page_title: Styles and themes of Jane Austen
section_title: Economic position of women
hierarchical_section_title: Styles and themes of Jane Austen / Themes / Gender / Economic position of women
caption_attribution_description: English: "If Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield the heiress of £30,000, were not quite so easily obtained...he would soon try for Miss Somebody else with twenty or with ten" - Mr. Elton on his marriage prospects. Austen, Jane. Emma. London: George Allen, 1898, page 138.
context_page_description: Jane Austen's distinctive literary style relies on a combination of parody, burlesque, irony, free indirect speech and a degree of realism. She uses parody and burlesque for comic effect and to critique the portrayal of women in 18th-century sentimental and gothic novels. Austen extends her critique by highlighting social hypocrisy through irony; she often creates an ironic tone through free indirect speech in which the thoughts and words of the characters mix with the voice of the narrator. The degree to which critics believe Austen's characters have psychological depth informs their views regarding her realism. While some scholars argue that Austen falls into a tradition of realism because of her finely executed portrayal of individual characters and her emphasis on "the everyday", others contend that her characters lack a depth of feeling compared with earlier works, and that this, combined with Austen's polemical tone, places her outside the realist tradition.
  Often characterized as "country house novels" or "comedies of manners", Austen's novels also include fairy tale elements.
context_section_description: Austen's novels explore the precarious economic position of women of the late-18th and early-19th centuries. As Gilbert and Gubar explain, "Austen examines the female powerlessness that underlies monetary pressure to marry, the injustice of inheritance laws, the ignorance of women denied formal education, the psychological vulnerability of the heiress or widow, the exploited dependency of the spinster, the boredom of the lady provided with no vocation". In exploring these issues, she continued the tradition of Burney's novels, particularly Cecilia (1782) and Camilla (1796).
  Worldly marriage is the theme of Austen's unfinished novel, The Watsons, which portrays a female economy in which the odds for marriage heavily favour those young women whose fathers can and will pay a dowry. Physical attractiveness and "accomplishments" are helpful but insufficient in the absence of adequate funds for a marriage settlement. After Mr. Watson dies, the family does not have sufficient money for the dowries or support of the four daughters. As historian Oliver MacDonagh writes, "[m]atrimony was their only hope of escape from current penury and future ruin or near-ruin. Dowerless, they were pursuing it with varying degrees of ruthlessness."
  MacDonagh points out that none of the marriages in Austen's fiction of which she approved was financially imprudent. For Austen, marriage and children were a girl's natural and best aspiration. She advocated sincere attachment, material prudence and circumspect delay in the choice of a marriage partner. If the appropriate conditions were met, then marriage should follow. Austen realized that women without independent means felt very great pressure to marry someone who could look after them, because otherwise they would be a burden on their families. The marriage market that she describes is quite detailed and well understood by all concerned. For example, as is explained in Mansfield Park, "Miss Maria Ward, 'with only seven thousand pounds', had the good luck to captivate a baronet, 'her uncle, the lawyer, allowed her to be at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it'. To indulge in a marriage less lucrative than might have been expected was regarded as 'throwing oneself away', and someone like Mary Crawford, who prided herself on her realism, could not bring herself to do it."
caption: Chris Hammond's illustration, published in 1898, of Mr. Elton's economic considerations of marriage in Emma.
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D70", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.6.8", "Image DateTime": "2010:02:11 20:59:41", "Image ExifOffset": "198", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "842", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9570", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/320", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:02:09 15:27:49", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:02:09 15:27:49", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "1040241/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "19/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Tungsten (incandescent light)", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "25", "EXIF SubSecTime": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1062", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1072", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 2, 1, 1, 0]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "37", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Hard", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}