Hi, welcome to Dashie Notes.
Today, we'll be talking about Mr.
Darcy.
Mr.
Darcy, most people who've never read Pride and Prejudice and have never
even seen the movie have heard of Mr.
Darcy.
After all he's handsome, charming and not to mention incredibly rich.
Have you ever wondered, how did he get so rich?
Especially because it seems like all he does is hang out with his friends and
dramatically dive into ponds all day.
And on that note, how did any of Jane Austen's characters get their money?
They sit around the drawing room talking like all the time.
And those are really great questions.
questions about classic literature.
Jane Austen characters love to talk about money.
And in fact, as soon as Mr.
Darcy walks in the door, Elizabeth hears how much he is worth: 10,000 pounds.
Which doesn't sound like a lot, but in modern day terms, he's worth millions.
And how did he get all of that?
Put simply like most of Jane Austen's characters, he inherited it.
He was born with the right family at the right time.
It's a little bit over simplifying things just to say he inherited it.
So let's go over the three major ways people in Jane
Austen's world got their money.
The first is land holdings.
The second is fortunes and investments.
And the third is marriage--which Jane Austen knows so much of that clearly.
So first, landholdings.
Mr.
Darcy inherited a lot of land.
We're talking a lot.
How did he get it?
Well, his family probably took it from poor people like hundreds of years
ago by force, but we just sort of like, you know, accept that fact and
Regency England, cause that's normal.
He owns a lot of land.
And so what does he do with it?
He rents it out to farmers who will pay him a lot of rent in order
to live on his land and work it.
So Mr.
Darcy is in essence, a landlord who makes that ton off of rent.
Which is sort of a big job to be a landlord, but that's why if you're Mr.
Darcy, you hire someone else to do that.
So you can go hang out with Mr.
Bingley and hit up the party season in London.
Two fortunes and investments.
Mr.
Darcy not only inherited a lot of land from his family, but he
also inherited a lot of money.
And what do you do with a lot of money in Regency England?
You put it in a bank and live off the interest.
Banks gave really good interest rates back then, especially
if you had a huge fortune.
A lot of Jane Austen's characters can even live off the interest of their fortunes.
Such as the Dashwoods in Sense and Sensibility.
At the beginning of the book, they have a combined fortune of 10,000 pounds.
And at 5% interest, which was standard of the day and they got about
500 pounds a year to live off of.
Which wasn't much, but it kept them off the streets.
In addition to the investments they would make in banks, often gentlemen
had had other business arrangements.
One very controversial one at the time and now was that they own
slave plantations in the Caribbean.
In Jane Austen's Mansfield Park Sir Bertram, who was Fanny's uncle actually
even just goes to visit a slave plantation in Antigua to make sure it's doing well.
Thankfully in Pride and Prejudice, it says nothing about Darcy owning a plantation
because he is too cool for that.
Three, marriage.
So Mr.
Darcy already has a ton of money because he owns a lot of land
and he invests his money wisely.
But like most people, those of Regency England always wanted more.
They wanted more money.
They want it to be higher on the social status.
And one way they could do this is through marriage.
Often people think about marrying for money, they think about women.
Which is true.
During that time period, making a good match with a rich husband was the number
one way you could support yourself because there were not a lot of career
opportunities available for women.
So essentially 18 year old girls were like, "Hey, I have to go find
a rich husband because this is will ruin the rest of my life and my
children's life and everything else in the whole university if I don't."
And that was so real.
But men also married for money because at this time period, families
gave their daughter something called a dowery or a fortune that
would make men want to marry them.
For example in Pride and Prejudice, Mr.
Bennett calls this a way of bribing worthless young men
into marrying his daughters.
Which he didn't do very well at because he didn't give his daughter as much money.
But a lot of young heiresses did have a lot to bring to the table and
they could raise the family income quite a bit through what they bring.
Of course, Mr.
Darcy, doesn't do that.
He marries Elizabeth, despite the fact that she's poor.
So in conclusion, how did Mr.
Darcy get so rich?
Well, He was born with the right family at the right time.
But the Darcys in general got their money through the three main ways.
Which is through one, owning a lot of land, two investments and
three marrying people with money.
Unless you're a Darcy, then you're like, "Whatever, Lady Catherine de Bourgh,
I don't care that Elizabeth is poor.
I'm going to marry her anyway."
And that's how he's so rich and why they sit around drawing rooms all day long.
I hope you've enjoyed listening to a modern day question about
classic literature be answered.
Check out my page for more videos on this topic and on Mr.
Darcy, because he is awesome.