From the 16th well into the 19th century, respectable wealth in England was accumulated primarily through the ownership of land. The land would be leased to tenants for farming, and the landowning families would live entirely off of the income generated by these leases. The families owning the largest of these hereditary estates, which varied in size but averaged about 10,000 acres, drew incomes sufficient to construct great parks and manors, purchase fashionable goods, retain servants and livery (horses and carriages), and meet other expenses related to keeping a country home. The most prosperous landowners also kept a town home in London, the social and political center of England, and lived there during the social season, January through July. The oldest, though not necessarily the wealthiest, of these families may have had some claim to nobility with inherited titles that gave “precedence,” or a higher rank at social functions in town or country. The term “aristocracy” referred somewhat more ambiguously to any keepers of London town homes whose social and political connections bought them seats in Parliament or influence in the royal court.
In Pride and Prejudice, the Bennets are, like Jane Austen herself, members of an educated upper middle class known as the “gentry” or the “landed gentry.” Considered socially eligible to mix with the landowning aristocracy, but quite a step beneath them in wealth, resources and precedence, the landed gentry included country squires, military officers and many forms of clergy; all acceptable roles for the educated younger sons of the aristocracy and their descendants. Gentry may have owned less than 1,000 acres of land, may have leased to tenants or overseen the farming directly and typically lived in the country year-round, visiting London only to take care of occasional legal matters.
Beneath the gentry were the laboring