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Authors: Joan Elizabeth Klingel Ray

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Sugaring tea from the slave trade

Most of us probably think of England as a nation of tea drinkers, politely asking, “One lump or two?” In Austen's day, that sugar came from the West Indies as a result of slavery's Transatlantic Trade Triangle, which means:

Goods were shipped from British ports to the west coast of Africa, where they were exchanged for slaves.

The slaves were taken to the New World (a horrid ocean journey called The Middle Passage).

Slaves were then traded for agricultural goods like cotton and sugar that went back to England.

Jane Austen had personal connections with folks who in one way or another had involvement in this Triangle. She also lived in the early age of Abolition. And while Austen certainly wasn't writing in the vein of the future famous American anti-slavery novel,
Uncle Tom's Cabin
(1852), she either refers directly to slavery or alludes to it in her fiction with great disapproval.

Austen was familiar with the slave trade and slave workers on plantations in British colonies through ways that are far more personal than reading about slavery and abolition in books and newspapers:

1.
Her father was a trustee for a plantation in Antigua owned by his old classmate at Oxford, James Nibbs, who was also the godfather of Mr. Austen's eldest son, James (possibly named for James Nibbs?). Mr. Nibbs's eldest son, George (possibly named for Jane's father, George Austen?), became a student at Mr. Austen's school run at the Steventon Rectory, the Austens' home, which even had a portrait of Mr. Nibbs hanging on a wall (Letter, January 3–5, 1801). Thus, plantation talk would have been common when Jane Austen was growing up. No wonder in
Mansfield Park,
she places Sir Thomas Bertram's plantation in — of all the locations in the West Indies — Antigua.

2.
Her mother's brother's wife (Jane's aunt, Jane Cholmeley Leigh-Perrot) was from a family that held investments in Barbados, another slave-holding location.

3.
Her younger brother, Charles, spent several years of his Royal Naval career in the Americas, searching ships and stopping trade between France and the Americas. While serving in the West Indies, a group of islands, he married the daughter of a former attorney general of Bermuda (1807). Charles certainly was an eyewitness to slavery during this period.

4.
Her favorite poet, William Cowper, was active as an Abolitionist and wrote two important anti-slavery poems that she would surely have known, “The Negro's Complaint” (1778) and “Pity for Poor Africans” (1787).

Austen was horrified by the slave trade, and she shows it in several places in her novels:

In
Emma,
she has Jane Fairfax, who is facing life as a governess, refer to offices in London that place young women in governess jobs as places that sell “‘not quite . . . human flesh — but . . . human intellect'” (E 2:17).

Again in
Emma,
she has the dreadful Mrs. Elton come from a merchant family in Bristol, which was a major port for the slave Triangle. Thus, Austen suggests that Mrs. Elton's money and the wealth of her brother-in-law, who lives near Bristol, are tainted from slavery. This is a subtle and clever way for Austen to degrade both the boastful Mrs. Elton and her pride in her in-laws' riches.

As already noted, Sir Thomas of
Mansfield Park
has a plantation in Antigua. The moral illness of many of the Bertrams can be connected to their slave-holding wealth.

So Jane Austen wrote with a full social awareness of slavery. She shows her anger about it in a ladylike, subtle way that nevertheless should register with her readers. While Jane Austen does not appear in any list of Abolitionist writers, it is intriguing to speculate that perhaps she should be!

Understanding the Class System

Jane Austen's England was class oriented, dating back hundreds of years. Austen made sure to put each of her characters in a social and economic place. She also saw that people of a lower class wanted to move to a higher one, which was something new in her day. Understanding the class system deepens your insight into Austen's novels.

Recognizing class

Austen shows in her novels a clear understanding and even support of a need for change: longtime, careless, wealthy landowners fell down on the job, and the new business class rose as they were needed in society. Class notwithstanding, women were virtually nothing in a legal or economic sense. But in terms of class, one woman could rank higher than another.

Identifying the nobility

The social pyramid of Jane Austen's day followed a certain order:

Royal Family

• King

• Queen

• Prince(s)

• Princess(es)

Nobility or Aristocracy (the hereditary peers of the realm)

• Dukes

• Marquises

• Earls

• Viscounts

• Barons

The men of nobility sat in the House of Lords. So when a man is addressed as a Lord, he's a peer or noble or the son of a peer. A peer's daughters are Lady First Name. So in
Pride and Prejudice,
Lady Catherine de Bourgh is called “Lady Catherine” because her father was one of the three higher ranks of peers: a duke, marquis, or earl. (Later, we learn that her brother is an earl, so their father must have been an earl, too [PP 2:10].)While she is the widow of Sir Lewis de Bourgh, he was only a knight, and knights are commoners and not noble. So rather than being merely Lady de Bourgh, which is what a knight's wife is called (using the husband's last name), she shows her higher rank as Lady Catherine. Austen's readers of her day would know immediately that Lady First Name comes from the nobility — unlike Lady Lucas, in the same novel, who is only the wife of a lowly knight. (You can find more on the “Ladies” a little later in this section.)

Unless the title was a life peerage, which meant it died with the holder, the title was hereditary, meaning it went to the peer's eldest son. If the peer had no male children, the title went to his eldest brother. If he was an only child, the closest and oldest male relative got the title and accompanying estate. A lady who married a peer assumed his noble rank. In
Persuasion,
Austen introduces the Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple. She's a Dowager because she's a widow. And her late husband was Viscount Dalrymple. Their unmarried daughter is the Honourable Miss Carteret. Carteret is the family name; Dalrymple is the title name.

Austen comments on the aristocracy (nobility) by the way she treats them in her novels. Lady Catherine is rude, bossy, and controlling; her behavior even embarrasses her nephew, Darcy (PP 2:8). The Dowager Viscount Dalrymple is snobby and has no direct speech; her daughter never says a word. This is Austen's way of showing a useless and vulgar or bland effete aristocracy.

Separating aristocrats from commoners

If Lady Catherine is called by her first name, preceded by the word “Lady,” then why are Lady Lucas in
Pride and Prejudice,
Lady Russell and Lady Elliot in
Persuasion,
and Lady Bertram in
Mansfield Park
called Lady, but with their last names? Lady Catherine, as explained earlier, takes her nobility from her father, Earl Fitzwilliam, and so she gets to call herself, as an earl's daughter, Lady Catherine. Likewise, her sister, Darcy's mother, is called “Lady Anne,” and not Mrs. Darcy, to show her noble paternal lineage (PP 1:16). But all of the other women called “Lady Last Name” are the wives of either knights or baronets. Knights and baronets aren't part of the nobility or aristocracy; they're
commoners
. Sir Thomas Bertram and Sir William Elliot are baronets, abbreviated Bart., or Bt.

A baronet's title is hereditary, but baronet is the newest titled rank, having been invented by King James I in 1611, in order to raise money: In his day, one paid dues to be a baronet. The titles of knights weren't hereditary, and a knighthood was granted to a gentleman for special services rendered to the Crown — and still is.

Sir William Lucas was originally just plain Mr. Lucas, a merchant in the town of Meryton and its mayor. In Volume 1, Chapter 5 of
Pride and Prejudice,
we learn that Mr. Lucas had made “a tolerable fortune” in his trade and had “risen to the honour of knighthood by an address to the king, during his mayoralty.” So far from earning a knighthood by wearing armor and riding a gallant steed, Mr. Lucas became Sir William Lucas by making a speech of thanks to the king for visiting the town. Austen ridicules the effect that the knighthood has had on him: “The distinction had perhaps been felt too strongly. It had given him a disgust to his business and to his residence in a small market town; and quitting both, he had removed his family to a house about a mile from Meryton, denominated from that period Lucas Lodge,” a comical sign of how the knighthood has flattered his ego (PP 1:5). To add to Austen's poking fun at Sir William, her contemporary readers knew that during the period in which this novel is set, 1811–1812, and until 1815, the awarding of knighthoods was common. So for all of Sir William Lucas's kindness to others, Austen shows he has let his knighthood go to his head by making him somewhat ridiculous. After all, the novel is called
PRIDE and Prejudice
! And Austen wants us readers to see that Darcy is not the only proud character.

Defining a gentleman and the gentry

The part of the population on whom Jane Austen focuses her attention is the landed gentry (generally one who owns at least 300 acres of property, and most gentry owned much more). The gentry is a long-established and highly respectable class.

Male members of the landed gentry, along with noblemen and those with the lesser titles of baronet or knight, were officially considered gentlemen (from the word “gentry”). Jane Austen was a gentleman's daughter. While her maternal ancestors were truly wealthy gentry, her father was at the lower end of the gentry. Most of the company that the Austens associated with were gentry, who blended well with the lower titled class of baronets and knights — all of whom are commoners and characters in her novels carrying major roles. Being familiar with this class is probably why she wrote about it as vividly and realistically as she did. The gentry was the bedrock of society of her day, and Austen respects them. All of her heroines and most of her heroes are members of the gentry — whether at the lower end, like the Dashwood ladies (SS); more towards the middle of gentry, like the Morlands (NA), Colonel Brandon (SS), and the Bennets (PP); or at the higher end like Darcy (PP), Henry Tilney (NA), the Bertrams (MP), Emma and Mr. Knightley (E), and Anne Elliot (P). From this list, you can also see that the gentry is a wide class, with people of less wealth at the lower end of the class. But they're all gentry.

Many readers of Austen's novels observe (and are sometimes even confused) that the gentlemen, who are men of the gentry, don't go to work. But they're not “lazy bums,” as one of my students claimed at the beginning of the term! Gentlemen lived off the money earned by their land, which they've inherited. For example, in
Pride and Prejudice,
gentlemen range from Darcy, with his magnificent estate, Pemberley, and annual income of £10,000, to Mr. Bennet, with his smaller estate and far lower annual income of £2,000.

Discovering a new kind of gentleman

While nowadays we admire people who make their money by earning it, in Austen's day the more genteel way of making money was to inherit it and get it from your land or estate, which a gentleman also usually inherited: You rented out land to tenant farmers, or perhaps your estate had valuable timber, which you sold for profit. But a new and upwardly mobile group of people who weren't gentry — they didn't own land — were slowly being recognized and accepted as gentlemen. And Jane Austen knew it! These newly recognized group of gentlemen included

Businessmen:
These individuals earned their way in business. For example, in
Pride and Prejudice,
Elizabeth's uncle, Mr. Gardiner, is a well-educated businessman in London. He earns his money “in a respectable line of trade” (PP 1:7). While the Bingley sisters make fun of him and his family for living in Cheapside, a commercial part of London, both he and Mrs. Gardiner are intelligent, modest, courteous, and charming. Even Darcy is impressed — and somewhat surprised — by them when he meets them at Pemberley, and Elizabeth proudly notes that he “‘takes them for people of fashion'” (PP 3:1). The Gardiners' demeanor is intelligent and genteel. They represent what we, today, think of as a lady and a gentleman. But this was just starting to occur in Austen's time.

Charles Bingley, also in
Pride and Prejudice,
represents a variation on this situation. In his case, he inherited nearly £100,000 from his late father, who made a fortune “in the north of England . . . by trade” (PP 1:4). Austen's contemporary readers would immediately pick up that the Bingleys come from a manufacturing city up north like Manchester. Such wealth did not immediately grant status. But the late Mr. Bingley planned to buy an estate in order to become a member of the gentry. Not living long enough to do that, Bingley Senior left it up to his son Charles Bingley to use his inheritance to buy an estate. Charles's status-conscious sisters urge him to do so, for as rich as they are, they want the status that comes with being members of the gentry — even through their brother.

In Austen's day, the type of wealth that had the highest regard was land (property). This idea went back to the Middle Ages, and would continue into the 19th century.

Army and naval officers:
Younger sons of members of the gentry needed to have respectable careers in which they would still be regarded as gentlemen, but also make money. Why only younger sons? Their elder brothers inherited the family estate, and so younger sons needed to supplement any money they inherited from the mothers by earning it. (For maternal money, see Chapter 7, the section on “marriage settlements.”) Society considered army and naval officers gentlemen. Austen also had a special respect and affection for the Royal Navy because two of her brothers were naval officers. (For more on the Austen family, see Chapter 3.)

In
Persuasion,
Captain Wentworth fought the French on the seas and returned home with £20,000 in prize money for capturing enemy ships and their cargo (P 1:9, 2:12). If he continues to win battles and gain more prize money, he'll be able to purchase an estate, too, thus making him an actual member of the gentry.

Anglican clergymen:
Clergy were also considered gentlemen, even if they had little or no property. This was out of respect for the profession, which required a university degree from Oxford or Cambridge. As with the army and navy, many younger sons of families of the gentry became Anglican clergymen. In Austen's novels, Henry Tilney (NA), Edward Ferrars (SS), and Edmund Bertram (MP) are all younger sons of the gentry; their elder brothers (or in Edward's case, his younger brother, because their mother is angry at Edward and disinherits him!) inherit the family property.

Persuasion
's snobbish Sir Walter Elliot is confused when his lawyer mentions that a “gentleman,” who turns out to be a clergyman, lives in a neighboring village: “‘You misled me by the term gentleman. I thought you were speaking of a man of property,'” with property meaning land (1:3).

Austen recognized that her social world was changing, and that people could honorably earn their way “up” the ranks of society. She scorns only those who forget their origins and behave like snobs.

Austen makes fun of the social-climbing Bingley sisters by observing that they think well of themselves and meanly of others and forget that their money comes from trade. But she thinks well of people who earn their fortunes but who don't let that fact go to their heads. The Coles in
Emma
have made their money in trade and now live in Highbury in a style close to Emma Woodhouse's and her father's. But they are — unlike the Bingley sisters — “friendly, liberal, and unpretending” (E 2:7). Emma is a snob for looking down on them.

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