Re-reading Pride and Prejudice I am struck by how it was considered devastating to the reputation of whole family if one of the girls went off with a man without being married to him.
Lydia (silly and wilful) goes away with Wickham (the bounder of the story. Lydia's father, Mr Bennett, remarks that Wickham would be a fool to accept less that £10,000 - a fortune in those days - to agree to marry Lydia. Collins, a vicar, in what is supposed to be a letter of sympathy, passes on the comment of his patroness that no one would now want a connection with the Bennett family - meaning that no one would want connection by marriage to any member of the family including Lydia's sisters who are utterly blameless.
It does seem very hard and actually hard to understand. Even if one were to acknowledge the idea that sex outside marriage was a sin as far as Christians were concerned, it seems beyond all fairness that the sisters should be implicated. Perhaps it is a reflection of how determined people were to be considered 'respectable'. But why were they so determined? Did respectability have financial advantages which could be lost? Or just social advantages?
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Behaviour & Crime
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I greatly enjoy your writing. I'm just a little stunned at this :
But why were they so determined? Did respectability have financial advantages which could be lost? Or just social advantages?
Because in English middle class life respectability was considered a good in itself - indeed so high a good that communal sanctions for breaching it were severe. To be a respectable person was to be a good person, a respectable family was by definition a good family. The financial and social penalties may have been great, but they were a result of the loss of reputation. I'm really surprised that you should need to ask this.
In Christian England, there was no way of expunging the shame. In cultures where it is permitted, the shame is expunged and family honour restored by the killing of the transgressor.
Posted by: Laban at May 15, 2010 10:17 PM
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Good question - it shows how little we understand of how people really thought not so long ago.
I recently saw a paper claiming that duelling was connected to credit - see https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/news/who_knows/node/189251
I think the gist is that, as with banks, once someone's credit comes under question, even if for a not very good reason, their credit is definitively gone, because a run of creditors can destroy even an objectively good risk. So once the principal became established that someone who avoided duels was a bad credit risk, such people really were bad credit risks, regardless of whether it was a sensible principle in the first place.
It is plausible that the same mechanism could apply to other forms of "honour"
Posted by: AMcGuinn at May 10, 2010 09:38 PM