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"A Sort of Notch in the Donwell Estate": Intersections of Status and Class in EmmaPaul Deiany Many critics have addressed the question of Jane Austen's exact class position and loyalties. Marilyn Butler's Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975) argued influentially that Austen was a conservative who should be placed within the anti-Jacobin reaction; more recently, others have read her fiction as implicitly subversive of patriarchal and even capitalist values.1 1 will argue that disagreements about Austen's specific position on the political spectrum can be clarified if we recognize that, for her, there are two distinct social hierarchies, one of "class" and one of "status."2 Class is much the simpler, as well as the more modern concept: 1 Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). Critics who emphasize Austen's hostility to established hierarchies include Claudia L. Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); James Thompson, Between Self and World: The Novels of Jane Austen (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1988); and Mary Evans, Jane Austen and the State (London: Tavistock, 1987). The originator of this line of criticism was D.W. Harding, "Regulated Hatred: An Aspect of the Work of Jane Austen," Scrutiny 8 (1939^-0), 346-62. 2 See R.J. Morris: "The bulk of the history of class has been written by the Marxist, neo-Marxist and anti-Marxist. Thus the whole shape of the discussion of class in the industrial revolution— the concepts used and the questions asked—has been derived from Marx. ... Weber provided an alternative system by which historians can organise the information they have about class relationships in the past. It is a pity that his ideas have been so little used by historians." Class and Class Consciousness in the Industrial Revolution 1780-1850 (London: Macmillan Press, 1979), p. 62. However, my purpose here is not to pit Marx against Weber, but rather to show how Austen (and her characters) use two separate but complementary ways of classifying people—roughly, by wealth and by gentility. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 12, Number 4, July 2000 534 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION a stratification by capital, income, and economic productivity. It is the outcome of competition, driven by man's natural "propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another," as Adam Smith put it.3 Class can be precisely quantified, and Austen is notoriously fond of such quantifications : Darcy has £10,000 a year, Emma will inherit £30,000, Captain Wentworth has £25,000 in prize money, and so it continues. A large number in Austen is sure to have a pound sign attached to it.4 But in Austen's England, wealth is only one axis of rank (if it were the only one, Emma could have no objection to Harriet Smith's marrying a man who is much better off than she is, Robert Martin). The other axis measures what Max Weber calls status: In contrast to the purely economically determined "class situation" we wish to designate as "status situation" every typical component of the life fate of men that is determined by a specific, positive or negative, social estimation of honor. ... In content, status honor is normally expressed by the fact that above all else a specific style of life can be expected from all those who wish to belong to the circle. Linked with this expectation are restrictions on "social" intercourse (that is, intercourse which is not subservient to economic ... purposes). These restrictions may confine normal marriages to w ithin the status circle and may lead to complete endogamous closure.5 Status groups form cultures of stability, exclusion, and distinction, and place great value on sheer length oftenure. An important determinant ofMr Knightley's status, for example, is that his family have been landowners in Highbury since at least 1540; Emma's family have been there for perhaps a hundred years; the Coles have had a house in the village for about ten years; Mr Elton has recently arrived. Status groups tend to fear the levelling potential of "market forces," though it is impossible for them to ignore wealth altogether: 3...

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