Language In Clarissa, Evelina And Pride And Prejudice

to [the Solmes marriage settlement] . . ." (L13 81).
Richardson paints the Harlowes as a typical eighteenth-
century merchant family, acquisitive and expanding,
transitioning from merchant class to landed gentry,
aspiring to minor aristocracy. He explains, through
Clarissa's letters, the practice of giving portions, or
money, instead of dowers to young women of marriageable
age, thus cutting down the amount of land from the
paternal estate that would be given into a marriage
settlement.
Dowers usually incorporated any land not entailed,
and even some that was. Portions were money paid in lieu
of dowered land. Richardson also subtly introduces
jointure, the giving of a parcel of land, usually through
the husband's estate, that becomes the property of the
husband and wife jointly, and which will become the sole
property of the survivor of the marriage and not subject
to the laws of strict settlement. Unlike her brother,
who conjectures about the "possibilities" and
"probabilities" of arrangements to be made, Clarissa
implies that he is erroneously hoping for something that
she will not allow to occur.
Superficially, Grandfather Harlower s will, a private
and individual civil document, appears to have allowed