One of the key plot points is that the Bennet women can’t inherit their father’s estate, but then we have points about Mary King inheriting 10K Pounds, and there’s another point of a woman inheriting a large sum.
What is the explanation for the discrepancy here? Was there a difference for the laws between the landed and the actual nobility? I’m lost.
The key point about inheritance of the Bennet estate is that it was ‘entailed’ - that is, it could only be inherited by specified heirs. In this case, the specification was for ‘male descendents of <x>’, where x is some unknown ancestor. Mr. Bennet was the most direct male descendent, so got to have the house and income while he was alive; however, as he has no sons, the next closest male descendent (Mr. Collins) will inherit on his death.
This, IMHO, makes Mr. Bennet positively despicable in his lack of concern for his children’s fate - compare it to the (albeit unsuccessful) plans laid by Elinor and Marianne’s father in Sense and Sensibility.
I’m not sure about that. I think he was just trying different tactics from Mrs Bennet, becaue he knew that her tactics were likely to make the whole family look absurd and so backfire (as indeed they did at the start). On those grounds you also might condemn Elizabeth turning down her first two proposals of marriage, as in both cases she might not expect to get another (as Mr Collins so tactfully points out in the course of the first proposal). So Elizabeth was being rather careless about her fate, even if she had good reasons to turn down both suitors.
The closest person in Pride and Prejudice to nobility was Lady Catherine de Bourgh, daughter of an earl and widow of a knight (so entitled to the honorific “Lady” on both counts). Even Mr Darcy is not nobility, even though he’s the grandson of an earl, and Lady Catherine’s nephew. So special rules abut how the nobility can inherit don’t come into it.
I’d be more convinced by that if I could remember a single point in the text where Mr. Bennet took active measures to try to arrange anything for his children. The closest I can come up with off-hand is that he made Mr. Bingley’s acquaintance when the latter had just arrived, thus allowing social contact with the daughters. Even there, I don’t think there’s anything in the text to indicate that this was motivated by anything more than curiousity or a desire to keep his wife and daughters happy in the short-term (by providing social activity).
As far as Elizabeth goes, I’d agree that she also deserves condemnation for her behavior. Not so much with Mr. Collins, as at that time (if I recall the book correctly) she had every expectation that Jane was going to marry Mr. Bingley, securing all of their futures. When it comes to her second proposal, though, she was certainly being rather careless - not only with her own fate, which would be more forgiveable, but with that of her mother and sisters.
Ah, but it wouldn’t be a *romance *novel if she coldly sat down with an abacus (in those pre-Excel days) and her accountant and worked out potential future earnings, would it? That’s the whole point of the novel! Romance 1, Established Social Customs 0. (But in the end it’s all settled nicely for the good people, and all the readers come away with a huge happy sigh of pink-tinted bliss.) 
I think Mr. Bennet’s master plan consisted it breeding children until they got a boy. Unfortunately, that didn’t work. But his lackadaisical “Once we’d had the last of the girls, it was too late to start saving” attitude was really reprehensible. It’s never too late to to at least something. But I don’t believe people had the same “Save for the future” attitude that we have today. Most people had and income (whether from work or inheritances or investments) and they lived wihtin them, but didn’t put aside. I suppose most working-class people expected to work until they died, and most gentry expected the well never to go dry.
I also think Mrs. Bennet should’ve pushed Mr. Collins in the direction of Mary Bennet, instead of Elizabeth. I think the two of them could’ve been quite happy together, happier that he and Charlotte Lucas.
StG
It’ s been a long time since I took property law, but I seem to recall that is was relatively easy to get out of an entailment if you threw some guineas at a competent solicitor. That the Bennet girls were so threatened by the entailment is either a sign of Mr Bennet’s fecklessness or a Mcguffin, depending on how you look at it.
Rube, I hate to disagree, but I think to break the entail in the 18th - early 19th century, you had to get the heir to sign on to the change. That was usually easy to do when the heir was the son or grandson of the current holder of the property, and the family wanted to re-order the settlement of the property. But when the heir-at-tail was somewhat removed from the current holder, which was the situation in P&P, he would be unlikely to agree to giving up his rights.
I think it wasn’t only until later on in the 19th century that it became easier to break the entail, and my recollection is that it was easier to do it in the B.N.A. colonies than in England itself, because the legal and social structure here was much more amenable to free transfers of land, rather than preserving land in one family.
But, like you, Prop 101 is a long way away, so I may be misremembering…
Hmmm… point taken… but I’ve got some vague recollection of long ago reading an article in some ancient issue of the Canadian Bar Review that dealt with this very question … if I can find some time, I’ll try to dig it out.
Mr. Bennet is not that admirable of a man or father, when you get right down to it. He secludes himself in his study and neglects the rearing of his children, or rather abdicates the responsibility of it to Mrs. Bennet, with rather disastrous results (Lydia). For all that Mrs. Bennet gets the bad rap as being flighty and ill-bred, she’s far more practical in terms of getting her daughters situated. She knows that Mr. Bennet could drop dead at any moment and they’d be out on the street, dependent on primarily her family for charity. Mr. Bennet just buries his head in the sand.
I think they’re all on-line now on the CBA web-site, which makes it easeir to find the ancient stuff. Have to be a member, though, to access it.
Hmm, I have a deep philosophical objection to joining the CBA, so I’m out of luck on that one.
I’m unphilosophical. Private message me anything that you can remember about the article and I’ll poke around a bit.
Haven’t found anything yet, but this question raised another question about P&P that I’ve always wondered about: what was the nature of the entail? Since Mr. Bennett and Mr. Collins have different last names, at some point one of their descent from the common ancestor must have gone through the female line. If so, what kind of entail allows the descent to go through the female line in some cases, but not in the case of Mr. Bennett’s own daughters?
It’s not set forth in the book why Mr. Bennet and Mr. Collins have different last names, but it is set forth that “Mr. Bennet’s property . . . was entailed in default of heirs male, on a distant relation” – Mr. Collins. (Chapter 7.) AFAIK, an estate entailed in default of heirs male could pass through the female line if there were NO other male heirs. IOW, say Mr. Bennet inherited the entailed estate by direct descent, from his father and grandfather. But Grandfather Bennet had no male heirs (other than Father Bennet) and Father Bennet had no male heirs other than Mr. Bennet. So the law hypothetically looks back to Mr. Bennet’s grandfather, whose hypothetical sister married a man named Collins. She has a son (Collins) who also has a son (Collins), and this grandson of Mr. Bennet’s great-aunt is Mr. Bennet’s closest surviving male relation, and therefore his heir.
I think.
I also seem to recall that once a man’s family’s right to inherit an entailed estate was cut of by his failure to produce a male heir, you went back up to when the estate was entailed by the original grantor – usually within three generations under the Rule of Perpetuities – and then shifted back through the descendants to find the first living male heir. IOW, even if Elizabeth Darcy had a son, he would not inherit his Grandfather Bennet’s estate even though he would technically be his grandfather’s closest living male heir. Once Mr. Bennet failed to produce a direct male heir, the estate devolved on to the next closest male relation of the last direct male heir of the original grantor.
I think.
IOW, primogeniture meant the heir had to be male, but if you had to go through the female line to find the nearest related male, that was acceptable since the other alternative was complete failure of the entail.
This is all AFAIK, but since my knowledge of the workings of entails is both sketchy and completely historical, I could be totally wrong.
I’ve wondered about the different surname issue too. I thought perhaps that one of Mr Collins’ forebears might have changed his name from Bennett to Collins as a result of adoption.