I recently based part of my Property final exam on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Generations of English lit professors have spilled barrels of ink over this book; but, as far as I know, most of them haven't placed much emphasis on the fact that the plot hinges on a point of property law.
The reason why it is so important for Mr. and Mrs. Bennet's five daughters to find wealthy husbands is that they cannot inherit their father's estate, since it is subject to the fee tail - a now archaic form of property estate that was required to pass through the male line. As a result, upon Mr. Bennet's death, his land (which forms the overwhelming majority of his wealth) will go to his nearest male relation, the despicable Mr. Collins. In the early nineteenth century, few women could acquire significant wealth other than by inheriting it or marrying into it; thus the Bennets' predicament. As Austen explains in Chapter 7:
Mr. Bennet's property consisted almost entirely in an estate of two thousand a year, which, unfortunately for his daughters, was entailed, in default of heirs male, on a distant relation; and their mother's fortune, though ample for her situation in life, could but ill supply the deficiency of his.
This plot device is far from the only property-related issue in Pride and Prejudice. It is striking that nearly all the villains in the story (Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Collins, and others), are motivated in large part by a desire to acquire valuable landholdings for themselves or their children. In another part of the story, Austen censures big landowners for looking down on merchants who make their living through trade rather than from income derived from their landholdings. Similar negative views of big landowners appear in several of Austen's other novels, especially Mansfield Park and Persuasion. On the other hand, Austen wasn't completely negative in her attitude towards the landed gentry. The good qualities of one of the key positive characters in Pride and Prejudice are first revealed through the care he bestows on his estate and its tenants.
I'm not going to argue that an understanding of property law is essential to your appreciation of Jane Austen and her work. But it can certainly help! Indeed, property law is probably second only to criminal law as a legal influence on great literature. Yet another reason to study Property (not that we need any more:))! You don't see too many great novels that feature legal issues in corporate law or civil procedure.
UPDATE: I should note, for those who have expressed concern about this issue, that the final exam in question is over, and that in any event knowing that the characters are drawn from Pride and Prejudice would not help anyone answer the questions I based on them; the property issues in the question are not the same as those in the actual novel (unfortunately for the students, the ones on the exam are more complicated:)).
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Austen also includes rights of presentation, which I suppose we now meet only through literature.
No.
I didn't include Wickham in the post because if I did people would accuse me of spoiling the plot. But I think it's pretty obvious that Austen intended to portray him as even worse than Collins (though with somewhat similar motivations).
If that's crazy, please ignore me. Finals outlining and all. ;)
I wouldn't describe either Mrs Bennet or Mr Collins as "villains", and Collins certainly isn't seeking more property. His first appearance is when he comes around to marry one of the Bennet girls, evidently feeling obligated to provide for his cousins in so far as he can. He's a toady to his patroness, but "despicable" fits another character far better.
The entailed estate was also a driving force in Mansfield Park. Since the estate was entailed, Edmund, as the second son was forced to go into the clergy. When it looks like the eldest son might die, leaving Edmund with raised expectations, his fiancee betrays her true colors, and Edmund is outraged.
And, its been a while since I've read it, but I think The Way We Live Now raises some questions of corporate formality. I could be off on this, because I don't remember exactly the nature of Melmotte's swindle.
For landed estates, income would primarily come from tenant's rent. It could also derive from granting rights to certain uses of the land -- cutting timber, hunting, fishing. And the landholder might also be entitled to some profit sharing from businesses in the villages on the estate, again depending on the area.
Bennett's estate, as a fee tail, was of course in interests in real property. So his income almost exclusively would come from the rents and other forms that I mentioned. His wife's income would have been tied up in whatever settlement was made upon their marriage, and is more likely to come from passive investments.
Well, that's good.
A further point. Corporations surely were not very important at the time of Jane Austen's book. Or, maybe the lack of them was important, but we have a very hard time seeing the importance of that which does not yet exist. That takes too much imagination.
What about Civil Procedure? Did the obscure pleading requirements in place in England at the time have any affect on power relations between different classes of citizens?
Overall, I would agree that Property Law is more important than Corporate Law or Civil Procedure in Pride and Prejudice. But, I think the degree of importance can be overstated. And, I think that the importance is more equalized as we move to more modern literature.
One final point. Property Law plays a role in Pride and Prejudice, but, really only in a very simple way. I am not sure that anything one learns in a Property Law course would in fact give one a deeper understanding of the novel.
Yes, of course Property has always been important. The fact that some people own things, exclude others from using those things, and use things to exert influence over others is of course immensely important. However, most often, the more obscure legal rules (precisely the ones one would need to take a course in Property Law to better grasp) that govern property are not central to this narrative. Instead, the rules that anyone can very easily grasp (like the idea that there exists a law allowing only male relatives to inherit) seem to be central.
I would suggest that what perhaps one learns in an MBA course might be more useful to understanding property in action than what one learns taking a course in Property Law. In my view, if you are really interested in property, you are better off learning about economics, finance, business, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and history than you are learning about the more intricate and obscure details of law.
And I'm not saying that because she's my Mother-In-Law and Christmas Dinner is coming soon.
Really.
In England the yeoman class was very small and had little impact on the law. The nobility was powerful but also small. The gentry -- and its unlanded sons who went into politics, the law, the clergy, and the military -- very much dominated English law and government. They also dominated the countryside, because most country residents in England were either the gentry's hired labor or tenants (either at-will or on extended lease) or supervisory staff. This fact, and its social ramifications form the background for all Thomas Hardy's novels, e.g., the complexly changing interactions between Bathsheba and Gabriel in Far from the Madding Crowd.
Interestingly, as Hobsbawm and Rude point out (Captain Swing, Phoenix Press, Eric Hobsbawm and George Rude) in Europe most land was held by small landholders practicing subsistence farming. This large peasant class lacked political power, since they were too busy surviving to involve themselves in law or politics. This may be part of the explanation why relatively democratic and liberal government arose so early and so organically in England as compared withn the rest of Europe.
The relations between John Dashwood and his step-mother step-sisters are governed by his control of the inherited property. The animosity between Lucy Steele and the sisters of Edward Ferrars exists because they see her as an importunate gold-digger. (She unexpectedly links up with the younger Robert Ferrars, whose inheritance was made almost-certain by the engagement between herself and Edward...which makes her status as gold-digger certain. Despite the fact that the fortune was settled onto Edward almost immediately afterwards...)
But I suspect that I only point out the obvious.
Of course, even in a work of fiction devoted to solving crimes, Property Law may play as much of a role as Criminal Law. The much more recent English author P.D. James used Property Law and inheritance as a significant plot point in several of her criminal dramas/murder mysteries.
Exactly this situation happens in Felix Holt, except with the lapse of a few more generations -- an entailed property was alienated from one line of a family, which continued on, losing money and social status, for generations. Finally there's only one representative of the line left, a poor paperhanger, and he dies. Immediately on his death, the valuable property reverted to a distant cousin (female -- this wasn't a fee tail male), with no knowledge of it or expectations of any inheritance.
I read the book while taking Property, and enjoyed it immensely, mostly because I can't imagine that plotline being comprehensible on any level beyond "And then a miracle occured" to most readers.
Although sadly in decline, there used to be a substantial body of English (specifically, I think) literature that dealt with advowsons - a field that has sadly declined.
I agree with the other commentators - these are not villains, they are comic characters who amuse us and for whom we sometimes feel contempt.
I actually occasionally put "fee tail" questions on my exam. My only object is to make sure that the students are aware of how a conveyance "to A and the heirs of his body."
Of course, that raises the question of how Atticus violated attorney-client confidentiality by explaining the particulars of an individual's legal situation to his daughter . . .
The students in question are 2Ls.
All of them, don't they? Doesn't one need a to first obtain a grounding in animals ferae naturae before one can proceed?
That would be in Criminal Law, I believe.
I also second the vote for Anthony Trollope. His descriptions of legal process are amazingly good - better than anything I've ever seen from any other non-lawyer. See, e.g. The Eustace Diamonds, which turns heavily on a dispute about ownership of property (including said diamonds) and even includes a written legal opinion on the subject.
I spend about 2-3 minutes in class on the fee tail, which is all that it requires to get students to understand what it is. To teach the RAP effectively requires vastly more time - time that is better spent on other things.
A bit. Pretty much the first thing she'd learned about him was that he was really, really rich — £10,000 a year, if memory serves. What she learned at Pemberley was what he did with his money, and how he treated his sister.
Also, you are being too cynical about Elizabeth's impressions at Pemberley. She is certainly overwhelmed by the estate, but she is softened to Darcy because of the servants' prevailing attitudes about him. If he truly lived up to her ideas about him, the servants would not have been so glowing in their praise and admiration. Also, the care of the estate helps to show how seriously he took his duties as the master of the estate, which in part means how well he treated his tenants and servants.
'Willy-Nilly' and Other Tales of Male-Tails: Rightful and Wrongful Laws of Landed Property in Northanger Abbey and Beyond; by Dierdre Gilbert
or
Patriarchy and Married Women's Property in England: Questions on Some Current Views; by S.M. Okin
It's a fairly developed field, although I think there's plenty of room for a JD holder to go back to an English dept. with loads of ideas.
According to this article, in 1890, Darcy's income was about the minimum one needed to maintain a large manor house. Assume that 80 years earlier, it was somewhat over the minimum. That's enough to make him rich. But, as I said before, he was still not in the same league as the 'really, really rich.'
In the U.S., during the Gilded Age, a millionaire was certainly rich. And a person could live happily on an income of a couple of thousand per year. To that person, of course, the millionaire is "really, really rich". But to the folks out in Newport, the Vanderbilts and the Astors, a regular millionaire wasn't even a blip on the radar. The same thing probably goes for Mr. Darcy.