Pride and Poverty? Lizzy Bennet's financial prospects.

No, she does not face destitution.

It is not uncommon for people to say that without a good marriage Austen’s heroine’s face poverty. Tanya Gold said Austen herself lived in a “daily hell of boredom and semi-poverty”. Bidisha says Austen heroines live in the threat of poverty. Allison Juda says the Bennet girls “must marry well or face the terrible consequences of uncertain dependence for survival.” Professor Susan Zlotnick calls Pride and Prejudice a novel about “genteel female poverty”.

This is all wrong. What we are looking at are not the risks of starvation, but of leaving the gentry. The uncertainty is that of not being in the upper class, not that of survival. What can Professor Zlotnick mean by genteel poverty? The Bennet family income is in the top 1%! Sense and Sensibility might be about genteel poverty (though I don’t think so—they are far from Miss Bates!); Pride and Prejudice certainly is not.

If Lizzy Bennet remains single, then, after her father’s death, she will have about £40 or £50 a year, which was maybe twice the average income, and far less than she was living on as part of the £2,000 a year Bennet household. Branko Milanovic called it “measly”. But even if Lizzy is single, this is not starvation level, though it is less than Miss Bates’ income (perhaps £100 or £150).