Wives as Servants and the Transfer of Wealth

Brit

As I was doing research for my final project, I found an article on Mansfield Park that uses many of Veblen’s arguments to describe the leisure class found in the novel.  One of the most profound was that the housewife of a man from the leisure class was basically a servant.  In fact, on page 60, Veblen easily transitions from using the term servant to the term wife.  “The servant or wife should not only perform certain offices and show a servile disposition, but it is quite as imperative that they should show an acquired facility in the tactics of subservience – a trained conformity to the canons of effectual and conspicuous subservience.  [I]t is this aptitude and acquired skill in the formal manifestation of the servile relation that constitutes…one of the chief ornaments of the well-bred housewife” (60).  What makes this so striking is that in Mansfield Park, Fanny Price is in fact a servant in the service of her aunts.  When Henry Crawford is vying for her hand in marriage, he knows that she is trained to be in the service of others.  He knows that having her as a wife will not harm his status in the leisure class, but more likely solidify it since she is already accustomed to subservience and using her time for others.  She would be the perfect leisure class wife because she would certainly know her place in the household due to the way she grew up, and she would understand her position.

            Also, Mansfield Park as well as many of Austen’s other novels display the possession of wealth as an important factor in the leisure class.  “Wealth is not itself intrinsically honourable and confers honour on its possessor.  By a further refinement, wealth acquired passively by transmission from ancestors or other antecedents presently becomes even more honorific than wealth acquired by the possessor’s own effort” (29).  Sir Thomas is able to pass his estate and his holdings onto his son, and that is a key feature of the leisure class.  His son Tom is in possession of a wealth he did not have to work for or toil over, which in this case has serious backlash, but overall the wealth was transferred from father to son, showing the honor of their family and their status.  The passing of wealth is more honorable in Pride and Prejudice since Darcy inherited his land and status from his father.  Darcy’s acquisition is more honorable because of the way he takes care of the estate and his holdings, ensuring that it will pass onto his own son, and ensuring his and his family’s status.