so in pride and prejudice we all know
that the dreaded mr collins is set to
inherit elizabeth bennett's family's
house mr collins is just gonna take over
longhorn when mr bennett dies but here's
a question that many of you guys have
been asking which is
is there a way around the entail for
example if elizabeth bennett has a son
could he inherit instead of mr collins
or any of the other bitter girls anyway
that is the question we're going to be
answering here in today's video my name
is ellie dashwood and this is my channel
where we talk about history and
literature if you like either of those
things please subscribe so this is
really a follow-up video to the longer
more in-depth video i already did on
entails a few months ago i go into all
the legal logistics of entails but one
question that has kept coming up from
you guys both before i made that video
and after is whether if one of the
bennett girls
had a son if that son could inherit
instead of mr collins so i thought i
would just take today's video to give
you a very quick answer to this highly
asked question and
that answer is
no
so when i say no it's most likely not i
would say because technically we don't
have the entire legal document on the
intel
on longborne so we can't be like
absolutely not this is what the entail
says because of course jane austen was
writing a novel she wasn't writing legal
documents
however we know that this is not a very
likely possibility from three different
lines of reasoning if not more which
the most basic are how they thought
during the time period their world view
second how entails legally worked and
third the book itself first up let's
talk about the mindset and world view
that's really underlying entails like
the one on longborne i feel like
sometimes the regency can be so
romanticized or we can see a lot of
gallantry towards women and think like
oh they really respected women during
the era and that could really be a topic
for a whole different video because so
much stuff
would need to be said but basically the
underlying
deepest held belief that was pretty much
universally acknowledged by everyone was
that men
were better than women yeah this is why
they had the legal rights this affected
not only dynamics within marriage but
even dynamics between siblings daughters
were seen as less than sons and sisters
were supposed to support and give way to
their brothers this idea that men were
inherently superior physically mentally
pretty much in every way except for
religiously like women got to be like
the angels of the house right but
otherwise men were where it's at anyway
this idea was so deeply held that even
feminists at the time believed it it's
fascinating to read even what was pretty
progressive for women in the air being
like you know what it'd be great if my
husband didn't have a legal right to hit
me it would be great that if he didn't
have the ability just to take all my
children away and never let me see them
again but don't get me wrong i still
think men are great and they are far
superior but i would just really like to
see my kids and of course this idea
caused so many different issues in the
era and one was this preference for
passing property down from one man to
another or down the male line i've
already talked in other videos about how
families like to keep the bulk of their
wealth together so that they could
maintain their family position in
society but
of course the question then comes to if
you're gonna give all of your wealth to
one of the kids which one's getting it
well of course they were going to pick
the superior
the male the sun and in a hierarchical
society they're gonna go with that
oldest son or who was ever next in line
after him if he died now what's even
more fascinating about this is the idea
that property should be transferred down
the male line was seen as the more
enlightened
refined and superior way of passing
property from one generation to the next
so for example i've spoken before about
being american indian and historically
my tribe used a female wine inheritance
system which is where mothers pass on
property to their daughters and then
their granddaughters of course this is
directly the opposite of a male wine
system where it goes from fathers to
sons to grandsons really using a female
line inheritance system was pretty
common among indigenous tribes of north
america what's fascinating is when these
two cultures met the english basically
decided that their method was superior
not only was their method superior but
it was one of the marks of how they were
so much better than my native ancestors
and again with this female line versus
male line situation what we see
happening is what's important
is not necessarily who's getting it but
how it gets there the means of
transmission are also important not just
who eventually ends up with it anyway
when we take these two factors combined
that they thought men were inherently
superior
and they felt like the mail line
inheritance model was actually a mark of
being a superior society that's really
where you get the gender
aspect of entails now like i've talked
about before not all entails were mail
line only however these ideas were very
deeply held and underlying
society at the time and that's why we do
see a lot of situations play out this
way anyway what does this have to do
with the question at hand basically
entails like the one set up on the
long-born estate we're there to
guarantee that the state's going to pass
from man to man
down a line
now if it passed from mr bennett to his
grandson at first that might look like
oh it's passing from one man to another
man but what's connecting them
it's a woman right so technically it's
not going from man-to-man to man down
generation even though it's skipping a
generation it's going
through a woman still technically
because the only reason the grandson
would be inheriting is because of his
mother
being the daughter of mr bennett and
that's ideologically
at odds with everything i've been
talking about about the male line
inheritance now that we've talked about
some of the underlying ideas in the male
line inheritance entail let's talk about
the entail itself like i mentioned in my
video on entails one of the important
factors that govern them by jane
austen's time was that they could only
last for so many generations and they
couldn't go beyond
one unborn generation if an unborn
generation was named
someone in that generation had to
inherit more than likely the entail was
set up before any of the bennett girls
were born
thereby there that unborn generation
someone has to inherit and it can only
be a man and since none of them are men
their next member in the male line turns
out to be mr collins has to inherit
because someone in the generation has to
inherit basically any grandson of mr
bennett would be a second unborn
generation and he doesn't qualify the
intel has to end
before him it's like he missed a
generational cut-off date
which all of this then takes us to the
third thing that i think shows that a
grandson couldn't inherit and that's the
internal evidence within the book
if there was this possibility
that
one of the bennett girls could have a
son that could inherit longborne that
would have completely changed the
plotline of pride and prejudice we
wouldn't see mrs bennett bemoaning the
fact that they're gonna get stuck out in
the hedge what we would be seeing is her
trying to get them married so that they
could have sons so that that son could
inherit longborn and we hear nothing of
that in the book and that would
dramatically change things because it
would make the girls much more marriable
and then that would have also created
tension between the sisters of who can
get married first who can mother a son
first and again we don't see that but is
there any way that mr collins might not
end up inheriting because of the birth
of a new child the only way that could
really happen is if either mrs bennett
ends up having a son if she still has
the ability to have children at her age
even though they've kind of given up on
it but who knows they could have a
surprise son something else that would
possibly happen is if mrs bennett dies
mr bennett could marry a younger woman
still in her child bearing years and
they could have a son together and that
son couldn't inherit and in fact that's
exactly the situation we see mr elliot
in the book persuasion worried about he
looks at his uncle sir walter elliott
you know getting friendly with a younger
woman and he's worried that he's going
to marry her they're going to have a
legitimate son who can inherit instead
of him and so that's something else that
could happen but of course that would be
us expecting mrs bennett to die first
and mr bennett to remarry and then have
a child but i mean it's not completely
outside of the realm of possibility
anyway back to this question of could a
grandson of mr bennett inherit instead
of mr collins well the answer is more
than likely no because a that would
still require
the property to be dependent on the
female line to some extent and again the
intel itself is excluding him because
he's one generation too late
third we just don't see any evidence of
that in pride and prejudice if that was
a possibility it would have completely
changed the dynamics of the family and
how the plotline would have played out
so let me know in the comments below if
you lived in the regency era and were
setting up an intel would you include
daughters or granddaughters or would you
stick to this male line inheritance my
name is ellie dashwood and this is my
channel where we talk about history and
literature if you like either of those
things please subscribe and keep having
an awesome day because you're awesome
bye
[Music]
you