Are Lizzy and Darcy in the Same Social Class? Pride and Prejudice and Regency Society Examined

Love your videos! Learning so much.
Just wondering why you pronounce it "hi-archy". And "liti-chure" (literature). Is it regional?

super interesting! you explained so much and so clearly!

Unlike In Poldark in which Ross marries his servant - Demelza It was written, however in 1946 - a time when the social class structure had changed

Enjoyed that.

Nonsense.

Lizzie and Darcy are the same class, as Lizzie says, he is a gentleman and she is the daughter of a gentleman. It’s hardly as though she’s defending a morganatic attachment or looking to join the landed gentry.

Would Mansfield Park be an exception? How poor can you be and still remain in this gentry class?

Huh, that's anew perspective for me to take a look at classical fairy tales.
A lot I can think of right now do keep the happy couple in the same sphere.
Thank you.

I always conceptualize this as: Lizzy and Darcy are in the same class, Lizzy's family is just a little trashy lol

In Emma Emma, Jane and Harriet also all marry accordingly to their class

What is the situation with Wickham and Lydia in this case?

People today still believe God likes them more. They think of they have enough money, they can go to the best school and they deserve it. Look up puritans. Even today, the Bidens son would not marry someone that lives in the ghetto.

your videos are so good!! I'm always impressed by how much I learn.

Wait i just noticed that your last name is DASHWOOD

I think Britain hasnt changed as much as the rest of the world/USA actually I know this guy who went to a really expensive posh school and he told me if your grandparents had made money because they owned a huge company you were looked down on, you had to have been rich and posh for 500 years

Great commentary! It actually made me wonder if there is another example hidden in the novel - Wickham. His backstory is that his father was a solicitor and steward of Pemberley (i.e. middle class). But the elder Mr. Darcy provided Wickham an upbringing comparable to what many sons of gentlemen (i.e. upper class) get due to his fondness for the boy. Except that Wickham wasn't headed for an adulthood as a landed gentleman like the younger Mr. Darcy was. So, as an adult, he set his goal of marrying an upper class heiress (ideally Georgiana Darcy) in order to attain status above the class he was born into. As Austen depicts him as a villain (and a loathsome one at that), it feels like one of these ambition-is-evil/going-against-God situations.

Thank you so much!!!

In P and P, Mrs Bennetts siblings do not seem to be of the same classe as Mr. Bennett's. Why did he marry her?

Not me drawing parallels to Indian caste system which the British created from jatis. This would explain why we took the British route instead of the more logical Japanese one.

Seriously though, thank you. It really explains very well my own country's history after the British colonial rule. You're covering topics that I would usually never lookup on my own. There's dry scholarship on this, but it's not nearly as fun as learning via stories.

Cool shirt! Looks comfy!

you are so good at explaining these concepts. i love your videos!

Thank you Professor Ms./Miss Dashwood for a most enlightening
explanation.
1) Mobility WITHIN a sphere/ class is
called. INTRA-- class, while BETWEEN
spheres/classes is called. INTER--
sphere/ class
2) In mid and late 19th c. ?fiction ( and
fact??) stories appeared that focused
on inter class relations, such as Jane
Eyre and Edward Rochester, and a few
others in UK and other countries,, especially US and Horatio Alger rags to
riches stories..Even in Mid E, origin of Islam features a similar inter class
marriage relation.

I love your shirt! Where did you get it?

What about Fanny Price, wasn't she from a properly poor family? Didn't she end up marrying above her sphere?

Thank you! ❤️❤️❤️

Ooh we need a comment about Emma's attempt to marry off her "natural" friend to the gentry along the lines of social spheres please!

Oh my goodness, I have always loved this era in history (literature and movies). I stumbled across this channel recently and I’m really enjoying it! I have been binging,and I’m learning so many things, I’m ashamed, that I didn’t know. This video is really helpful in understanding the relationships that were seen in Jane Austin’s books, and in series such as Brigerton, or the story of Cinderella. Knowing about how spheres worked brings so much clarity to these magnificent books!
Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge 🙏!

Hey Ellie! I love your videos! As an Austen reader, they are great info! I do have a question and an idea for a video for you. I'm currently reading Mansfield Park. I am understanding that Fanny is being treated differently by her richer aunt and uncle who took her in. What I don't get is why she is being treated like a servant.... Her mother and aunts were all sisters and on the same social standing at one point before they married. Would the social standings of their husbands cause cousins to be so drastically different on the social ladder from each other, even though the mothers were on the same rung from the same family?

Could you make a video on what the peerage/class spheres look like today in England? How they evolved from the Regency Period.

Wow that's really interesting about Cinderella, I'd always though the Grimm version was the original, and Disney etc has taken gigantuous liberties with it. Wow, there was an earlier version than Grimm which more closely resembles Disney!? (~mind being blown~)

Thank goodness (for the progress of humankind) that capitalism, modern philosophies, public education smashed decrepit, unhealthy, delusional/illogical, sclerotic class system. 🙂

There is a sort of turn-around in how people view poverty that starts once the Reformation takes proper hold, and particularly Calvinism. It doesn't happen overnight and it's fun to see the change happening in books of this time. There have always been poor people, and they have always suffered deprivation. It was considered the responsibility of rich people to alleviate that suffering; not doing so was considered a moral failing on the part of the rich (though not one that bore a whole lot of consequences). The poor were just, you know...poor. Gods will or just the way things were, but they were not responsible for being poor. It wasn't considered a moral failing. Slowly that started to change as Calvinism took hold and gratitude and moral life choices became not only expected, but an actual prerequisite to receiving aide. And that's still what we see today.

Hi, your analogy of social spheres is interesting...Cinderella, I'm sorry was the daughter of a Merchant. A successful merchant perhaps, but Cinderella herself married into... Royalty... that's def, not the same Sphere she was born in at all...
Royal's had... and still have only one sphere...There is no confusion and it is a unique sphere. Only another Royal will compare. Even then the snobbery or if you prefer the Hierarchy within the various Royal Families that exist even today within "European" Royal families is very much there...It may not be spoken of...BUT the various families do know... They... are very aware of their ranking, and it has nothing to do with their personal wealth, or if their country has discovered oil?
It has everything to do with the longevity of the Monarchy and the Quality of the marriages that have been made often over hundreds of years and most importantly History... Do they have lots of it?
Though we know some monarchies, indeed a few monarchies actually didn't even exist 200 years ago, whilst others existed...in the 10th century and beyond. So, It's not too hard to work out the most Senior Royal Family in Europe.
Miss Elizabeth Bennet marrying the much wealthier Mr. Darcy... was def within her own social "Sphere" but as that Sphere also has many levels...She was... as my own Mother would have put it " Marrying well "
A Gentleman's Daughter a child of Landed Gentry meant just that ... Gentlefolk is usually a description of a Gentleman or Gentlewoman of noble birth or high social standing... who owns "land" Landowners were described thus.

Reminds me of the Feudal System of China and Japan- top dog was the lords who owned land, then the farmers who planted and produced rice, , followed by artisan/craftsman and lowest on the totem pole, the merchants, because they produced nothing.

However towards the late 18 and 19th century, the merchants became so rich and powerful and able to control the price of rice and all things. And farmers and lords became poor and indebted to merchants

Binge watching your videos for the last three days now and I absolutely love your insights and explanations - I can literally feel brain cells growing! 🤩
And I love your shirt 😍 Bell-bottoms rock

Do you think Poldark is realistic then? A landed officer of the navy marries his scullery maid. It was probably 50 years before the Regency Era, but not too far removed.

So are Multilevel Marketing Scams, I mean businesses, the new aristocracy?

Did Fanny Price's mother marry below her sphere? And thusly would Fanny then be marrying above hers since she would be relegated to her father's?

THAT was so interesting!!! Where were you in my history or Literature class in 1977?? 😂 thanks for the video.☺️

Thank you for the enlightening video 🥰

These videos are completely excellent and I am binging my guts out on them. Thank you!!!

I'm so glad we had the American Revolution so we could ditch this backward system.

UK Society division was really not different from caste system in India... just realized that 😱

You deserve to have millions of subscribers

My buddy married a girl with NO class but that's another story.

Mrs. Bennet is actually a good example of someone who moved into another sphere. Her father was an attorney, a kind of lawyer that was not considered genteel, and would class him as a tradesman. But by marrying Mr. Bennet, a landed gentleman, she moved upwards into another sphere. Of course, this wasn't without consequences. One of the reasons that some people might look askance at Darcy marrying Elizabeth, even though technically they were in the same social class, was that her mother's origins were from another sphere. By marrying Elizabeth, Darcy immediately connects himself with a bunch of people that are not from their sphere of the landed gentry/aristocracy. Indeed, this was probably one of the reasons that Darcy tried to resist his attraction to Elizabeth initially. In the end, he just has to overlook this, and he shows this by being friendly and willing to socialize with Elizabeth's Aunt and Uncle Gardiner, who are her mother's relatives, and are in the tradespeople/middling class.

I think an interesting thing would be what happens if you're somebody born into the upper middle class, would it be acceptable to marry somebody in the lower upper class? You're technically crossing class spheres but not by much. Is that kind of what happened with Jane and Mr Bingley? Since I believe his family came into wealth by trade?

Although I am a fan, I am not sure of the illiteracy and innumeracy example for social class. England had common schools. Though they were not the graded schools of later reforms, they did provide the three Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic). Writing and reading were also part of the Protestant tradition with girls and boys being taught at home, usually by their mothers. It was going beyond the basics to genteel or scholarly levels that would have been considered inappropriate for Regency poor.

Thank you, I have to ask a question. (soory for my bad english, I hope you will understand) Lydia married under her class, isn't it? Or Wickam goes in her class? Wickam was in the militia but he is an inttendant son.
Does the woman go in her husband class or the man go in his wife class?

What HAS bothered me about Pride and Prejudice is the friendship between Bingley and Darcy. Why is Darcy friendly with Bingley who is not precisely in his social class as he does not OWN land and his wealth is of course much less than Darcy's. On top if it he cannot be blind to the fact that Bingley's sister is running after him and hoping to marry him and she really is an irritating woman. Why bother about people like that?