[ SECRET POST #6428 ]

[case]

⌈ 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.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

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

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

cf Persuasion, except Wentworth made his money in war.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah. Sir Walter Elliot and his oldest daughter were insufferable snobs about their status, even though Sir Walter had clearly mismanaged the estate to the point where he had to rent it out and live in cheaper accommodations. Lady Russell wasn't as hostile about it, but she clearly valued Anne so much and wanted a more promising match than Wentworth, before he became a captain and earned his fortune.

But note that after he returns as a captain and with money, it seems to carry with it more status than earning your money via trade, so that's a slight nuance there as well.

[(Anonymous)]

True!

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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.