It’s true! Jane married down, and Mr. Bingley married up! The characters in Pride and Prejudice all seem to understand the nuances of social order, but for a modern reader, it’s a bit like stepping into a new world. Before I started researching it, I thought that I (kind of) understood it, but I came across several surprises.
To start, here’s a general outline of what it meant to be upper or middle class, the two classes most represented in the novel.
Upper class: This is the landed gentry. These are the people who own land and do not have to work outside of managing their estates (i.e., Mr. Bennet hanging out and reading books in his library).
Middle class: These are people who do not own land and have to get, like, jobs. (Ew.) They might rent and work another man’s land, making them tenant farmers, or they might own their land but have to work it themselves, making them yeoman farmers. (If you own your own land but have to work it, you don’t count as landed gentry.)
The middle class also included people with professions, such as bankers, lawyers, clergymen, and those in the military.
There were divisions within these classes—what I would term the upper middle class, the lower middle class, the upper upper class, and the lower upper class. Sound confusing? Maybe, but it’s always been important to people to establish superiority. These days, it’s harder, since we no longer have an organized system, but we still manage to create a hierarchy by comparing our numbers of followers, “likes,” and Stanley cups.
What did these social class distinctions mean for the characters in Pride and Prejudice? Let’s take a look at who married up and who married down:
- Mr. Bennet married down.
This site is ending, so I moved this post. Read the rest of it here.
Leave a Reply