Matriarchal Economies: Women Inheriting from Women in Eighteenth-Century Wills, Courts, and Fiction

Despite the legal tradition of primogeniture and the laws of coverture in eighteenth-century England, women did in fact inherit and transmit money, land, and property. This essay illuminates female-to-female inheritance in wills, courts, and fiction. It examines cases of women inheriting money and property from other women in novels, such as in the work of Charlotte Smith and Charlotte Lennox, and also instances where they gift their patriarchal inheritances to other women, as depicted in the work of Frances Burney and others. We know that women willed property in the period, but are these fictional cases just imaginative fantasies of female economic independence and power? Utilizing regional case studies of wills and courts, this essay argues that women wielded their economic agency by directing portions of their wealth to deserving daughters, nieces, and friends. I then examine this practice in fiction, comparing the types of female relatives and friends involved in the transmission of property, the kinds of property willed and inherited, and the legal stipulations involved with inheritance in order to extend and complicate our understanding of women's roles in the transmission of property. My larger claim is that in both actual and fictional cases, women's financial legacies and bequests could successfully navigate the patriarchal economic structures that often disenfranchised them.

While I acknowledge that a gendered economy was clearly harmful to women, this essay seeks to work with the fact that women in eighteenth-century Britain could regard property in a similar fashion as men and that in eighteenth-century wills and courts women found forms of economic agency. In Law, Land and Family, Eileen Spring has observed that heiresses are transmitters of inheritance, and scholars such as Allan Hepburn, Virginia H. Cope, and Susan Glover have shown how, despite the legal tradition of primogeniture, eighteenth-century English women did inherit money, land, and personal property.¹ We see this practice reflected in numerous novels (such as Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, Eliza Haywood's The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote, and Frances Burney's Evelina), in which the deserving and moral heroines are rewarded for their virtue with an inheritance from a male relative. This essay will further interrogate the issues associated with primogeniture and illuminate the practice of female-to-female inheritance in wills, court decisions, and fiction. While female will-making persisted in the period, we will see that legal structures limited the prevalence of monied heiresses. Novels, in turn, seem to pick up the topic of female inheritance and the figure of the heiress, often depicting women who inherit, distribute, or are given money and property from other women, as witnessed in Lennox's Henrietta, Burney's Cecilia, and Charlotte Smith's Emmeline. Among the questions we will explore are: how rare was this cultural practice? And are these fictional cases imaginative fantasies of female economic independence and power?

This essay observes that matriarchal economies emerged in wills in which women wielded their power by directing their own inheritances to deserving daughters and female relatives. It then examines this practice in fiction, comparing the kinds of female friends and relations involved in the transmission of property. With both real and fictional examples, I compare the types of property willed, gifted, and inherited; examine the legal stipulations involved with female inheritance; and measure the success of property transmission between women. Despite the fact that in actual wills men directed much of their financial legacies to their male successors, both inheriting widows and daughters and never-married women found economic empowerment in the act of bequeathing to other women. Noting that the number of actual heiresses declined in the period, I examine how the heiress becomes a staple of fiction, central to debates about birthright and inheritance. While women of all classes made bequests to other women in actual wills, I argue that these female economies are primarily symbolized in female-authored fiction by the figure of the heiress and assert that in both actual and fictional cases women's financial legacies could successfully navigate (or at times, even circumvent) the patriarchal economic structures that often disenfranchised them.

Bequeathing and Inheriting Women

In both life and fiction, daughters inherited their portions when they married or reached the age of twenty-one. Susan Staves has demonstrated that these portions were increasingly left to daughters in the form of trusts—that is, they did not have direct access to the capital themselves.² In Married Women's Separate Property, Staves shows how changes in dower, jointure, pin money, and maintenance disempowered wives through an evasion of common-law provisions. Eileen Spring agrees and argues that common-law property rights for women eroded, noting that the heiress, widow, and younger children experience "a decline of women's rights over land."³ This was frequently true in novels as well, in which we see a woman's portion paid when she is married and so in effect (because of coverture) given to her husband. However, fiction allowed women more possibilities for agency and economic identity than the law typically did. I wish to suggest that narrative became a more reliable space for women to actively participate in the economy and that their roles as heiresses who either inherit from or bequeath to other women reflects the productive workings of a matriarchal economy, a structure formed by women to navigate patriarchal interests and, where possible, financially empower other women.

As we will see in our discussion of actual wills, the majority of women making bequests to other women were from the middling and even working ranks of society. In literature, though, monied heiresses are ubiquitous. The propertied widow is an especially common figure, as in Haywood's The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, which features the wealthy widow Mrs. Blanchfield, who dies and bequeaths her fortune to Mr. Trueworth and her jewels to Harriot Lovit. This female-to-male gift (Trueworth "blushed at having so much more ascribed to him, than he would allow himself to think he deserved, and would gladly have been deprived of the best part of his fortune, rather than have received an addition to it by such fatal means") is balanced by the widow's female-to-female gift: "All my jewels I entreat you to accept,—they can add nothing to your beauty, but may serve to ornament your wedding garments."⁴ Of course, Harriot isn't alone. The young, virtuous heiress—as found in Burney's Cecilia, Lennox's The Female Quixote, all six of Jane Austen's novels, and numerous other works—is the most common woman of means in the eighteenth-century novel. And as several studies have uncovered, plots involving female orphans and illegitimate daughters, as well as birthright and legitimized heiresses, are especially prevalent in the period.⁵ The chief challenge for male heirs, such as Evelina's Lord Orville and Cecilia's Mortimer, is the affront to their honor involved in marrying beneath their rank or having to give up their family name, while the primary concern of heiresses is being courted for their wealth, rather than out of love. While Virginia Cope argues that often these moral and educated heiresses seek love matches and don't consider their property when choosing a husband (she terms them "heroines of disinterest"), I'm focusing on interested heiresses, as well as widows and minor female characters who play active economic roles in female-to-female inheritance plots.⁶ While on the surface, propriety precedes property for these heroines, and so the eventual restoration of the family estate is a reward for their virtue and intelligence, I wish to claim that, especially in cases of female-to-female inheritance, the economically interested heroine benefits both morally and materially from her interest, and, as shown in actual cases of wills, she bestows economic power on other women.

Much like Samuel Richardson's Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady (1747-48), which dramatizes not only Clarissa's inheritance from her grandfather, but also Anna Howe's matriarchal inheritance, Charlotte Lennox's mid-century novels respond to concerns about female inheritance and matriarchal legacies. In The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella (1752), the orphaned heiress Arabella lives on a country estate and has a large inheritance that attracts many suitors solely interested in her wealth. Her father's will declares that she must marry her cousin Glanville or else lose part of her estate, and so, as part of giving up her romance-reading and "delusions" at the end of the novel, she ultimately makes the "reasonable" decision to keep her inheritance and marry him. Yet it is Lennox's third novel, Henrietta (1758)—written after the 1753 Marriage Act that required public notice of a couple's intent to marry and no longer enforced private verbal promises to live together as man and wife—that fully explores the challenges of familial bequests.⁷ Leaving the comfort of her family behind, Henrietta attempts to financially support herself as a lady's maid in London. This choice is prompted by a manipulative female legacy. Her aunt Lady Meadows wishes to bequeath a large inheritance to Henrietta, but she stipulates that she must convert to Catholicism. Her aunt directs: "If you retire to a convent, and put yourself into a way of being instructed in the true religion, I will pay your pension largely; and the day that sees you reunited to the faith, shall see you restored to my fondest affection, and made sole heiress to my whole estate."⁸ Henrietta refuses to change her religion in order to retain her aunt's protection and inherit her fortune, and so rejects female-to-female inheritance that is tainted with moral compromise. Henrietta later marries a marquis and is rewarded for her Protestant ideals with a good fortune.⁹ As with many novels during this period, the "heiress problem" plot unveils the anxieties raised by marriages of choice. The threat posed to landed families by the downward social mobility of the heiress is dramatized and then ultimately overcome.

Influenced by Lennox, Frances Burney's Evelina; or, The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World (1778) is a seminal example of the female birthright plot. After recognizing that Evelina looks exactly like her dead mother, her father, Lord Belmont, pronounces that she should "immediately take her place, according to [her] right, as Miss Belmont."¹⁰ Evelina is quickly informed that he "will give you, immediately, £30,000; all settlements, and so forth, will be made for you in the name of Evelina Belmont."¹¹ Yet seemingly within hours of her legitimization, recognition of her birthright, and inheritance, Evelina bequeaths a large portion of her fortune to Polly Green, the daughter of a maid who replaced Evelina with her own infant daughter to be raised as Lord Belmont's. This "gift" was facilitated by a negotiation between her father and her fiancé, Lord Orville: "This noblest of men had insisted the so-long supposed Miss Belmont should be considered indeed as my sister, and as the co-heiress of my father! though not in law, in justice, he says, she ought ever be treated as the daughter of Sir John Belmont."¹² But it is Evelina who ultimately shares her portion with Polly Green. While Cope and others have argued that this gift demonstrates Evelina's indifference to wealth, I read Evelina as actively pursuing legitimation, and thereby property and wealth (albeit under the guise of indifference). She follows the advice of Mr. Villars, Mrs. Selwyn, and Lady Howard, allowing letters to be written to her father on her behalf and agreeing to confront him in person in the full expectation that she will be acknowledged as his legitimate daughter and therefore his heiress. Her passive-aggressive strategy is successful. In the end, Evelina regains her name, her relatives, and her rightful property, enabling her to bestow on another woman the gift of wealth and inheritance.

Burney concludes Evelina, however, not only with a female-to-female gift, but also with the legal reality that wives' inheritances were subsumed by their husbands upon marriage. In her subsequent novels, Burney continued to develop plots that dramatize the anxieties surrounding female possession. Burney rewrites Evelina's heiress plot later in Cecilia; or, Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), but does so in reverse: Cecilia charts its heroine's dispossession in a "dismal commentary on women's potential for retaining individual property rights."¹³ By robbing Cecilia of her inheritance, Burney effectively shifts the emphasis to the acquiring of autonomy through individual development and awareness, rather than proprietorship and economy. An heiress only because she is an orphan, Cecilia is trapped by the patriarchal economy: her uncle's will dictates that in order to receive £3000 per annum, she must continue the family name by bestowing the surname Beverley upon her future husband. This clause of the will ostensibly gives her the right to independent thought and action (upon marriage she will keep her surname and identity, have a certain amount of power in her marriage negotiations, and will be a female recipient of family wealth). But while she temporarily enters a matriarchal economy, helping other women in their business ventures so that they may gain a modest economic independence, she ultimately experiences disinheritance. Choosing love over fortune and interest, she marries and gives up her name and estate in what is seen as an "extraordinary sacrifice."¹⁴ The narrator describes Cecilia's indifference to her inheritance: "At the proposal of parting with her uncle's fortune, which, desirable as it was, had as yet been only productive to her misery, her heart, disinterested, and wholly careless of money, was prompt to accede to the condition."¹⁵ As Linda Zionkowski details, reviewers and admirers of the novel, such as Hester Chapone and Mary Delany, expressed frustration with Cecilia's choice to give up her fortune. In 1782, the writer in The Critical Review remarks, "Cecilia's conduct, in sacrificing so large a fortune to gratify the pride of the Delvile family, is an example which we would by no means wish to propose as an object of imitation for the fair sex."¹⁶ We can certainly agree with contemporary and current readers of the novel that the heroine's indifference to fortune is a form of defeat and a diminishing of her agency. While Cecilia's economic sacrifice dominates the narrative, however, Burney simultaneously narrates an optimistic female bequest, illuminating financial forms of independence.

At the close of the novel, Burney reinstates Cecilia's economic power through a modest female inheritance: her husband Mortimer's maternal aunt, who admired the extraordinary sacrifice Cecilia made, "left to her, and to her sole disposal, the fortune, which almost from his infancy she had destined for her nephew."¹⁷ This deus ex machina is extraordinary: Cecilia receives the fortune of this aunt—someone previously unknown to her—which enables the couple to live comfortably. Mortimer generously remarks that he was "delighted to restore to her through his own family any part of that power and independence of which her generous and pure regard for himself had deprived her."¹⁸ While Zionkowski interprets Cecilia's charity as confined to the domestic and "limited gestures of good will that would not impinge upon the resources of the patriarchal household," I wish instead to emphasize the power of women investing in one another. With this unconditional female-to-female legacy, Cecilia benefits from a clearly discernible chain of female charity, perhaps fashioning a new model of economy that critiques patriarchal capitalism. She resumes her charitable works and marries Mortimer, whose future inheritance has suddenly been reduced.

Yet in the end, Cecilia remains disinherited from her paternal estate, which perhaps explains why the scene of Mortimer's aunt altering her will is only briefly addressed. In my reading, this suggestion that female virtue is somehow incompatible with property signals the historical waning of the heiress and her influence that has been recognized by Eileen Spring and others. It disallows the possibility of women gaining both economic and emotional independence, and it reflects a larger truth about the decline of the heiress and her bequeathing power over the course of the eighteenth century. But by placing an heiress at the center of these plots, authors like Burney, Lennox, and Charlotte Smith foreground the social tension created by the potential of successful female economies. Female-to-female bequests, in particular, complicate, disrupt, and problematize inheritance norms. And when these disruptions emerge in the novel, they both underscore these economic and social disruptions and offer new possibilities for how property might be transferred between women.

Cecilia depicts a successful system of female bequeathing and gifting. But how frequent was this in actual practice? Much of the information about women bequeathing to women comes from wills. In this period, a man had complete power to disinherit his children and wife. Because of the laws of coverture, married women were precluded from making a will except by special arrangement with their husbands. Therefore, the vast majority of women's wills were made by widows (about 80%), as we see in Henrietta and Cecilia, and single women (close to 20%).¹⁹ In the seventeenth century, we can witness a slight, but measurable increase in female will-making. Richard T. Vann's work demonstrates that female bequests beyond their immediate families were on the rise. For example, out of 89 wills of women, 18% bequeathed to nieces, 40% to friends, and 7.9% to servants (all higher percentages than what was done by their male counterparts). In his study of the town of Banbury during this period, Vann observes that "almost a third of the wills proved locally were coming from women, as compared to about a quarter in the period from 1650-1724."²⁰ He suspects that this may "reflect increasing economic activity on the part of women, or at least of widows. The inventories show that many widows were active moneylenders, and some were at the center of quite large webs of credit."²¹ In Silent Partners: Women as Public Investors during Britain's Financial Revolution, Amy Froide shows that women's capital was a critical component of Britain's financial and colonial dominance in the eighteenth century and that women not only invested for themselves, but also relied on other female relatives as their agents. In addition to investing cash, women also held land. M. K. Ashby observes, "England has always had large landowners who were women. In the village of Bledington, Gloucestershire in the early seventeenth century, daughters were handsomely treated, in both fathers' and mothers' wills; their legacies are usually equal to their brothers' except where one of the latter is going to carry on the farm with his mother."²² Sheila M. Cooper, reporting on a broad cross-section of wills in late seventeenth-century King's Lynn in Norfolk, observes that daughters inherited as well as sons, but that daughters were more likely to inherit money and household goods than land, unless there were no sons.²³ The seventeenth century saw several advice books that reflected this practice, such as Elizabeth Richardson Cramond's A Ladies Legacie to Her Daughters (1645), which describes female bequests in the wills of women from all social classes.²⁴ Trusts and strict settlements were ways in which the customary restrictions on women's property could be lifted. As Davis recognizes, "Trusts could provide all single and married women with access to separate property, though in practice they applied only to those who belonged to the landed classes."²⁵ And trusts could be challenged in the Court of Chancery.

Yet Froide observes that assertive single women "could exploit a legal loophole to acquire property that would not have originally descended" to them.²⁶ One example she offers is that of Mary Lacy, who in 1736 went to court to enroll a deed in her own name and that of her sister in order to lay claim to Lomer manor and rectory, which Mary Bone had devised to Lacy's mother and thereafter William Moore. Lacy asserted that her mother was now dead and that Moore was a papist and so incapable of owning the property or receiving its income. She enrolled her claim to the land she thought rightfully belonged to her and her sister.²⁷ Similarly, the case of the widowed Elizabeth Williamson demonstrates how women capitalized on their power and often secured property rights to their daughters. Her case appears in manor court records as early as 1695, when she and her husband successfully sued a builder for poor work on a new house.²⁸ But it is her history of ownership and the bequests she made that is of interest for my discussion. Elizabeth was a joint tenant of her home with her first husband, inheriting it after his death. When she later married John Williamson, she remained the sole tenant, giving the tenancy to her daughter only after her second husband's death. Even then, she retained a life occupancy and rented out rooms to provide an income. The mortgage was cleared and the granddaughter to whom it eventually passed purchased the freehold. Two other properties that Elizabeth held as surviving joint tenant with her second husband passed at her death to her son. Her example demonstrates the manner in which savvy widows could not only redirect property among family members, but also ensure matrilineal lines of inheritance. Yet the practice of entail worked against such redirection in the service of maintaining patrilineal lines, especially in the eighteenth century. Entails had long been used to distribute land to younger children, but they were also used to keep land and property in the hands of male descendants, as we see in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (which we will discuss later). Spring recognizes that "the increasing hostility to female heirs must have meant some use of such a weapon against them."²⁹ Since entails could specify the sex of the inheritor, females could summarily be cut out of inheriting land and property for a lifetime or even in perpetuity.

The Importance of Nieces

Yet while women from wealthy families may have been limited by entails, working- and middling-rank women routinely inherited and bequeathed portable property, real estate, and businesses. In the first half of the eighteenth century, we see single, female business owners take up will-making. Froide observes, "Of the 2 million wills which survive from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century, approximately one fifth (or 400,000) were made by women."³⁰ For Vann, the most striking aspect of the period between 1725 and 1800 is the increasing prominence of women as will-writers and inheritors.³¹ Because various studies focus on different parishes or counties and differing time spans it is difficult to discern clear patterns, but in general the proportion of wills that were made by women grew only slightly over the early modern period. In her study of women's wills in Lancashire and Cheshire between 1660 and 1837, Amy Louise Erickson observes that women with estates under £40 decreased from 31 to 23%, and those with estates over £40 remained relatively consistent, between 18 and 22%.³² Froide recognizes that "although never-married women and widows always left more legacies to kin, friends, and servants than did men, over the eighteenth century women began to leave two to three times more bequests to these individuals than did men."³³ In a study of wills in Southhampton, Froide observes that aunts helped their nieces by providing them with portions or property. For example, the widow Mary Carteret bequeathed two houses and the George Inn to her five nieces. Froide remarks, "Such property helped maintain at least one lifelong singlewoman, for Carteret's niece Frances Gollop was still single twenty-eight years after she had received her inheritance."³⁴ In her will from 1780, the never-married investor Mary Trevor left an annuity of £250 transferable at the Bank of England to her two sisters and then to her nieces.³⁵ In the absence of a husband or direct male heir, widows and non-married women controlled their own money and property, as Lennox's Henrietta and Burney's Cecilia depict.³⁶ While an absolute bequest to a wife was typically made with the understanding that the wife shared the same familial interest as her dying husband, widows could direct property and investments to other female relatives on their own accord and even redirect money destined for male blood relatives to non-blood-related women, such as a niece-in-law.

In fact, the twin situations we see in Cecilia—the uncle's will that bequeaths a large fortune to his niece, Cecilia, and the will of Mortimer's maternal aunt that bequeaths her fortune to Cecilia, a niece-in-law—were not that uncommon in actual practice. Nieces often receive special attention in wills from the period, as we saw in the case of Mary Carteret, yet they haven't received nearly as much scholarly attention as wives and daughters. In my work on Chancery cases of the period, I was struck by the number of nieces who used the court system to hold onto legacies (ranging from a £10 annual income to a £10,000 inheritance) not only from their uncles, but also from their aunts and other female relatives.³⁷ A few examples from the English Reports will underscore these practices and demonstrate the growing importance of aunt-niece legacies. In Williams v. Jones, we learn that Ann Jones left her nieces and nephews sizeable legacies, ranging from £100 to £150, and her god-daughter £10. She also designated Mary Jones, her great-niece, as co-executrix of her estate. Upon Ann Jones's death in 1804, Mr. Williams, the co-executor, sued Mary Jones and several of the nephews and nieces who were Ann's next of kin to have the rights of the residual estate declared. The court first recognized that the will bequeathed to Mr. Williams "twenty pounds for his trouble" without any payment to Mary Jones for her role as co-executrix and then declared Mary Jones the recipient of the estate's residue.

In another case from the English Reports, nieces fought to keep annuities from both their aunt and uncle. In Crompton v. Sale, Thomas Boddington, in a will dated 20 August 1726, bequeathed money to numerous female relatives. He left his sister, Mary Potter, an annuity of £10 and his sister's daughter, Elizabeth Potter, an annuity of £5. To his niece, Martha Nicholls, Boddington left an annuity of £10 and to her daughter Elizabeth an annuity of £5. He gave another niece, Martha Dimmock, an annuity of £10 and her daughter, Elizabeth Dimmock, £5. All of the annuities were to be paid by his wife, Elizabeth Boddington, out of his personal estate tax-free, and Boddington made his wife his sole executrix and residuary legatee.³⁸ It's notable that Boddington recognizes numerous women and their daughters in his will. But what drew this case into court was its use of matriarchal legacies. In 1728, Elizabeth Boddington made her own will, giving Elizabeth Potter an additional £5 "to her and her heirs for ever, in case she should survive her mother Mary Potter, and not otherwise." She gave Elizabeth Nicholls, the second daughter of her niece Martha Nicholls, an annuity of £5, her niece Martha Dimmock an annuity of £10, and to Martha's daughter, Elizabeth Dimmock, an annuity of £5. The question brought to the court was whether the annuities given by Elizabeth Boddington should be taken as a satisfaction of the similar annuities given to them by the will of Thomas Boddington ("they being bequeathed by her who having her husband's personal estate, was become a debtor in respect thereof, and consequently might intend the legacies in satisfaction of such debt") or whether the heirs should have the several annuities given to them by both wills? Citing numerous cases, the Lord Chancellor decided for the defendants: Martha and Elizabeth Dimmock, as well as Elizabeth Potter and Elizabeth Nicholls (if they should survive their respective mothers), should receive the annuities given to them by both wills.³⁹ He stated, "I see no reason why it may not be supposed the testatrix intended to be kind as well as just to her husband's relations, and to make an addition to what he had given them."⁴⁰ Therefore, the nieces prevailed in court, and were each granted both of the annuities bequeathed to them.

It comes as no surprise that women of the aristocracy were regularly involved in inheritance cases that eventually made it to Chancery. As I examined cases that involved female wills, it became clear that widowed heiresses demonstrated the importance of matriarchal legacies in their wills. Lady Lincoln v. Pelham is a notable Chancery case that reflects the economic power of the aristocratic heiress. Lady Catherine Pelham, in her will of 1 July 1775, bequeaths £4,000 each to her sons-in-law, the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Sondes, and £2,000 each to her two daughters, Lady Sondes and Mary Pelham (unmarried). She appoints another daughter, Frances Pelham (also unmarried), and Mary Pelham executrixes of her will and also bequeaths them "all the residue of her goods, chattels, and personal estate and effects … equally to be divided between them."⁴¹ In 1780, Lady Catherine made a codicil that revoked the legacy to the Duke of Newcastle. When she died in 1781, three petitions were presented to the court, including one from other sons of the Duke and the children of Lady Sondes suing for what they believed to be their rightful inheritance. The case would take over twenty years to settle. During this time, Mary Pelham died without issue and appointed her sister Frances to be her executrix. Unfortunately, Frances died in 1804 intestate, unmarried, and without issue. In his decision, the Lord Chancellor stated that the intention of the children's grandmother should be the primary consideration. He cited the will that designates that the "younger" children of her daughters inherit upon their mothers' deaths and finds that since there is only one surviving "youngest" child, he should receive three-quarters of the estate (£8,000) and the remaining portion should be distributed to those considered the "youngest" at the time of her death. Though a male grandson received the majority of the estate, Lady Catherine's steerage of her wealth and the legal trust set up to manage her bequests relied upon her daughters.

In Henry Davis v. Henry Gibbs, Administrator of Elizabeth Gibbs (1729), we see how Lady Boreman, in a will dated 1699, bequeathed "all her manors, messuages, lands, tenements, hereditaments, and real estate whatsoever in Kent, Essex, Bucks, Bedfordshire, or elsewhere within the kingdom of England, of which she was any way seised or entitled to, unto her nephew Henry Davis the appellant, and to her niece Elizabeth (the wife of the respondent Gibbs) for their lives equally, share and share alike; and after their decease, then the testatrix devised her said real estate to the heirs of her said nephew Henry Davis (the appellant) and of her said niece Elizabeth Gibbs, equally in equal parts, to hold them and their heirs, as tenants in common."⁴² Her niece Elizabeth Gibbs died without issue and her husband was her administrator. Is Henry Davis entitled to his sister's inheritance? Or should it go to her husband? After years of delays and appeals ("the cause had been four times heard in Chancery"), the Lord Chancellor ultimately decided "that the same belonged to the respondent the husband, as administrator to his wife, and not her brother the appellant, as heir at law." While the niece's inheritance ended up in her husband's hands, and not another woman's, what is important here is the potential for transfers of property between women. In another niece case, East et Maria Ux' v. Thornbury (1731), Thomas Thornbury left his niece £300, payable a year after his death. Her brother, as executor, held onto the legacy for two years, eventually paying his sister, Mary Thornbury, £300 without interest. Mary sued for the interest and won, with her brother ordered to "pay the arrears of interest from the year after the testator's death, with costs of suit."⁴³ As this and so many other cases, both pre- and post-Hardwicke, demonstrate, women not only included daughters in their wills, but also nieces, who played critical roles in the transmission of legacies and often successfully defend their inheritances in court. This phenomenon is reflected in inheritance plots such as those of Henrietta and Cecilia, in which nieces and other extended female relatives who receive bequests demonstrate changes in kinship relations and economies. With their financial importance being challenged and their role in inheritance practices shifting, women sought additional paths for female legacies. Needing to expand the familial net for their bequests and investments, women increasingly saw nieces as critical to female-to-female inheritance systems.

Middling and Working Rank Bequests

One of the most fascinating discoveries of regional studies is the increase in the number of women's wills in industrial towns. As women gained new economic power, they became increasingly concerned with their legacies. Industrial development created opportunities for them to hold property and create wealth. Maxine Berg argues that in the new industrial towns, such as Birmingham and Sheffield, a higher portion of women owned real property and had substantial amounts of cash to bequeath to their children. In those metal-working centers, 22.8% of women in Birmingham and 18.1% in Sheffield, nearly all of them spinsters or widows, left wills over the course of the eighteenth century.⁴⁴ For example, in the 1789 "Will and Probate of Elizabeth Andrews of Sheffield, Widow," Andrews left a small legacy to the couple she lived with and listed six other women as legatees.⁴⁵ Christine Wiskin's study of urban businesswomen in the period shows that their wills specifically designated their daughters or nieces as much as their sons or nephews to "inherit the assets which would enable them to continue family enterprises."⁴⁶ Wiskin observes that "widows or daughters came into their own when they inherited the business. They were now in a position to choose whether to wind it up and live on the proceeds, or to continue it."⁴⁷ Her study demonstrates that a "sizeable minority" of women who inherited businesses continued them. She describes widows who owned or managed properties and businesses as stand-ins for deceased husbands and who regarded spinster daughters as the "surrogate sons" of their parents. Wiskin asserts that "female life cycles explain why urban women had to provide for themselves; family circumstances were a form of empowerment, providing monetary and social capital for the widows and daughters of businessmen."⁴⁸ This economic power—typically regarded as male—would, in turn, provide opportunities for women to create matriarchal instead of patriarchal legacies. Indeed, women maneuvered their way through the inheritance system, many specifically bequeathing their inherited businesses to female relatives.

Though women bequeathed businesses, lent money, and otherwise participated in what was generally considered the male sphere of property exchange, the majority of women's wills bequeathed portable property, as entails and strict settlements limited the inheritance of land. Dorothy Howard's will from 1748 (not proved until 1760) reflects this practice. Though not wealthy, Howard was proud of her economic power and bestowed a legacy on her "poor servant who has given me undeniable proofs of her honesty uncommon fidelity and concern for me." She wrote: "I am persuaded my friend and relations will not blame me for bestowing upon my said servant all the residue of my estate I do therefore give devise and bequeath to the said Margaret White all the rest residue and remainder of my good cloaths money or securities."⁴⁹ From the mid-eighteenth century on, British women tended to bequeath more frequently to close female kin, friends, and servants than they had done previously (and more frequently than they did to men).⁵⁰ Even granddaughters saw increased visibility as inheritors. Mary Astell (not the celebrated writer) received a legacy from her grandmother, Mary Millington, which later became part of an inheritance dispute in Bouchier v. Horngold (1754). Ann Headlam's will of 1834 bequeathed a legacy to her niece, Mary Oates, who "was duly rewarded for many visits paid to her Aunt when she was sick." Mary received "linen, books, wine, wearing apparel and ornaments as well as a half share residual, which amounted to £145."⁵¹ These detailed bequests show how women embraced one of the few forms of legal independence and power allowed them. Bequests given by women to daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and female servants and friends indicate not only the increasing importance of self-fashioning in the process of writing or dictating a will and choosing items (however small) to bequeath, they also reveal how the female testator can bestow economic power on other women. Working within a restrictive patrilineal system, both wealthy and ordinary women found ways to maintain and bequeath to other women both their personal and their real property. In so doing, female-to-female bequests provided future models for inheritance and the opportunity for inheriting women to continue this practice.

Of course, will-making is integral to this inscription of female economic power and legacy, which is why so many novels attend to the dangers of lost inheritances. A rewriting of Evelina, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire's scandalous The Sylph (1779) depicts a series of female heiresses who control formerly "male" estates; yet, like Cecilia, it narrates the loss of matrilineal lines of property. The history of the inheritance of a comparatively minor character, Maria Maynard, speaks to the narrative possibilities of female economies and the threat that they supposedly pose to patrilineage. Edward Grenville, the father of the novel's heroine Julia, writes to his daughter informing her of his previously untold past. Poor, yet of good blood, he fell in love with a young "heiress of upwards of thirty thousand pounds," and despite the protestations of her family, they married.⁵² On the eve of her turning twenty-one, she suffered an attack of gout and died, leaving her will unsigned. The stipulations of her inheritance decreed that, should she die childless before she came of age, the large estate to which she was heiress would then "devolve upon a cousin": Maria Maynard. To intercept the estate and prevent its matrilinear transfer, Maria's father remarried, had a son with his second wife, and then falsely announced that Maria was dead, so that his son could inherit her fortune (Maria was so scarred from smallpox as to be unrecognizable).⁵³ Edward then sued on the theory that his former wife was entitled to her estate on the day of her marriage, despite being underage. Ultimately, Maria is disinherited and Edward recovers the estate, but in the meantime he eloped with Maria (who will become Julia's mother), which somehow softens the economic violence.

The Sylph thus dramatizes the male anxieties produced by female will-making and female-to-female bequests. Edward Grenville seeks legal counsel to uphold his claim on his former wife's estate, and Maria Maynard's father proceeds to remarry and father a child in the hope of intercepting his "dead" daughter's inheritance. Both cases involve litigation (though off-page). As women's roles as executrixes and administratixes increased, actual court cases from the period reflect a higher proportion of female litigants who were caught up in disputes over the estates of the deceased. A study of Chancery by Henry Horwitz found that women made up 14.4% of plaintiffs in 1627 and 21.2% by 1818-19.⁵⁴ In "Putting Women in Their Place: Female Litigants at Whitehaven, 1660-1760," Christine Churches examines regional court proceedings to show that "widows were often obliged to sue for maintenance."⁵⁵ Over half of the suits in Common Pleas and King's Bench records involved women "exercising administration of the effects of deceased husbands or brothers."⁵⁶ Churches remarks that "Widows' knowledge of property law and business strongly suggests their active participation in these areas of social life before their widowhood."⁵⁷ But while these regional studies demonstrate that women were active participants in litigation over their inheritances, studies such as those of Eileen Spring, Maxine Berg, and Eva König find that wealthy women increasingly favored private, rather than public legal proceedings over the course of the second half of the century, as we will see in Emmeline. I have highlighted some interesting cases that did go to court, but most suits, both in law and in equity, never progressed beyond the initial complaint and were generally settled through private agreement or arbitration.⁵⁸ Noting the increase in private legal structures, Berg argues that the decline of the widow-executrix, for example, reflects a shift in the management of household financial affairs to lawyers.⁵⁹ So while women certainly sought to litigate for their inheritances, they had to navigate the ever-growing realities of the legal doctrine of coverture, patriarchal court systems, and gendered notions of proper behavior.

Charlotte Smith, who notoriously fought in court for years for her own rightful inheritance and that of her children, places heiresses at the center of her plots in order to dramatize the financial strength of matriarchal economies.⁶⁰ A useful example is that of Emmeline, The Orphan of the Castle (1788), which opens with a complex legacy of female inheritance, symbolized by Mowbray Castle and its inhabitant Emmeline, the supposed "natural" (i.e., illegitimate) daughter of the deceased Mr. Mowbray. How Emmeline eventually secures her birthright and inherits the castle at the end of the novel is intricately detailed by Smith, as is the female role in the castle's ownership history. With the extinction of her family's male line, Lady Eleonore Delamere became "sole heiress, her husband took the name of Delamere; and obtaining one of the titles of the lady's father, was, at his death, created Viscount Montreville."⁶¹ In her will, Lady Delamere leaves her eldest son, Mr. Mowbray, "the large estate," and he then marries, having a son and two daughters. After Mr. Mowbray and his wife die, the castle passes to his younger brother, Lord Montreville, who finds it inhabited by the orphaned infant Emmeline. Since her parents eloped and were thought not to have been married when she was born, Emmeline is allowed to remain in the castle with its servants and is given the surname "Mowbray." Fifteen years later, Lord Montreville hands the castle (and its residents, including Emmeline) over to his son. While Lord Montreville and his son Delamere are confident that the castle's ownership is not at risk, Smith consistently gestures toward the Cinderella myth through Emmeline's sympathetic and disenfranchised position. As Eva König recognizes, Smith's protagonist must "both be impeccable in her behavior and yet become increasingly self-assertive as the narrative develops."⁶² At the close of the novel, Emmeline locates documents that not only prove her parents were indeed married (Mr. Mowbray married Miss Stavordale in France after Lady Delamere died), but also that Emmeline had been left the Mowbray estate by her father. After some legal intervention, Emmeline is declared owner of the estate. In fact, a set of lawyers helps Emmeline avoid a public lawsuit and instead reach a private agreement.⁶³

Effectively, this legal intervention results in Emmeline disinheriting her uncle, Lord Montreville, and his son (her cousin), Delamere. Smith recognizes the financial triumph that this represents by stating that Emmeline "saw an infinite deal for which to be grateful, and failed not to offer her humble acknowledgements to that Providence, which, from dependance and indigence, had raised her to the highest affluence; given her, in the tenderest of husbands, the best and the most generous and most amiable of men; and had bestowed on her the means and the inclination to deserve, by virtue and beneficence, that heaven where only she can enjoy more perfect and lasting felicity."⁶⁴ Mowbray Castle has become a symbol of matrilineal bonds; from being a site of contestation, it eventually becomes the site of Emmeline's mastery and advantage. Loraine Fletcher writes that "Emmeline's intelligence and humanity make her, rather than the Montrevilles, the right person to inherit and renovate Mowbray Castle, and to use the power that goes with it."⁶⁵ I agree, but Fletcher doesn't address the female legacy that has enabled Emmeline's proper inheritance. Indeed, Emmeline becomes a heroine of economic interest and success; economic considerations are allowed to play a part in her marriage choice and her virtue is rewarded nonetheless. As in many of her novels, Smith envisions women's successful navigation and overthrowing of patriarchal property ownership. In Emmeline, Smith politicizes her heroine's position, thereby creating a powerful fantasy of disinheriting male property owners. Emmeline benefits from the fact that her cousin Delamere, the previous owner of the castle, died in a duel and from the legal documents that surface proving her parents' marriage and her right to inherit the castle and estate. Yet as we have seen in actual court cases, legal structures were in place that rewarded patrilineal inheritance, limited married women's property ownership (through coverture), and restricted female inheritance.

Smith's courtship novel Celestina (1791) similarly includes numerous occasions of female-to-female gifting and inheritance. Celestina de Mornay, poor and without family connections, financially assists the attractive servant girl Jessy, befriends the abandoned Sophy Elphinstone, and financially assists Sophy's sister, the destitute and dying prostitute Emily. Yet it is Lady Horatia Howard's financial generosity that fully dramatizes the power of matriarchal gifting. The affectionate and philanthropic Lady Horatia is so impressed with Celestina's education, sensibility, and virtue that she rewrites her will, intending to provide Celestina a sort of "pin money" for her future marriage:

Her encreasing tenderness for Celestina, made her often reflect with uneasiness on her situation, and very earnestly wish to see her married … she knew that after having taken her as her daughter, and accustomed her to share all the indulgencies which her own rank and income procured, it would be a very painful reverse of fortune were she to leave her in the narrow circumstances in which she found her. To save much out of her jointure had never been her wish, and was hardly now in her power. Her own fortune, in default of children, returned to her brother; and all she had to dispose of was about two thousand pounds. This she gave, by a will made in the fourth month of their being together, to Celestina; and with this, and what she before had, she thought that Celestina might, if married to Montague Thorold, enjoy through life that easy competence which was the utmost of her ambition.⁶⁶

Lady Horatia navigates her own inheritance and finances, carefully ensuring that Celestina (who at this point in the novel has not yet been discovered to be a relative) is provided for, so that she may enjoy a form of financial independence in marriage. This virtuous gifting differs from the novel's patrilineal inheritance plot. Willoughby's uncle, Lord Castlenorth, settles a large sum of money on him when he becomes engaged to the Castlenorths' daughter, a reward for keeping both estates within the family. When Castlenorth dies without discovering that the engagement has been broken off, Willoughby keeps the money without any retribution or criticism. And when Willoughby eventually marries her, Celestina benefits from this inheritance as well.

While, as we saw, the success of Cecilia's and Celestina's inheritance and female gifting is tempered, Emmeline convincingly depicts female lines of succession and the inheritance of portable property that enables its heroine a certain amount of personal and economic agency. While Austen will pillory the Miss Bingleys and de Bourghs for their outspoken financial power, Smith rewards her virtuous, yet financially interested heroines with their birthrights, good husbands, and ultimately the keys to the castle.

The Decline of the Actual Heiress and the Rise of the Literary Heiress

By Jane Austen's day, English inheritance practices were largely patrilineal. The entail on Norland, which disinherits the Dashwood women in Sense and Sensibility (1811), and that on Longbourn in Pride and Prejudice (1813), which results in the disinheritance of the five Bennet sisters, are two well-known fictional examples of the consolidation and retention of property. Non-portable property (houses, land) was primarily funneled to male children—or, in the case of Longbourn, to Mr. Collins, a male cousin—through entail. For many historians, this resulted in what has often been termed the "great decline of the female heiress." While historians such as Lawrence and Jeanne Fawtier Stone concluded that the percentage of English heiresses actually rose in this period (to a high of 17% of all heirs in 1760-79), more recent studies of wills and court cases tell the story of a deterioration in women's access to property.⁶⁷ In Novel Relations, Ruth Perry traces the legal disinheritance of daughters in the eighteenth century and fictional treatments of this phenomenon. Perry is reacting to studies, such as that of the Stones, which she believes are embedded in class bias and misleading, male-centered views of the eighteenth-century family. To counter such biases, she recovers traditional maternal constructions of the family, noting that "English society had always prized its daughters" and that through both the maternal and paternal lines "daughters inherited as well as sons, and widows had substantial property rights in their deceased husbands' estates. Daughters inherited property before collateral male relatives, and in landed families daughters were sometimes given land as their marriage portion."⁶⁸ Yet according to Perry, the seventeenth century witnessed a shift from this bilateral kin system to a lineage system defined primarily by male primogeniture and the marriage of first-born sons.⁶⁹ By mid-century, the erosion of provisions for daughters, wives, and widows in equity, manorial, and ecclesiastical courts as well as common law was evident.⁷⁰

Provisions in common law began limiting women's inheritance of land, and a series of statutes in ecclesiastical law reduced what counted as a reasonable portion for a woman of her husband's or father's moveable goods from as much as two-thirds to one-third or less.⁷¹ Spring argues that the proportion of families who, by chance, had no heirs at all and only female collateral relatives, combined with those who had only female heirs, adds up to between 25% and 40% of all inheritances.⁷² Spring demonstrates how collateral male relatives (such as the brothers of a woman's father or even a nephew) were often placed in the line of succession if there were no male offspring in a family.⁷³ By the early eighteenth century, strict settlement became the primary means by which land passed between members of the gentry and aristocracy. Inherited property was transferred according to terms set out by property owners. According to Lloyd Bonfield, "Property holders were freer to fashion individualized strategies of inheritance than strict adherence to the customs of inheritance would have allowed."⁷⁴ Yet this partial freedom to individualize bequests had its drawbacks. Bonfield finds that "the considerable quantity of litigation over dispositions suggests that the designs of property holders were not always respected. Numerous suits were probably initiated and then settled, leaving the historian with some doubt as to the actual distribution of family property."⁷⁵

Following strict settlement provisions, women's hereditary rights were ultimately made secondary since the agreements often followed primogeniture in entailing property through the successive eldest sons. Spring claims that aristocratic women's portions had been steadily shrinking over the course of the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth century "inheritance would not be traced through [the heiress] except as a last resort … the interests of the patriline were uppermost."⁷⁶ She notes that by the end of the eighteenth century, "only 11 percent of peers' sons had married heiresses."⁷⁷ Similarly, in his seminal study of landownership, John Habakkuk finds that there was a decline in the number of heiresses from the mid-eighteenth century onwards "because of demographic changes," including attitudes that valued seeking dynastic advantage through marriage (i.e., the landed family had become commercial).⁷⁸ This shift diminished women as landowners, but emphasized their role as conduits in the patrilineal transmission of land. Perry recognizes the peril this posed, asserting that for numerous, interrelated reasons, "women of both the landowning and working classes lost economic power within the family and status in society in the course of the eighteenth century."⁷⁹ Women found themselves more powerful as wives than as daughters because as wives they could bring property into a family, whereas daughters only shared in the estate and so reduced what could be passed on to future generations.⁸⁰

In addition to economic, demographic, and familial changes, there were numerous legal reasons for the decline of the heiress. Among its other purposes, Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act was "aimed at preventing heirs or heiresses from being duped into marriage with persons (ostensibly fortune-hunters) who were socially and/or economically inferior."⁸¹ While the Act benefited and protected women and helped to better regulate property, it may have also contributed to the commercialization of marriage by causing "property in land to become entangled to its detriment with self-interest."⁸² By both limiting and protecting women's financial independence, these restrictions included the transference of power to parental and marital guardians. Essentially, under the guise of providing security, these Acts partly limited women's inheritance and financial independence.

With the rise of female economic power and the emergence of laws that attempted to stifle that power, it is no wonder that legal cases involving monied heiresses declined in the period; as we saw in Smith's Emmeline, women increasingly sought private, rather than public, legal means to negotiate their inheritances. An example of women's dispossession by the legal system may be found in Dormer v. Parkhurst (1740). John Dormer, a member of a collateral branch of the Dormer family, challenged the possession of land by three sisters identified in a will as heirs-general (a situation in which property passed to a new owner according to a fixed order of kinship). The courts dispossessed the three sisters after they had been in possession for twelve years.⁸³ Spring remarks, "We may be sure that had Fleetwood [Dormer]'s heirs not been female the case would never have arisen. John Dormer would not likely have challenged a male in the senior branch of the family who was in possession."⁸⁴ Noting that English landowners had moved from lineal to patrilineal principles, Spring recognizes that the heiress in gentry and aristocratic families experienced a great downward slide.⁸⁵ Contradicting studies such as that of the Stones, she claims that only 13% of inheritances between 1540 and 1780 went either to or through women.⁸⁶ Legal developments restricting heiresses' rights and favoring private legal arrangements over public court cases resulted in the transplantation of the heiress from the margins of legal discourse to the center of fictional plots. Virginia Cope, Cheryl Nixon, Eva König, and others recognize that, as a result of this shift, heiresses became abundant in fiction. They not only nostalgically reflect an earlier economic practice, they also speak to the growing anxieties about threats to patrilineal inheritance (such as illegitimate children). By centering plots on rightful heiresses and their birthrights, manipulative male relatives who sought to siphon off an heiress's property, and virtuous natural daughters who ultimately discover their true parentage and are rewarded with social and economic status, female authors reacted to patrilineage and biased legal structures by dramatizing successful matrilineal economies.

Austen's Female Economies

Numerous studies of Jane Austen have focused on the material disadvantages of women and the heroines in her novels.⁸⁷ We can agree that, although Austen certainly depicts notable heiress-heroines, such as Emma Woodhouse or Anne Elliott, and numerous minor heiresses (such as Miss Grey, Miss Bingley, or Mary Crawford), many of her heroines are socially and economically vulnerable (the Bennet sisters, the Dashwood sisters, Fanny Price) and threatened by relative poverty, despite the fact that they are often from genteel families. Yet embedded in these plots of economic danger that seems to offer no material benefit to women, there are some notable examples of successful matriarchal inheritance plots. For instance, the widowed Mrs. Ferrars, in Sense and Sensibility, is a wealthy, manipulative mother who commands her first son Edward with the threat of disinheritance.⁸⁸ In fact, she eventually disinherits him for refusing to marry an heiress—"the Hon. Miss Morton, only daughter of the late Lord Morton, with thirty thousand pounds"—and persevering in his engagement to Lucy Steele, who quickly transfers her affections to the now favored son, Robert. When Robert pursues the poor, sycophantic Lucy, Mrs. Ferrars is forced to accept the match and provide them with a thousand a year, which allows Edward to pursue his true love, Elinor Dashwood. Despite all this, we are supposed to somehow accept the novel's concluding statement regarding the alliance between Lucy, Robert, Mrs. Ferrars, and John and Fanny Dashwood: "nothing could exceed the harmony in which they all lived together."⁸⁹ In the end, not only is Lucy's economic self-interest rewarded, Austen also suggests that money-wielding widows cannot ultimately overpower young love. Mrs. Ferrars may not have the daughters-in-law she would like, but she can rest assured that her main responsibility has been achieved: the Ferrars' name and estate will continue in the patrilineal line.

With this reading of the powerful heiress-widow in mind, I wish to close by considering a similar economic situation, that of the de Bourgh women in Pride and Prejudice, who have received relatively little critical attention.⁹⁰ Extremely wealthy, Lady Catherine has been seen as a "larger comic target than the novel's more conventionally silly girls and women."⁹¹ Elsie Michie recognizes that, for Austen, Lady Catherine and Miss Bingley "represent wealth's propensity to corrupt the moral sentiments."⁹² While I agree that Austen caricatures these "vulgar," "indelicate" women, providing negative models for virtuous women to reject in terms of their attitudes toward property, I would also claim that we can look to the de Bourghs as powerful symbols of matriarchal economies. In fact, their financial situation perhaps simultaneously signals both a remembrance of lineal inheritance (now wasted and sickly because of the growing dominance of patrilineal practices) and a rejection of the entail practices that haunt the Bennets. The haughty and powerful widow, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who presides over an elaborate estate, Rosings, wields her economic and social power throughout the novel, directing the Bennet family, approving of Mr. Collins's marriage, and in some ways controlling Fitzwilliam Darcy, her nephew. Should she survive her mother, the sickly Anne de Bourgh, the only child and invalid daughter of Lady Catherine, will inherit a massive fortune through the maternal line, including Rosings, an estate that is not entailed (Lady Catherine famously pronounces, "Otherwise I see no occasion for entailing estates from the female line. It was not thought necessary in Sir Lewis de Bourgh's family").⁹³ By anticipating that Anne will marry her maternal first cousin, Lady Catherine seeks to have her estate consolidated with the Darcy family's Pemberley. Such a match would result in significant material advantage, not only in terms of portable wealth, but also in land, an asset increasingly kept from women. Yet as with many cousin-couples in Austen, the match is never looked on as favorable and it never materializes.⁹⁴ Austen may focus on the resentments and damaging effects of inheritance, but with Mrs. Ferrars, Miss Bingley, and the de Bourghs, we are also reminded of the economic power that matriarchal inheritance can wield and endow.

Conclusion

Primogeniture made very wealthy heiresses a rarity, yet, as I have shown, matriarchal bequeathing—though often minimized in plots—abounded in eighteenth-century literature and society. Legal regulations may have attempted to control women's economic power and behavior, but will-making women often made female-to-female bequests, from small gestures transferring personal belongings to larger gifts of businesses, buildings, and land. While working- and middling-rank women's wills that included personal bequests to other women flourished in the period, the monied heiress saw a decline. In fiction, however, the figures of the business-minded, maternal heiress and the controlling, rich widow ultimately wielded the power of matrilineal inheritance. I see these female birthright and inheritance plots responding to the broader concerns about female economic power: the rightful heiress who financially supports or makes bequests to other women symbolizes the potential for women of all ranks to continue diverse forms of female bequests, despite the limitations placed upon them by gender norms and the law. These cultural anxieties about women, femininity, and the marketplace eventually produce a myriad of heiresses in the nineteenth-century novel, which further explores the moral conundrum of femininity and the amassing of wealth. Indeed, Jane Eyre is an exemplar of the heiress who gifts wealth and independence to her poor female relations. Yet it is in the emerging capitalism of the eighteenth century that we find these female economic forces first played out in fiction. And as women's reliance on the legal system to rightfully distribute bequeathed property waned, the novel took up these concerns about property and its proper regulation and transmission, allowing women to symbolically and literally hold the keys to the castle.