] Disclaimer: My scholarship is no doubt--NO doubt--not up to the level to which you are all accustomed on this board, but I did want to try to participate in this discussion, if I can keep up with you all.

Well, you're way ahead of me, Barbara. I haven't even had the time to go out and find reading material, let alone read it. But I am sitting down at the computer for some moments every day, and I'll be following the discussion with great interest even if I can't contribute much to it.

] ... she was still the daughter of a clergyman herself, and so I don't know that she would ever have looked higher than to be the wife of a clergyman herself.

That makes sense. I do get the sense though that she was quite proud of her better connections. I remember reading somewhere--possibly in Claire Tomalin's biography--that Cassandra Leigh was quite proud of the aristocratic nose she'd inherited from her family. ;-)

] ...it was not too surprising that he should want a family life of his own, considering that his mother died when he was one or two years old and his father when he was six and then he and his two sisters were passed around among various relatives.

Wow, what an astute observation! :-) It will be interesting to keep this in mind when we look at how Jane and her siblings were raised.