The entail on the Longbourn estate (according to which Mr. Collins is the heir) is treated somewhat lightly in the novel (or at least Mrs. Bennet's reaction to it is), but Jane Austen expected her readers to understand that it is no joke that if Mr. Bennet died, his wife and five daughters would have to leave Longbourn and live on the interest of ? 5.000, or a little more than ?200 a year (because Mr. Bennet has been unable to save anything). Since Lydia alone costs Mr. Bennet about ?90 a year, it is obvious that their standard of living would drop considerably (Mrs. Bennet: "else they [her daughters] will be destitute enough"); probably they would be partly dependent on the charity of the Gardiners, the Philipses, or even Mr. Collins. (After Jane Austen's father died in 1805, Jane Austen and her mother and her sister Cassandra needed an income of about ?450, which had to be partly supplied by some of Jane Austen's brothers.)

    Therefore Mrs. Bennet's threat to Elizabeth that "If you go on refusing every offer of marriage, you will never get a husband --and I am sure I do not know who is to maintain you when your father is dead" has some realism. This is the background against which Elizabeth and Jane are not desperate to be married to anyone with a good income (unlike Charlotte Lucas) --see "Marriage and the alternatives".
 
 

* Accomplishments / * Feminism in Jane Austen / * Marriage and the alternatives: the status of women / * Legalities of marriage / * Money and marriage / * "Settlements" / * Entail and inheritance / * Male progeniture succession / *Legal motivation for entails / * Legal aspects of entails / * "Sister" and "Brother"; "Alliance" / * Return