|By Jennifer Albers-Smith |
我把这个真棒类高校中密歇根大学，我说，10年后，仍然共鸣。它专注于简·奥斯汀和她同时代的人。我们阅读所有奥斯汀的小说以及拉德克利夫，伯尼和沃斯通克拉夫特，这是很容易的最好的四个月我的学术生涯。金宝搏彩票这位教授是真正的创新，并在她的一位同事，凯瑟琳多明格斯带来的，从经济学部门做什么东西在简·奥斯汀的时间成本的讲座。她放在一起这个伟大的PowerPoint甲板上，我仍然有这一天，因为我认为它是如此耐人寻味。
Numbers pop up all the time in Austen’s novels, but the reader really has no sense of how rich Bingley and Darcy are or how “poor” the Bennets are by comparison.
Because Economics is by no means my strength, I naturally assumed it was easy to figure out how much Mr. Darcy’s 10,000 per year really is in 2014. It turns out it isn’t. Professor Dominguez said that there is no single correct way to determine the relative value of an amount of money in one year compared to another, and that most approaches to this problem attempt to measure the price of a “bundle” of goods and services that a representative group buys or earns. They then compare that cost of the bundle in one year to the cost in another year.
So calculating purchasing power for the early 1800s is no exact science, but there is a网站(no surprise there!) that allows us to get an estimate for purchasing power in 1813 (when傲慢与偏见出版）。
So, in today’s dollars, just how much is Darcy worth? £569,300.00 per year! And how much is that in U.S. dollars? $966,966! Yeah, Darcy was loaded.
而这仅仅是4％的利息达西来自他的投资，而不是从他的庄园的租金的。他的实际继承/净值将是更大的。难怪班纳特太太太激动了。彬格莱不完全是贫穷或者，在4000磅每年，或386684 $每年在2014年没有多少人能说他们使每年那么多 - 和公正的利息。
为了进一步探讨这个奎德里，我走进金宝搏彩票盖尔NewsVault并掏出放在1813年一些广告给我们带来什么其他的事情时，成本的想法傲慢与偏见出来。我限制了我搜索到1813至十二月1813年1月1日31，和选择的只是广告。
![资料来源：“广告和注意事项。”杰克逊牛津杂志[英国牛津] 1813年1月2日：N.P.19世纪英国报纸。网页。2014年6月16日。](http://www.tampabjj.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Austen-Cost-1.png)
和出租带用餐和早餐室和佣人宿舍46英镑，每年2先令运行，这利用我们的计算器和货币转换器房子谈到2625英镑或每年，它出来，以每月371 $ 4,457 $。似乎是一个相当不错的交易给我！
![资料来源：“广告和注意事项。”Morning Chronicle [London, England] 1 Dec. 1813: n.p. 19th Century British Newspapers. Web. 16 June 2014.](http://www.tampabjj.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Austen-Cost-21.png)
我可以花一整天翻翻金宝搏彩票盖尔NewsVaultbrowsing advertisements. It’s utterly fascinating. Every time I spend more time looking through old newspapers, I can’t help but want to learn more!
关于作者
珍妮弗·爱她的孩子，狗和简·奥斯汀。她有一个学士学位在英语和社会学密歇根大学和花她醒着的营销总监和喂养她的家人。
这是关于19世纪的生命这样一个有趣的视角。我喜欢与当代生活的比较。迷人。
Just how “poor” were the Bennett’s?
达西先生拥有的大型楼盘有林地，农田，河流，和花园。房子是非常接近一座城堡。他的收入估计为每年10000磅，也许更多。
彬格莱先生被认为是富有的，他的收入估计只有5000年。
这是在天的年收入的相当一大块时，一家七口，像尼茨，可能在一年住在2000，仍然负担得起体面的着装，出行以有限的方式，保持公务员和国家遗产，并设置细表。诚然，五个未婚女儿也舒展他们的父亲的收入，没有一个女生有一个有意义的嫁妆。但他们生活在上流社会，但有限的情况下，没有绝望的贫穷。他们并不贫困，但有时财政压制。
Clearly, though, they all knew they could not afford Lydia’s selfish idiocy or Wickham’s perfidy without the aid of Mrs. Bennet’s successful brother — or, as it turned out, from Mr. Darcy. Buying Wickham to save Lydia’s honor would have left Mr. Bennett bankrupt, even though not salvaging Lydia’s name and reputation would have ruined any chance the four other sisters had of making good marriages. Lydia’s ruin would have sullied the reputations of her sisters and their entire family. .
The problem with estimating Darcy’s wealth is that we live in a consumer/consumables economy, whereas they lived in a service economy, so a straight rate-of-exchange doesn’t begin to cover actual buying power within the world Austen lived in. However, if you take the rate paid to a full-time manual laborer in Austen/Darcy’s time, compared with a minimum wage in our time, Darcy has around $7 million per year. Yet, presumably, the wages they paid laborers was actually enough to live off by fairly, whereas the minimum wage today is far below what you’d need to get by. So, if you increase the minimum wage to something actually liveable nowadays, which recent studies say would be around $22 per hour (the hourly rate needed to rent a 2 BR apartment), that would mean the worth of Darcy’s 10,000 would be comparable to over $20 million per year. You can easily see how that pans out as it would explain his extravagant manor, artworks, library, musical instruments, acreage, servants enough to care for all of that, — and his flakey childhood friend(s).