Pride-and-Prejudice

clergyman, she was the seventh of eight children in what appears to have been
a happy, stable family. There were, however, financial troubles, and the
Reverend George Austen was obliged to add to his income by establishing a
boarding school for boys in the Austen home and by borrowing money from
his sister and her husband. Further, as Austen’s biographer Claire Tomalin
points out, even though the family was close, several of the children spent a
considerable amount of time living away from home, which, though not
unusual for the gentry and professional classes at this time, was probably
disorienting for Austen and her siblings. One of her six brothers, George, was
disabled—possibly a deaf-mute—and was sent from home for most of his
long life. Jane, too, was sent from home, first to a village nurse and later to
two boarding schools that, if they resembled the typical girls’ schools of that
era, were characterized by bad food, dull teachers, and an atmosphere ripe for
one epidemic or another. Along with her older sister, Cassandra, the sevenyear-old
Jane spent only two seasons at the first institution, where she nearly
died from a contagious fever that spread through the school. At age nine, she
was sent to a second school, which, if not damaging, was not beneficial either.
Although her parents chose to terminate her formal education when she was
ten, her father gave her access to his library of some five hundred volumes,
and he encouraged his daughter’s literary interests. It was he, in fact, who first
tried, unsuccessfully, in 1797, to have an early version of Pride and Prejudice
published.
Austen’s immediate family was solidly professional, unlike that of her
heroine Elizabeth Bennet, whose father is a member of the gentry, which is to
say that his wealth is inherited and tied to land ownership, rather than earned
through work or commerce. Austen’s eldest brother, James, followed his
father into the ministry, while Henry, the brother who served for several years
in the militia, turned next to banking, and then, when his bank failed,
followed his father and elder brother into the ministry. The two naval officers,
Francis and Charles, both rose to the rank of admiral. Austen’s father and
brothers were hardworking, responsible, family-oriented men, so it makes
sense that in Pride and Prejudice Austen satirizes snobbish and frivolous
members of those classes above hers, the gentry and the aristocracy, who
would have looked down upon her own immediate family, just as she paints
an unsympathetic portrait of the haughty social climber Caroline Bingley,
who fancies herself a member of the gentry, even though her family’s wealth
was made “in trade,” or through commerce. Nor, if we consider Austen’s own
unaffected outlook, is it surprising that the most sensible characters in the
novel, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, not only make their money in trade but are
apparently not embarrassed to live near their warehouse. Elizabeth Bennet