I fully realise that their significant drop in income would have been a large shock for the Dashwood sisters and their mother but the Dashwoods will still have enough money to live comfortably. In a time when a farm worker could expect to earn £25 in a year, and have to maintain “himself, his wife, and half a dozen children in food, lodging, clothes, and fuel” (Anna Laetitia Barbauld and John Aiken, Evenings at Home: Or, the Juvenile Budget Opened, 1846, written between 1793 and 1796), the Dashwoods are fortunate.

Yes, they will lose their carriage and horses, as well as some of their servants and a considerable fall in income per annum, but that is just hard luck! They are certainly not impecunious. As I said in my post, “Five hundred a year”: “Their standard of living will be different from what they are used to: a large Sussex estate, and they may have to economise more but they are a long way from being on the breadline. JA’s families may be deprived of some things, but they are never seriously badly off.”.

This is my point: the Dashwoods will have to reduce their expenditure quite considerably, especially as there were large taxes on items such as tea and sugar, but they are nowhere near being poor. They have kindly, wealthy relations belonging to the gentry, who can help them out. In that respect, they are very privileged as they can be secure in the thought that they will never fall into destitution.

However, it is very difficult to accurately compare; as Edward Copeland says, “Money in Jane Austen’s novels has an uncanny way of seeming so much like our own that we run the serious mistake of thinking that it is” (Jane Austen in Context, p. 317).