?

Ignoring the more than 70% of the population of Britain who made up the working class according to the articles mentioned above, as well as the educated middle class who were also looked down upon by most characters of Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth was, in fact, poorer than most of the other named characters in the book who were not her immediate family.

Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813, when the currency in the British Empire, and around the world was very different from today. In those times before decimalisation, the currency often referred to as Pounds, Shillings and Pence was divided in different, unfamiliar ratios. The coins were made out of precious metal.

Given this, in order to understand how much the characters were worth in a way that is meaningful to the contemporary reader, it is helpful to convert the currency to comparable buying power of today. According to an inflation calculator for the Bank of England Inflation calculator | Bank of England, with inflation averaging 2.1% per year, the various characters had the approximate income of:

Character	Income	Equivalent GBP	Equivalent USD	Reference
Mr Bennet	£2000 per year	£141,889.57	$194,405.03	Chapter 7
Mrs Bennet	£4000 total	£283,779.14	$388,810.06	Chapter 7
Elizabeth Bennet	£40 per year	£2,837.79	$3888.10	Chapter 19
Mr Bingley	£5000 per year	£354,723.93	$486,012.58	Chapter 1
	£100,000 total	£7,094,478.53	$9,720,21.45	Chapter 4
Mr Darcy	£10,000 a year	£709,447.85	$972,025.14	Chapter 3
Georgiana Darcy	£30,000 total	£2,128,348	$2,916,081.52	Chapter 35
Caroline Bingley	£20,000	£1,418,895.71	$1,944,049.32	Chapter 4
Mary King	£10,000 total	£709,447.85	$972,025.14	Chapter 26
Lady Catherine	£800 decorative fireplace	£56,755.83	$77,762.01	Chapter 16

Merely by looking at a comparison of the money we can see that Elizabeth and her family were considerably poorer than the other characters whose fortunes are mentioned in the book.

Mr Bingley’s inheritance came from trade, that is investments and his father or grandfather having worked. In the book it is made clear that he will have to build himself a house or keep renting. Meanwhile Elizabeth’s father is already the squire of a village, already has hunting rights on his land and is a member of the landed gentry unlike Mr Bingley who is actually well educated, nouveau riche, so aside from fortune, there is a social distinction between the two.

In conclusion, whilst Elizabeth was significantly less well off than than characters such as the Bingley sisters and Miss Darcy, she was considerably better off, especially during her father’s lifetime, than the vast majority of the people in Britain and the British Empire, so no, Elizabeth was not “poor”. She was just a “poor little rich girl”.