hello

[kiki1982]

I partly agree with that, JBI. The only thing that made Lizzy and her sisters 'poor' was the fact that they would not have a huge dowry to sell them off.

Mr Bennet's income was about 3000 pounds (?), economy was not his wife's greatest strength and so he had not increased his income by saving and had not settled a certain amount of money on his daughters.

If you look at it like you say (two underclasses), you could argue about it in a marxist way, but a bourgeois underclass with 3000 a year? With the only ambition to marry another 3000 a year or higher?

Sense and Sensibility can't have had a cottage lined with servants as the family didn't have money for it:

'in 1825 on a suggested budget of £250 a year given by Mrs Rundell in her New System of Domestic Economy for 'a gentleman, his lady, three children and a Maid-Servant', where food took £2.11.7d a week or £134.2.4d a year, the biggest single item was:
10s 6d a week for butcher's meat (18 lbs at 7d a pound, or about ½ lb each day)' (Burnett)

On an income of 1000, the same family was able to afford: cook, housemaid, nursery-maid, coachman and footman. And they would have two horses and more money for food and leisure.

With 500 a year, those four people in Sense and Sensibility can't have been that well off. They did not have a coach, no horses, no footman. Probably only a maid and cook (in the best case).

[Gladys]

The Bennet's are far from poor.

The challenge to male supremacy is Elizabeth herself.

One could equally argue that Charlotte, Lydia and Mary all mount assaults on 'male supremacy', through different routes. And perhaps too, angelic Jane.

And the one who succeeds at the end is the one of love.

Don't all the characters, even Wickham and Mrs Bennet, more or less succeed in the end?

[kiki1982]

@ Gladys:

I get the last point, but could you explain the first?

I could see Elizabeth's impertinence sometimes, and Lydia's (although that is down to youth and education, with a mother like that...).

But I can't see what you mean by Charlotte's and Jane's. But maybe I'm just not seeing far enough... Although Charlotte did get rid of her husband the whole day... But Jane?

[Gladys]

But I can't see what you mean by Charlotte's and Jane's.

Simply that each woman uses the resources available to her, however limited, to prevail in a man's world. Charlotte piggy-backs on a man with some status and expectations; Jane charms and beguiles mankind with her angelic sincerity.

Few are equipped to tackle male supremacy in the way Elizabeth does.