Language In Clarissa, Evelina And Pride And Prejudice

usually on fiscal matters, but these titles were non-
hereditary. Families would have to raise substantial
sums and garner much property to be considered to keep
the title once the original endowment passed away.
Merchant families wanted land and titles. They
wanted to live according to their means. Aristocracy, on
the other hand, wanted money in order to keep their
ancestral estates. While the situation seems ideal for
both, both sides came to the realization that
intermarriage and interclass socializing, exchange of
property, and intermingling of noble and common lineage
were inevitable, yet fraught with unimaginable class-
incurred tensions, creating a stranglehold on legal
marriage and inheritance contracts as they then existed.
Primogeniture could no longer accommodate the needs
of the upper classes for several reasons. First, through
the authority of common law, a vast estate, having no
male heir, could legally be put into the hands of a
daughter, thus into the hands of her husband's family,
eradicating not only the family estate, but also, and
more importantly, the family name. Second, vast estates
could be broken into smaller and smaller parcels through
equal distribution to all heirs, male and female. In
order to keep an estate and enlarge it, allowing a family