Jane Austen's Pragmatic England

Right now, I’m listening to jane Austen’s novel, “Sense and Sensibility”, and enjoying it very much. It’s very interesting to note that although we’re separated by nearly two centuries, Miss Austen’s prose is fresh and lively, and makes the concerns of early 19th century England seem utterly contemporary.

I’m also very interested to read in Austen of the lucid way people of her time dealt with money and marriage. There was plenty of romance, but it seems that everyone was quite aware of what everyone else was worth, and angling for a financially advantageous marriage was deemed quite respectable, even necessary. Austen’s people are constantly talking about other people’s incomes, and relating it to the cost of living. And it doesn’t strike me as mercenary, in the mean sense of the word. Rather, it’s utterly refreshing to read of people who are aware of their interests and capable of talking about them without a lot of masking and euphemistic language. Everything is above board. The people with the money are aware that, whether they are attractive in any other way, the size of their estates are quite candidly a bargaining chip in the game of finding and keeping attractive mates.

Americans, it seems to me, could learn a lot from Jane Austen. Here, everyone wants to be wealthy, and are quite willing to talk about that desire in regards to their career. But in regards to marriage, nobody speaks of it at all, except for the occasional girl chat and the recommendations of wise would-be mothers-in-law. IN America, putting romance and money together is always read as prostitution, rather than what it is in part: a perfectly respectable business arrangement. . Will we be able to buy a reasonbably comfortable home on your income? Will we be able to send our kids to college? Can we afford medical care in the case of catastrophic illness?Will we be able to afford the little nothings which grease the skids in what can sometimes be a very rough life under the best of conditions? Austen’s characters are thinking about these things while, I fear, Americans are mostly thinking about what they can tell their buddies at the gym, or the bar or over coffee. If they were wise, clergy men and other such persons should read and reread “Sense and Sensibility” in order to help our young women sort out the noble Colonel Brandons from the feckless Willoughbies.