Jane Austen For Dummies (30 page)

Assuming the future wife brought a dowry into the marriage, the future husband's lawyer, working with the woman's family's lawyer, would prepare a
marriage settlement,
also called
marriage articles.
This contract stipulated many scenarios to “settle” money on the wife and children:

Having a marriage settlement was important for a woman because after her husband died, the bulk of his estate normally went to the eldest son, who was the heir. The marriage settlement ensured that the widow could continue to live in comfort after she moved from the estate so that her eldest son, with his family, could move in as the new heir. Furthermore, the marriage settlement could help support the younger children so they could live and marry well. This was needed as there was no insurance to support a widow or children.

Jane Austen's novels show that she was very much aware of these premarital legal workings between the bride and groom. In
Pride and Prejudice,
the Bennets' marriage settlement is clearly spelled out: “Five thousand pounds was settled by marriage articles on Mrs. Bennet and the children” (3:8). In Volume 1, Chapter 7 of the novel, Mrs. Bennet's father, Mr. Gardiner, a country attorney (not genteel), “Had left her four thousand pounds.” Presumably that was her dowry, and the marriage articles added another thousand pounds from Mr. Bennet: “[I]n what proportions [the resulting 5,000 pounds] should be divided among [the Bennet children] depended on the will of the parents” (3:8). Here is a case, then, with the bride's dowry supplemented by £1,000 from the groom. This may sound like a lot. But consider that the Bingley sisters “had a fortune of twenty thousand pounds,” and Georgiana Darcy's fortune is £30,000 (PP 1:4, 2:12).

In
Persuasion,
we also hear of marriage articles but with behavioral stipulations involved instead of property. Mrs. Smith speculates that Mr. William Elliot will marry Anne Elliot and suggests that Mr. Elliot, to preserve the Kellynch Estate and Baronetcy for his future sons, will “‘put into the marriage articles . . . that [Anne's] father is not to marry Mrs. Clay'” (2:9). If Sir Walter Elliot, Anne's father, was to marry the young Mrs. Clay, and they were to have a son, the estate and the Elliot Baronetcy would, of course, go to their son, thus cutting off Mr. William Elliot's prospects for both land and title.

Another item that could be discussed and arranged prior to the marriage was the jointure. A
jointure
is an agreement stipulating that the wife would receive a portion — traditionally one-third of it — of her husband's estate when her husband died. With a sufficient jointure, a widow had control over her property. And for this reason, most widows with ample jointures didn't remarry; otherwise, they would then find their property again controlled by their new husbands. Lady Russell feels the freedom from marriage after her husband dies and she's “extremely well provided for” and has “no thought of a second marriage” (1:1). Freedom at last!

If all of this sounds like a lot of money dealing — and it was — remember that Austen's day didn't have pensions or insurance. So people had to look out for their financial well-beings.

When a gentlewoman married, her parents purchased wedding clothes for her, which was an entire wardrobe including fashionable clothes for all occasions, ranging from ball gowns to riding habits.

Traditionally, the bride was married in a formal white bridal gown, but she did have the option of wearing her best dress instead, which could be white or some other color.

The bride normally wore her best dress, but it did not have to be white. (By the same token, it was not black or red.) White was a popular dress color for young ladies of the gentry because it suggested their wealth: They had maids to keep their dresses clean. Thus, the fashion conscious Mrs. Allen reminds Catherine that Miss Tilney “‘always wears white'” and advises Catherine to wear her white gown when she calls on Miss Tilney (NA 1:12). A wealthy bride of the gentry like Maria Bertram was “elegantly dressed” for her wedding, and Fanny, a bridesmaid, wore a white gown with “glossy spots” (MP 2:3, 2:5). But when Emma and Mr. Knightley marry, Austen writes that “the wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade” (E 3:19). Mrs. Elton, ever jealous of Emma, even snidely remarks that Emma's wedding is “very inferior to her own,” having “‘Very little white satin, very few lace veils'” (3:19).

The elaborate white wedding dress with a long train only began with Queen Victoria's marriage in 1840. In Austen's day, young ladies commonly wore for any occasion white muslin columnar or tube-shaped dresses, usually beautifully decorated with needlework. A white chemise or slip was worn underneath, serving as underwear. When Fanny wears her bridesmaid dress to a dinner party, she is concerned that she will appear “‘too fine,'” but her cousin Edmund reassures her, saying, “‘A woman can never be too fine when she is all in white'” (MP 2:5). While white is traditionally associated with purity, white gowns in Austen's time also reflected the contemporary taste for ancient Grecian and Roman fashion. Austen lived at the end of the English neoclassical age; hence, the taste for the straight, white dresses seen in classical sculpture.

Meanwhile, the groom wasn't just sitting around, although he didn't have to rent a tuxedo. At the wedding, he wore his best clothes, too. Prior to the wedding, the groom's main project was usually to buy a new coach for himself and his bride. But sometimes they fall down on the job. When the newly-wed Maria Bertram and Mr. Rushworth leave Mansfield Park, the neighbors note that they are in the “same chaise which Mr. Rushworth had used for a twelvemonth before. In everything else the etiquette of the day may stand the strictest investigation” (MP 2:3).

In Austen's day, the couple who planned to marry had a choice among three ways to head to the altar in the Church of England. Couples selected their way based on their economic and social status. Because Austen writes about the gentry, it is likely that most of her characters marry by the license, discussed below. But in
Emma
when the farmer Robert Martin and Harriet Smith marry, it is more likely they would choose the banns. Like just about everything else in Austen's world, one's class determined one's choices and conduct.

With a Special License, the couple had more latitude in terms of choosing the location and time to be married. With the banns or the ordinary license, the couple married in the bride's or groom's parish church. (See the next section on the canonical hours.)

Weddings occurred only during the canonical hours, between 8:00 a.m. and noon — unless the pair had the Special License, which allowed them to marry later in the day, if they chose. Unless couples were very showy or very important, they invited only family and close friends. After the wedding ended, the bride and groom and their guests adjourned somewhere for the wedding breakfast. The most important thing to note is that people in Austen's day did not have the elaborate weddings we attend today.

The breakfast normally included a wedding cake, which, unlike today's tiered wedding cakes, was similar to a fruit cake with icing. The couple might also use the breakfast as the occasion to distribute little gifts to their guests, which ranged from little trinkets to larger gifts.

Of course, a couple could simplify the whole marriage process and elope to Scotland. People crossed the border to the nearest Scottish village, Gretna Green, and declared before a witness — any witness — their desire to marry. Usually, the witness was the local blacksmith. This very loose marriage “ceremony” could occur in Scotland because the rules of the Scottish Presbyterian Church were far more lax than those of the Church of England.

In
Pride and Prejudice,
Lydia initially goes with Wickham and writes to her sister Kitty that they are headed to Gretna Green (3:5). While her older sisters, Jane and Elizabeth, are horrified at the news, at least Lydia would have been “married” to Wickham before she started to cohabitate with him. A woman living with a man out of wedlock was simply unthinkable — though it did happen, as Austen, no prude, realized. With the double standard, the shame was thrown on the woman. The reader learns that Wickham had no intention of marrying Lydia and had planned to make “his fortune by marriage, in some other country” (PP 3:10). This would have left Lydia a fallen woman: the “spiteful old ladies” of her village think she has already “come upon the town” (become a prostitute) (PP 3:8). Had Wickham not been forced to marry her, she would have shared the fate of Maria Bertram: being sent to live with an older woman companion on a small allowance to a remote country house.

But elopement was frowned upon as a bad start to a marriage. Austen shows how forced marriages or elopements lead to bad marriages through Lydia and Wickham. Soon after their marriage — after the excitement and physical attraction wear thin — they lead largely separate lives as their marriage falls apart. The eloping couple had no dowries or marriage settlements to support their future. And they were an embarrassment to their families as the elopement was anti-social in the very social gentry world. In Austen's day, there was nothing romantic about eloping.

Honeymoons date back to the early centuries
A.D.
In Austen's day, when premarital sex was scandalous, the honeymoon truly meant the first time the couple had marital relations. Like today, the newly married couple went off on a holiday together.

It usually strikes readers as peculiar when they read in
Mansfield Park
that when Mr. Rushworth and his new bride Maria leave for their honeymoon, Maria's sister joins them (2:3). Granted, Rushworth isn't the most entertaining companion, but three on a honeymoon? Yes. And this practice continued well into the Victorian period (1837–1901). Frequently, the bride's sister or closest female friend accompanied the couple. This custom was meant to assist both the bride and the groom socially. The bride, a virgin until her wedding night, had a close female companion to comfort her, as needed, during the holiday. And the groom did not appear too groomlike in public places, walking around with two young women. This is a custom that most readers are probably glad has ended!

While the newlyweds were honeymooning, the groom's mother — if she was a widow and still living in the house that her son had inherited from his father — might graciously depart to her own new home, albeit smaller and less grand than that which she left. Thus, Rushworth's widowed mother “with true . . . propriety” decamps from Sotherton to Bath, so the estate will be ready for her son and his wife when they return from their honeymoon (MP 2:3). But Jane Austen's brother Edward remained in the smaller Rowling house on the Knight family's Kent property even after his adopted father died until his adopted mother chose to leave the Godmersham estate.

If the groom's father was alive and well, it was his right to remain on the family estate as its master until his death or disability. Austen knew well the Bigg-Wither family of Manydown, where the widowed Mr. Bigg Wither lived on his Manydown estate, providing a home for his unmarried and widowed daughters and the latter's children. His married son and heir lived with his wife and young family on another, smaller estate that the family also owned. When Mr. Bigg-Wither died, the son and his family moved to Manydown, and his remaining unmarried sister, Alethea Bigg, and widowed sister, Catherine Heathcote, moved to a house in Winchester.