Chapter 1-3傲慢与偏见

“every thing, in short, that one could wish for …” at least 5 or 6 servants Adding to that, they are able to provide a house in London for the social season. A man can go into horse-racing or illegitimate pleasures.
This means a member of the real aristocracy, whose income exceeded £ 10,000 a year, would possess in today’s terms a minimum fortune of $2 million.
Darcy’s income suggests only a part of the power that a man in his position wielded. He not only had access to high political office if he wanted it; he controlled the lives and incomes of hundreds of people on his estates, many of whom had no voting power until 1832.
Irony:
1. “Mr. Bingley was goodlooking and gentleman-like; …” 2. “His brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst, merely looked the gentleman; …”
“… but his friend Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report, which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year.”
What did the income mean at that time?
At that time an average lower-class family of 3 could support themselves with £ for a year. 20 Incomes of £ 4000 a year and above (Darcy’s and Bingley’s) leave behind the cheese-paring cares of middle-class incomes and enter a realm of unlimited genteel comforts.
Until World War I, before the income taxes and inflation of the last century, the English pound was worth about 5 American dollars. The pound’s value remained relatively steady through out the nineteenth century.
According to the inflation figures suggested by E. H. Phelps Brown and Sheila V. Hopkins, the value of the pound has multiplied about forty-fold over the course of the nineteenth century to the present.
Should have gone:

“The ladies were somewhat more fortunate, for they had the advantage of ascertaining, from an upper window, that he wore a blue coat and rode a black horse.”
In 1803, the upper class, or those who did not have to work for a living, comprised 27,000 families, or 2% of the population. With fortunes yielding an income of over £ 10,000 a year, this tiny yet immensely powerful group numbered from 3oo to 400 families.
The aristocracy, with its beautiful houses manned by up to fifty servants, its enormous annual revenues, its power in Parliament, its own constituency of tenants, and its tremendous prestige based on tradition, must be considered in all its aspects in order to appreciate the significance of property inheritance in the English novel.
Traditional character description v.s. modern character description
“Well, …, that you should have gone this morning, and never said a word about it till now.”
£ 1,000 a year
What do these figures mean in today’s terms?
We are unable to do the comparison with absolute accuracy here and now. (Too many details regarding both income and expenditure are unknown.) (Then, the figures listed above are based on studies made early in the nineteenth century which cannot pretend to the statistical certainty of a modern survey.
Which rung of the social ladder did Bingley belong to?
From the mid-nineteenth century, it has been common to identify 3 classes: upper, middle and lower. The upper class were the great landed proprietors whose fortunes yielding an income of over £ 10,000 a year.
In the Victorian period, a gentle man required today’s rough equivalent of $200, 000 a year to live. Being a gentleman meant not having to work, dressing as a gentleman, and employing at least enough servants to receive and to go into society (a cook, housemaid, maid-of-all-work, and valet).
The gentry’s income went from about $200,000 to $2 million a year, and the average gentleman needed today’s equivalent of $200,000 a year to retain a place in the upper class and not work for a living.
Beneath them, the gentry was made up of the smaller landed proprietors whose annual income ranged from £ 1,000 to £ 10,000 a year.
The section comprised about 3,000 families. Moving a step lower, the much larger group of borderline gentry and independent gentlemen had less land and income, living on about £ 700 to
Chapter 1-3
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
… that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England