How the Rich Cry Poverty, Austen Style

Thompson and Winslett as Elinor and Marianne

Thompson and Winslet as Elinor and Marianne

John Kenneth Galbraith, noted economist and author of The Affluent Society, used to read Jane Austen before he sat down to write. He wanted to achieve the author’s light ironic touch in his own work.

Yesterday another liberal economist had me thinking of Austen. Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate who writes for the New York Times, went after America’s wealthy in a way that reminded me of Sense and Sensibility.

Krugman noted that some of those who are calling Obama a socialist are upset because he wants taxes to return to Clinton-era levels. “Self-pity among the privileged,” Krugman writes, “has become acceptable, even fashionable.”


The Princeton economist believes that the old arguments for tax cuts have shifted. In the old days, the claim was that “lower taxes at the top would make the economy stronger for everyone.” Now, however,

it has become common to hear vehement denials that people making $400,000 or $500,000 a year are rich. I mean, look at the expenses of people in that income class — the property taxes they have to pay on their expensive houses, the cost of sending their kids to elite private schools, and so on. Why, they can barely make ends meet.

If Krugman is right, then the wealthy he is talking about resemble John and Fanny Dashwood.

John is the half brother of Elinor and Marianne, the heroines of Austen’s novel. When his father is dying, John promises that he will support his sisters. This will be no hardship. His mother, the first Mrs. Dashwood, left him a fortune when she died, and his wife is very wealthy. Furthermore, most of his great uncle’s considerable wealth descends to him (not to his sisters) upon the death of his father. He is one of the wealthiest characters in Austen’s fiction, and after making his promise, he spends the next few days feeling good about himself:

When he gave his promise to his father, he meditated within himself to increase the fortunes of his sisters by the present of a thousand pounds a-piece. He then really thought himself equal to it. The prospect of four thousand a-year, in addition to his present income, besides the remaining half of his own mother’s fortune, warmed his heart, and made him feel capable of generosity.— “Yes, he would give them three thousand pounds: it would be liberal and handsome! It would be enough to make them completely easy. Three thousand pounds! he could spare so considerable a sum with little inconvenience.”— He thought of it all day long, and for many days successively, and he did not repent.

Then his wife intervenes.

In one of literature’s greatest examples of sustained rationalization in support of greed, Fanny persuades him against giving his sisters anything at all. She doesn’t do this all at once, however. Rather, she persuades her husband to make one modification after another to his original plan. By the end, not only does John decide to keep all the money for himself.  He even sees himself as the aggrieved party.

Note the descent. Giving each of his sisters a thousand pound, his wife fears, will “impoverish” their “little Harry” (who, remember, stands to inherit a tremendous fortune). Victimization language is rampant:

Mrs. John Dashwood did not at all approve of what her husband intended to do for his sisters. To take three thousand pounds from the fortune of their dear little boy would be impoverishing him to the most dreadful degree. She begged him to think again on the subject. How could he answer it to himself to rob his child, and his only child too, of so large a sum? And what possible claim could the Miss Dashwoods, who were related to him only by half blood, which she considered as no relationship at all, have on his generosity to so large an amount. It was very well known that no affection was ever supposed to exist between the children of any man by different marriages; and why was he to ruin himself, and their poor little Harry, by giving away all his money to his half sisters?

Persuaded by Fanny, John agrees to halve the sum to 500 pounds a piece, and at first his wife praises him for his “generous spirit.” Then, however, she goes to work again, and John’s planned donation is steadily reduced.  Here are the subsequent stages:

–not a flat sum of 500 pounds each to the sisters but a yearly payment to the mother of 100 pounds

–because the mother may selfishly decided to live an overly long life, no annuity but a present of 50 pounds every now and then

–no money at all, but just assistance in finding a house, helping them move their things, and sending them presents of fish and game “and so forth whenever they are in season.” And perhaps a little present of furniture.

–Hold any item of furniture because the furniture, china, plate and linen originally owned by John’s father and mother has now either been sold or passed down to his stepmother.  In fact (John recollects), the remaining plate “would have been a very pleasant addition to our own stock here.”

–And so would the china. In fact, the wrong people now own the china. And if his father had had his way, he would have bequeathed even more to his second wife and his daughters. So the real injured party is John, Fanny, and poor little Harry.  As Fanny puts it,

the set of and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for any place THEY can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your father thought only of THEM. And I must say this: that you owe no particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the world to THEM.

Austen concludes:

This argument was irresistible. It gave to his intentions whatever of decision was wanting before; and he finally resolved, that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow and children of his father, than such kind of neighbourly acts as his own wife pointed out.

Ultimately, John does nothing at all. He doesn’t help them find a house—they learn of one through a relative of the stepmother—and because they move far away, he can’t help them move, nor can he, in the future, provide them with the gifts of fish and game he’d planned. This, however, doesn’t stop his wife from casting an envious eye on the furniture and piano (the stepmother’s own) that they take with them:

Mrs. John Dashwood saw the packages depart with a sigh: she could not help feeling it hard that as Mrs. Dashwood’s income would be so trifling in comparison with their own, she should have any handsome article of furniture.

Austen’s stiletto satire never burns brighter than when she is describing the greedy rich.  To cite one more example, here’s how she initially describes John and Fanny. Note how she at first seems to praise John but then undercuts him as she elaborates.  Her seeming defense of him is no defense.  By the time she gets to Fanny, she has had enough of this circuitous approach and levels her with a quick direct jab:

He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted and rather selfish is to be ill-disposed: but he was, in general, well respected; for he conducted himself with propriety in the discharge of his ordinary duties. Had he married a more amiable woman, he might have been made still more respectable than he was:—he might even have been made amiable himself; for he was very young when he married, and very fond of his wife. But Mrs. John Dashwood was a strong caricature of himself;—more narrow-minded and selfish.

At such moments, Austen anticipates Dickens.

Others who know America’s wealthy better than I do will need to let us know whether Krugman is right and that America’s wealthy are Dashwoodian.  (I’m not talking about everyone with money but those who accuse Obama of being a socialist engaged in “class warfare.”) Can they really claim, with a straight face, that a rise in taxes would be a hardship?

Austen provides a clinic in how one could do so.

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