What Did Charlotte Lucas Get for Marrying Mr Collins?

Austen never says what Mr Collins earned. The figures on this page come from the record around the novel: a Kent county history of the 1790s, the clergy directories of the 1830s, a Norfolk parson’s account book, and the law of marriage as William Blackstone stated it in 1765. Every modern value is converted the same way, explained in note 1.¹

Did Charlotte say she was frightened?

No. The speech in the 2005 film, in which Charlotte says she is twenty-seven and frightened and that Elizabeth has no right to judge her, is not in the novel. The director, Joe Wright, has said Emma Thompson made it up on Hampstead Heath while he took notes.² In the book Charlotte’s only visible upset is “a momentary confusion” when Elizabeth reproaches her, and she recovers within the sentence.³

She had also explained herself long before. In chapter 6 she tells Elizabeth, “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance,” and Elizabeth laughs at her: “You make me laugh, Charlotte; but it is not sound.”⁴ Sixteen chapters later she sees Mr Collins from an upper window and goes out “to meet him accidentally in the lane.” The narrator calls it “Miss Lucas’s scheme.”³

Was twenty-seven too old to marry?

Late, but not unusually so. The Cambridge Group for the History of Population puts English women’s average age at first marriage at about twenty-four in these decades, the lowest since 1550 apart from the 1950s and 1960s.⁵ Austen calls Charlotte “about twenty-seven,” three years past that average.⁶

Historians still argue about the figure itself. Steven Ruggles holds that the method behind it misses women who moved away and gives averages two to four years too low; E. A. Wrigley, who built the series, disagrees.⁷ If Ruggles is right, Charlotte was exactly average. Parish registers of the time cannot settle it, because they did not record a bride’s age.

How much money did she have?

Very little, and Austen says so: her parents “could give little fortune.”³ Her father had made his money in trade, then gave the business up when he was knighted and lived “unshackled by business” at Lucas Lodge.⁶

A gentry daughter’s portion, the capital settled on her at marriage, usually ran from £500 to £2,000.⁸ The interest on it was what she could live on. Mr Collins names the rate himself when he reminds Elizabeth of her “one thousand pounds in the 4 per cents.”⁹ At 4 or 5 percent, £500 paid £20 to £25 a year.

How much was Mr Collins’s living worth?

The novel says only “a good house and a very sufficient income.”¹⁰ A living was a clergyman’s post and its income together, held for life. As a rector, Mr Collins took all the tithes of his parish, including the great tithes: a tenth of the corn, hay and wood grown there.¹¹

Hunsford is invented, but Austen puts it “near Westerham, Kent,” where every parish is real. Edward Hasted’s county history, published while Austen was drafting the novel, valued Penshurst, the richest rectory nearby, at “four hundred pounds and upwards,” and Hever, near the bottom, at “about 200l.”¹² That gives a range of roughly £200 to £450 a year.

A stated value was a ceiling, since curates had to be paid out of it.¹³ James Woodforde, a Norfolk rector, collected about £205 to £240 a year (about £20,500 to £24,000, or $26,000 to $30,700, today) from a living “worth it is said £300.”¹⁴ Even so, Mr Collins was fortunate. Irene Collins, a historian of the Georgian clergy, calls a good living at twenty-four or twenty-five “a most unlikely occurrence.”¹⁵

The money at a glance

Retail prices measure what money would buy. For where a family stood socially, average earnings are the better guide, and they give much larger figures: the £200 to £450 rectory comes to about £206,000 to £464,000 ($263,000 to $593,000).¹ (A shilling, written s, was a twentieth of a pound; a penny, d, a twelfth of a shilling.)

What came with the marriage?

The house first. The 1836 clergy directory marked Westerham’s living as having “a Glebe House attached, fit for residence,” which was far from certain: in perhaps a quarter of English parishes there was no parsonage, or none fit to live in.^{13 16} Elizabeth finds the Hunsford house “rather small, but well built and convenient.”¹⁸ She also notices that Charlotte sits in a small back room, when the dining parlor is larger and has the better view. The reason, Elizabeth decides, is that Mr Collins “would undoubtedly have been much less in his own apartment had they sat in one equally lively.”¹⁹

A place in every room. John Trusler’s book of table manners, published in 1788, puts the rule plainly: “Where a company is equal in point of rank, married ladies take place of single ones.”²⁰ From her wedding day Charlotte went in ahead of every unmarried woman of her rank. A household manual of 1825 tells the new wife she will “send her cards in return for those which are left at her house,” so callers now came to her, in her own name.²¹

Servants, though few. Mr Collins speaks of “our small rooms, and few domestics.”²² A servants’ manual of 1825 set one maid of all work against an income of £200 a year. In practice wages ran lower than the manuals suggest: Woodforde’s maid earned £5 15s 6d a year and bought her own tea and sugar out of it.^{14 17}

Work. Charlotte walked to Rosings with her husband most days, and Elizabeth could not see why “till Elizabeth recollected that there might be other family livings to be disposed of.”¹⁹

What did it cost her?

Her standing in law. Blackstone, in 1765: “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage.”²³ A wife’s property became her husband’s, and she could not make a contract or bring a lawsuit without him. Ellen Weeton, a governess who married a Wigan cotton spinner in 1814, was later left a legacy of £60 (about £6,000, or $7,700, today), and “the whole amount was immediately forfeited to her then husband.” Of her own wedding she wrote that she had “resigned my prospects of future happiness or misery for this life, into the hands of another.”²⁴

Any way out. A full divorce needed a private Act of Parliament. Published counts run from about 310 to 320 such Acts between 1700 and 1857, and four went to women.²⁵

Any security after his death. The living ended with Mr Collins’s life, and the parsonage passed to the next man. Until the Pluralities Act of 1838, a clergyman’s widow had no legal right to stay in the house at all; the Act gave her “any period not exceeding two calendar months.”²⁶ When the Commons debated it, members heard of a patron who had threatened a clergyman and carried out the threat “upon the incumbent’s death by immediately dispossessing his widow and family of their place of residence.”²⁶

Did women Austen knew make the same choice?

One did. Her friend Catherine Bigg, born the same year as Austen, married the Reverend Herbert Hill on October 25, 1808, at thirty-three; he was about fifty-nine. Hill was a younger son who had paid his own school bills and earned his way through the church.²⁷ Austen sent verses wishing her “no tears to wipe, but tears of joy,” and the night before the wedding wrote to her sister, “to-morrow we must think of poor Catherine.”²⁸ Catherine had six children, was widowed in 1828, and lived another twenty years as a clergyman’s widow, with the living gone from the family.²⁸

What does Austen make of it?

She leaves the verdict open. After a fortnight at Hunsford, Elizabeth admits “it was all done very well,” and on leaving she thinks: “Poor Charlotte! it was melancholy to leave her to such society! But she had chosen it with her eyes open.”²⁹ Elizabeth never withdraws her first judgment, that the marriage was a humiliating choice, and she never repeats it either. Both views stand in the novel, and the record outside it does not settle the question for her.

The film ends on a question. If the only offer you were likely to get came from a man you could not respect, but with a house, a position and work you could do well, would you have gone out to the lane or stayed at the window? The conversation is open in the comments on YouTube.