The fancy clothing, big houses, and polite language of most Jane Austen adaptations and illustrations makes many newbies imagine that Jane Austen’s characters are among England’s upper class. They’re not really. They’re mostly land owners with estates large enough to be self-supporting, as long as cities’ market for farm goods holds up.
There are several classes above them, as well as several classes below. Certain frictions in the plots arise when those classes collide. But more than that, class boundaries that are more or less invisible to modern readers affect many of the motivations, decisions, and outcomes of Austen’s novels.
For an overview of the class structure of Austen’s England, please check out our article: “The Strata of Regency Society.”
