Letter the Seventh -- Edward to Augusta: “Support! What Support will Laura want which she can receive from him?"
"Only those very insignificant ones of Victuals and Drink," (answered she).
"Victuals and Drink! (replied my Husband in a most nobly contemptuous Manner) and dost thou then imagine that there is no other support for an exalted Mind (such as is my Laura's) than the mean and indelicate employment of Eating and Drinking?"
"None that I know of, so efficacious," (returned Augusta).”
Even in Jane Austen’s juvenilia, financial “support” rears its ugly and ubiquitous head! Can you think of any examples in her later works that also contrast romance with finance? Charlotte Lucas comes to mind in Pride and Prejudice…
Well, Anne was persuaded not to marry the penniless Wentworth in "Persuasion." And Willoughby gives up Marianne in S&S to marry money. Emma squelches Harriet's romance with Mr. Martin because she thinks they are not social equals.
ReplyDeleteI think of JA as being romantically pragmatic. She thinks it's foolish that romance alone could win the day and makes fun of people who think you can live on love alone. On the other hand, she disdains matches made purely for material reasons. Loveless, shallow marriages among the gentry are one of the most common targets of her satire.