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In Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813), Austen is preoccupied with the phenomenon of social mobility. The family of Elizabeth, or Lizzy, Bennet, Austen’s heroine, is a good case in point. Lizzy’s father (Mr. Bennett) is a gentleman. He lives on the family estate, which provides him with an annual income of about £2,000. Lizzy’s mother (Mrs. Bennet) is from a slightly lower class. Her “people” are professionals and merchants—respectable and decent but not quite on Mr. Bennet’s level. When we look at Lizzy’s parents, we can see subtle examples of social mobility: He has married down, while she has married up.
There’s more to the story than that, for although Mr. Bennet is indeed a gentleman, his position is in no way secure. The family estate can be passed on only to male heirs—and the Bennets have had only daughters, five of them. The business of the novel, as Mrs. Bennet realizes, is to get at least a few of those daughters married off to reasonably wealthy men. Thus, although the novel presents us with some conspicuous examples of upward mobility—one local merchant has recently been knighted, for instance—looming in the background is the awful possibility of downward mobility for the family, and that makes the novel more suspenseful.
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