Language In Clarissa, Evelina And Pride And Prejudice

power and wealth in a nation," making their private
interest a public one, associating the "exertion of
public virtue with landed wealth" (Bellamy 2) . However,
because daughters and younger children were being cared
for through settlement agreements, and wives were able to
retain more of their personal property through either
jointure of trusteeships, the general trend was to
undermine the principle of patriarchal power.
Primogeniture successfully harmonized with individualism
(Stone 167) .
Liz Bellamy proposes that the economic boom at the
beginning of the eighteenth century allowed the monied
and upper classes to adopt a discourse of economy so
strong it influenced profoundly the writings of Defoe,
Fielding and others, and this influence in their writing
is the precursor to the economic discourse so visible in
the writing of Richardson and Austen (2-3). In the
relationship between economics, the wealthy landed class
and the language of inheritance, economic boundaries
between the aristocracy, merchant and business classes,
and freeholders blurred. Peers were related to each
other through marriage and were related through marriage
to the wealthy merchant class and gentry, as well.