"Sister" is used frequently for "sister-in-law", and "brother" for "brother-in-law". Similarly "son" for "son-in-law". Lady Catherine even extends "brother" to cover the wife's sister's husband. Elizabeth imagines herself beings presented to Lady Catherine as "her future niece" (i.e. as the fiancé of Lady Catherine's nephew Darcy); Caroline Bingley taunts Darcy that Mr. and Mrs. Phillips will be his "uncle and taunt" if he marries Elizabeth; and Wickham (when talking to Elizabeth after his marriage to her sister Lydia) refers to "our uncle and aunt", meaning her uncle and aunt, the Gardiners.

    The use of the same terms for one's spouse's family as for one's own family reflects the view of marriage as uniting or allying the two families of the couple. (Thus later on in the 19^th century, there was a long debate about whether or not it is incest to marry one's dead wife's sister.) This is why Lady Catherine conceives herself to have the right to prevent Elizabeth's possible marriage to her nephew Darcy. (Mary Musgrove in Persuasion: "I do not think any young woman has a right to make a choice that may be disagreeable and inconvenient to the principal part of her family, and be giving bad connections to those who have not been used to them.")
 
 

* 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 / * Attitudes to the entail in Pride and Prejudice / * Return