fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6428 ]

[ SECRET POST #6428 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6428 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[House of the Dragon]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 47 secrets from Secret Submission Post #919.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - isn't this the same secret as the last one? ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
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02. https://i.imgur.com/rYUw3rt.png

It's relative. Compared to regular people, they're rich. Compared to their peers they're poor as shit.

I think OP has a point here though. It's pointedly not supposed to be a Cinderella story. A local landlord marrying the owner of a hotel chain is more accurate than a peasant marrying a noble. Is the local landlord poor as shit compared to the hotel guy? Yeah, but nobody outside of the upper class would call them poor.

nayrt - Even within the upper class, nobody calls them poor. It's noted that the Bennet sisters' dowries are not impressive, that's true. It's also noted that Mrs. Bennet in particular does not have an upper class background and neither does her brother's family, the Gardiners. Even Lady Catherine, the snobbiest of all the characters, takes issue with that background more than she does their finances. Anyone who looks on P&P as a Cinderella story or a rich man/poor girl story is likely misunderstanding the social context.

Oh, I meant nobody in present day outside of rich snobs would call an established local landlord family poor, and it'd be inaccurate for a movie to portray them to a general audience as poor. But yeah, agreed in general.

Whoops, sorry, misread your comment! And yeah, that's a good point. English society at that time was very class conscious and your economic status was part of that, but it's super complicated. For example, a family who had been landowners for many generations but didn't have a lot of money would still be accorded a significant amount of social status - and in some peoples' eyes, that counts for more than someone who made a lot of money off of trade.

cf Persuasion, except Wentworth made his money in war.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-08-11 23:34 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-08-12 02:28 (UTC) - Expand

They aren't even poor compared to their peers - Mr. Darcy is RICH rich, but the Bennets have more land and income than the Lucases, and they're on par with all their neighbors. And when Mr. Collins inherits he'll be quite well situated. That being the actual problem- all the wealth is tied up in the entail and inaccessible, and they've been spending the interest as fast it comes in, so there's no emergency fund and once Mr. Collins inherits, they're shit out of luck. They're currently living a bit frugal in an attempt to save something for dowries, but not that frugally.

They're not poor in the sense of $500,000 instead if $1000000 a year, they're poor in the sense of $1,000,000 a year but somehow it all gets spent immediately and they have 0 in savings, ever. They're those people who complain on instagram that a seven digit income is poor because the rent on the penthouse, the car payments, the au pair, the cook, the PA, the three-month summer ski camps in Zurich and the clothing budget doesn't let them pay little Liddy's bail money for the DWI without taking out a loan.

I should note that when I said the Bennets were like half a million vs. a million, I'm saying that Mr. Bennet's income is far less than that of Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy of course is even richer. IIRC, in the book it's 2000GBP a year, which isn't a huge amount of wealth, but it's pretty darn comfortable except that you have a LOT of daughters and the entail means that the estate goes to Mr. Collins after Mr. Bennet's death, so Mrs. Bennet and her daughters only have a relatively modest portion - not enough to starve in the streets, but definitely far below the lifestyle they're accustomed to.

It's not always obvious in adaptations that Mr. Bennet has been careless and didn't plan well for his financial future, but I suppose that's because the finance and marriage settlement part is real tough to explain to modern audiences.

Yes, the book is very specific that Mr Bennet should have been putting away much more money (from his income, which he can spend as he will, unlike the estate itself) for his daughters but he didn't. That's one way he's a bad parent.

Ehhh, that's a bit of a simplification. They're not on the same economic level as Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bingley, or Lady Catherine de Bourgh. That's not the same as being poor. That'd be like calling someone poor because they only earn $500,000 a year and not a million dollars a year.

I don’t think they make these movies for Jane Austen fans though. They aren’t true adaptations (according to the way too many secrets we’ve had over the years); they’re just meant to give a general audience an idea of Austen’s stories. They keep getting made because they’re super cheap to make, they’re a reliable source of income for up and coming British actors and a safe spend for the Beeb or any production company. They’re cosy weekend family viewing content and not much more tbh.

MTE.

The 1995 BBC is more for Austenites. The 2005 felt more like it was capitalizing off of rom-com fans who had a vague understanding of Jane Austen and history.

nayrt but this.

I'm no expert but maybe it was an intentional choice to show the contrast so the audience would have the desired emotional reaction. Yes, we all know there are different levels of "rich" but most people's knee-jerk reaction is going to be "Quit whining, you're rich! You're fine!"

See also the friend who marries Mr. Collins. I think they made her older in the movie so the audience would have the correct reaction when she makes her case for marrying him.

IMO, it's an irritating choice even if it's intentional. It feels lazy, like not wanting to make those nuances understood for a historical drama, and not trusting your audience to understand that this is an older time, with different expectations and customs.

I looked it up, and the actress who plays Charlotte Lucas was around 31 at the time P&P came out. I don't think that's really "older" casting, since it's reasonable for a 31 actress to play a 27 year old character.

HR Mencken once said "No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."

And I doubt that's become any less true in the near-century since he said it (eg Republicans suddenly whining about Rage Against the Machine being "political").

Sad but true. It's a shame though, because having a reasonable grasp of the time period's customs understanding how entailments worked and why marriage was so important to women makes all of Austen's work a lot more interesting. Without that understanding, it seems far more like a frivolous story.

I kind of assumed it was meant to demonstrate not "they're poor", but a combination of "they have country manners" and "the household is badly run". A pig walking through the house is not the most subtle or accurate way to show this, true, but considering how many people manage to miss it entirely in the book...

But I'm probably giving them too much credit.

This is barely related, but a fact I loved discovering (from a scholar doing a close-read on youtube) was that by the standards of the day, the Bennets are actually of a higher class than the Bingleys. They don't own a home outright, which means they don't have an estate - and therefore aren't landed gentry, unlike Mr. Bennet and his girls by extension.

(Also the Bingleys are apparently actually tradesfolk who have conveniently forgotten where their wealth started? I really did not read closely enough.)

Yes, this is technically true, because Mr. Bennet inherited his estate and Mr. Bingley has to purchase his, because his father was a tradesman, albeit a wealthy one. His father's goal was to purchase a family estate so his son could be a gentleman and move up in rank with every successive generation. In other words, to join the same class of landowners with estates as Mr. Bennet and Mr. Darcy.

People tend to forget this because Bingley's wealth puts him on more equal footing, and because his sisters (especially Caroline) are a snobby hypocrites who sneer at the Gardiners for being in the trade even though their father started the same way. It's subtle for modern audiences, but I think in Austen's time people would've understood.

Yes, that's why Jane is a good match for Bingley - she has the background, he has the money. The Bingleys are on an upward trajectory and their descendants today would be actually posh. So Darcy talking Bingley out of marrying Jane is him being a bad friend because of his prejudice.

I wouldn't overstate that too much. It's true that Mr. Bennet is a gentleman who inherited his estate, but Bingley's wealth, good looks and amiable personality makes him a catch. If he were the social climbing type, he could aim higher than Jane. He could aim for a title, for example.

Minor nitpick, Darcy doesn't talk Bingley out of marrying Jane completely out of social prejudice. He has a valid point if he truly believes that Jane doesn't feel any particular affinity for his friend, and the novel makes the point that Jane has a very serene, reserved disposition. Elizabeth knew she loved Bingley, but that doesn't mean it was obvious to people who didn't know Jane. Darcy also had a good point about the rest of the Bennet family - he sees a family of tolerably good class, but mismanaged finances and with neither parent doing a particularly responsible job of raising their children. Lydia and Kitty run wild, doing whatever they like even when it's inappropriate. Poor Mary isn't exactly impressive. Mrs. Bennet is vulgar and publicly announces her ambition to pursue rich men for her daughters' potential husbands. Mr. Bennet has not only been irresponsible with his finances, but he's also not doing his job as head of the household by reigning in his wife and daughters. By that standard of measure, Mr. Darcy is being a good friend in saving the impressionable, malleable Mr. Bingley from a possible gold-digger who does not love him. He's mistaken in that, of course. But that's the point.

As a man, Bingley can't marry into a title. Titles are inherited down The male line, not the female. What he can do is marry into an established family of good breeding, and then lobby his friends and connections to have Parliament grant him one. Maybe a Baronetage, a hereditary knighthood (not quite in the aristocracy, but the highest level of gentleman commoner available), for himself and his son, and if they maintain good manners and standing etc, his grandson might get a lordship

I meant, he could marry the daughter of a peer. While unable to inherit the title himself, that's a huge step up for him and carries with it a great deal of social clout and connections, plus the possibility of his son or grandsons inheriting the title one day, if the circumstances were right.

(And while it's true that most titles went down the male line, that depends on the terms upon which it was granted.)