The full Bennet Family Finances endnote from Ch33

I’ve been doing some more maths (ch26 has the initial discussion) on the savings that our characters might do/should’ve done since it’s fascinating to me and some of the comments I’ve been getting have been making me think more about it. One of the common themes is surprise at just how negligent the Bennets were at saving, instead of merely being stretched thin by expenses. I understand this completely, as it isn’t something that’s explicit in an easily recognisable way for modern audiences.

So, where could they have been more economical? They don’t go to London, no one has a gambling addiction, all travelling (which was EXPENSIVE) is done cost effectively, and they certainly didn’t spend all the money on tutors and the like for their daughters. I’m sure there’s actual academic papers by historians on this (I miss my uni access to those so much) but I can take some educated guesses.

You do really have to wonder where they have been spending all that money, especially when the girls were young (nursemaids were cheap and baby clothes would be handed down). Was Mrs. Bennet just spending a lot more on herself?

I'm wondering if taxes and/or inflation would have gone up during the time the girls were growing up. According to Wikipedia, an income tax was introduced in 1803, and abolished in 1816 (after the war was over). There had also been a tax from 1798 to 1802. Inflation was also at least somewhat volatile between 1790 and 1815 (see Hume's article below).

Austen started writing P&P in 1796, but significantly revised it in 1811-1812, and since she didn't include a disclaimer about it being out of date the way she did with Northanger Abbey, I'd guess that she meant it to be more or less contemporary. Jane is I think 22 or 23? So say the novel is set in 1811, she would have been born around 1789, before the first income tax. .

I do have access to academic databases, so I did a little searching on JSTOR and found this article, which talks about income and economics in all of Jane Austen's full novels, but focuses heavily on Pride and Prejudice:

Hume goes deeper into taxes and inflation, which were both apparently pretty high. He also mentions that the Bennets have a pretty large number of servants-- at least 5 household servants not including kitchen staff, plus they would have needed servants to drive the carriage and take care of the upkeep on the estate, in addition to farm workers. Even with labor being fairly cheap at the time, that's still a pretty large staff.

However, despite those expenses, he argues that Mr. Bennet's income would have made the Bennet family very well off, and that Mr. Bennet should have been able to save at least 20% of his annual income for the sake of emergencies and his daughters' futures.

Thank you so much for finding and sharing that resource! Such a good read. I actually used a lot of his stats and research when talking other times about how Mr Bennet failed his family and making my estimates, but it was from remembering Hume from studying Austen at uni and getting the information again from essays which reference the work, rather than having access to the original. I'm glad I get it to save it to my essay folder now! Anything about finances in Pride and Prejudice or the reality of Elizabeth's financial situation is a favourite topic of mine - to no one's surprise. I mean, this post is an author's note of a fic where I literally use the sudden risk of Mr Bennet dying just after the Netherfield Ball, and the financial implications, as the justification for the premise, haha. I'm always happy to read more research about it.

This post is actually second in a bit of a series I occasionally do about finances in Pride and Prejudice in the author's notes. I'm not making any claims to being particularly academic and it's certainly not equal to peer-reviewed essays, I'm just helping to give context about the financial aspects that modern readers don't necessarily understand the same way contemporary readers would have. Also, I just enjoy applying maths to the amounts they could be saving and see what we end up with. The first part here was actually begun by a throw away comment about how much the Bennets would need to have saved to give the girls £10,000 a piece and then delves into what would be suitable dowries for their position, and how much money they would have if their parents had annually saved £450, £200, £100, or even only the interest of the £5,000 settlement. It mentions they're in the top 1% and slightly touches on Mr Bennet's personal culpability towards not providing for his family. (Small note for anyone who's new to my maths: I assume Jane Austen always listed the profits of estate incomes, not simply revenue. The only amount I believe we have clarity for in any of her book's is Darcy's £10,000/y, which, as Wickham calls it 'clear' means that's the amount remaining after all expenses necessary for the maintenance of the estate.)

The 40% of income put into savings (though I suppose the half that is meant for emergencies could be a similar amount to what the Bennets were spending on that purpose, just without explicitly saving for it) that Trusler recommends is new to me, as is some of the others referenced. Even Hume's recommendation of 20% is more than I expected. I've been treating 10% as the recommended (which, with reinvesting Mrs Bennet's settlement, in the 4%s comes to £19,647 total for her and the girls at the start of the novel), based on the 1823 'A New System of Practical Domestic Economy'. A blog post which sums up the relevant bits for Austen fans is here and I very much recommend checking it out. The book isn't a perfect contemporary, but it's certainly close enough to be useful and comparative to others Hume references. I love seeing the variety of different opinions on respectable savings, and how similar it is to the variation of advice we receive today. Humans are humans and will always have different opinions.

Luckily, I don't have to determine which is the most realistic for the Bennets income or respectable in the eyes of society, I just get to do more MATHS!

Assuming Hume's (and Trusler's, if we exclude the half of his 40% which is meant for emergencies) 20% of the income saved, over 23 years in the 4%s, we get:

If we do Trusler's 40% and presume, through some impossibly good luck we're indulging the existence of purely for funsies, the 20% saved for emergencies was never needed and so contributes to the girls dowries, using those same stipulations, we have:

Of course, those last three amounts would never happen. But interesting to see that, with Trusler's view on economical savings, an amount somewhere between the first three and last three is possible if the emergency fund always had something left over at the end of the year. (Though, I imagine Mrs Bennet would soon, if she doesn't already, grow to consider a lack of new gowns and cushions an emergency).

Also, I'm so sorry, Skarabrae, since I want everyone to see this link your reply is being used as the base for me adding extra information for everyone and answering some things I saw pop up in the notes. No good deed goes unpunished.

#i actually have a draft post on tumblr that talks more about Mr Bennet's failures in a way very reminiscent of that article#and discusses how his flaws are softened to modern readers whilst his virtues are even more prominent but it's the opposite for Mrs Bennet (via @taradactyls)

Hela's character development was beautiful to watch and finally see, i honestly missed her so much and i'm so happy we got to see more of her character development

Down with Odin and his terrible parenting! I loved seeing her find peace and remember the innocence of her younger self.

I don’t have children so take this with a grain of salt but I hate when you can tell people like the concept of their children more than their well-being. Parents like the concept of an all-beige nursery that’s photogenic more than they care about the development of their kid’s brain. They like the concept of a cutely dressed kid in designer clothes more than they care about their comfort and personal desires. They like the concept of a child who never eats poorly more than they care about the happiness that can come from a child eating some candy now and then. People need to stop treating their kids like little dolls

Uh, I have kids, and so I've spent a lot of time around kids and around other parents, and you are very much on to something.

Whether they have kids because they felt like they needed to or because they wanted an heir or whatever, they don't actually want to hang out with developing humans. They want the idea of kids. They want the Christmas card and the pictures on the desk and the Instagram picture.

They don't want the baby screaming for 5 hours straight because it's too cold out to walk to the store and get more baby ibuprofen for the ear infection on Friday night and your partner has the car. They don't get that the baby is crying because she's literally never hurt worse than this in her tiny life, and they don't get that their toddler has never been sadder than when her favorite toy broke, and that she really didn't know she would break it if she did the thing she just did. That the 4-year-old is crying because the world is too big and too overwhelming and she has no control over where she goes or what she does most of the time, and that the 14-year-old isn't telling them anything about her life because they told her ten years ago to shut up or they'd give her something worth crying about, so she knows they don't value her real feelings, only the ones she's supposed to have.

And they don't want to get any of it. And it fucking sucks that people who don't actually WANT kids feel like they have to have them, or have them to have something smaller than themselves to bully, or have kids as a status symbol. It all just blows, and mostly because:

Kids are people, and most people are actually pretty fucking rad, if given the opportunity to be.

There are a lot of good parents out there, and then there are the parents who had kids because they thought they had to, or wanted someone to boss around, or whatever. And like... even if you thought you wanted kids, you can quickly find out that it actually blows to be a parent in a nuclear family setup, and get really burned out on being a parent. Kids are much better raised by an extended family. That's how we're wired. And like... we broke it. We broke it, and it breaks parents and it hurts kids.

What the fuck they’re two years old

STRAIGHT PEOPLE ARE SO FUCKING WEIRD 

This is exactly what I was talking about the other day. It’s not even just the bizarre urge to sexualize children, it’s that they’re sexualized with the explicit purpose of then policing their hypothetical sexuality. Little girls have sexuality forced on them for the sole purpose of teaching them that sexuality is meant to be shameful.

^this is a great point

I repeat: HETEROPATRIARCHY IS SO FUCKIN WEIRD

so hey who else was taught as a kid that “”””wanting attention”””” in any way was wrong and shameful and has grown up unable ask for help or support even in great distress/suffering

Parent: why do you never come to me for help

(two days later)

Me: I need help with something

Parent: CAN’T YOU SEE I’M BUSY WHY CAN’T YOU DO ANYTHING BY YOURSELF GOD YOU’RE SO-

Me: never mind

And don’t forget the You Can Tell Me Anything (Except Things I Don’t Want to Hear)™.

Bonus round of You Can Tell Me Anything (But If I Don’t Like It You’re In Big Trouble Even If You’re Asking For Help)

Disney recently is really just coming for anyone with generational trauma

growing up, i dont remember my dad yelling at me when i got in trouble

he yelled when i was playing outside and he wanted me in for dinner, but that was only so id hear him. he yelled the day i told him and my mom about the abuse going on at school, but that was when i was up in my room and he was downstairs yelling over my special ed teacher abusing me and my classmates and the school letting it happen and how messed up it was. he yelled the night he went to kill my uncle cuz he was upset that my uncle had raped my cousin

but he never yelled at me. i wasnt afraid of him screaming at me or worried that he might hit me when i got in trouble

and i grew up just fine. i grew up feeling loved. i grew up able to talk to him about my hobbies and interests. i grew up comfortable around my own dad

its messed up that my experience was something many people i know never had. a lot of those people feel distant from their dad or tense around them. they dont connect with their fathers, and that is a fault on the fathers part. and that issue is yelling

‘but hermes how did he discipline you? maybe you were just a good kid?’

im really disorganized, and god i was much worse when i was younger. i didnt finish my homework a lot then either

so when wed get a note home about my incomplete homework and disorganization, my dad….didnt yell at me. wed go about our day and when we were alone, hed bring it up. he was always gentle about it and he took ‘i dont know’ as an answer when he asked me why i had trouble finishing homework or organizing 

according to my mom, enough ‘i dont know’s led to me getting my adhd diagnosis 

and like…..i got better with organizing and finishing work. why? cuz my dad helped me. he sat down and helped me with my homework. we made a system that helped me finish assignments. he helped me organize my backpack and folders. i still use these systems even though im older and hes not here 

when we moved, i didnt like my new special ed teacher at first, mostly cuz i was afraid shed be like my old one. i skipped going to her room a lot. i did whatever i could to avoid her

and so my dad asked me why i didnt go to her class. he asked me while we were doing something we liked, he was gentle about it too, and he had never been even vaguely threatening to me before……so i felt comfortable telling him i was scared

he helped me with this too. he told me to write down everything that happened in special ed and keep the page, so id see after a period of time that she wasnt going to abuse me. he worked with my special ed teacher for us to interact outside of a classroom environment for a little so i wouldnt feel pressured or that she had power over me

yelling isnt discipline. yelling doesnt teach your kid to do the right thing. building trust with them, accepting their answers, and helping them overcome difficulties teaches them to do the right thing 

the fact that people in the notes are genuinely shocked that a parent doesnt yell at their kid and wish that their parents were like mine is fucked up