Asserting one’s status
Austen analysed the pretensions of all who thought themselves superior to others. In Pride and Prejudice the Bingley sisters think themselves better than the Bennets, but they like to forget that ‘their brother's fortune and their own had been acquired by trade’ (ch. 4). Sir William Lucas has a title, but has made his fortune ‘in trade’ and is ridiculous in a nouveau riche way for calling his house Lucas Lodge. Austen was alive to all the small ways in which members of her own rural society tried to assert their status and distinguish themselves from those below them. It is the main subject matter of her satire.
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