Abstract
The historical foundation for the terms expressed value and intrinsic value reflect the debate about economic value. As we read Jane Austen’s fiction, it is also difficult not to consider her characterizations as reflecting realities she exposed, supplementing our reading with historical data and other fictional and nonfictional representations of the time in order to ground our understanding within the lived reality of her contemporary readers. Concerns about the balance of trade, the existence of credit, the use and regulation of paper money, the distribution and redistribution of wealth, the division of labor, and the value of commerce are reflected in various pamphlets and treatises published in this period. Overlapping with the ongoing debate about value among the economic writers was the development of the novel—most notably for this study, popular circulation narratives that not only reveal the reading public’s fascination with circulating money, but also expose the split between the stamped coin’s intrinsic value and the paper bank-note’s mere expressed value—a tension between types of value that Jane Austen will also explore as she creates her female fictional characters. Finally, Adam Smith’s economic treatises eventually come to represent the culmination of the evolving thought about expressed and intrinsic value. A chief concern at this time was the possibility of class mobility, which was often achieved through marriage. Thus the marriage market structure at the center of Austen’s novels was developed to control this movement.
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- 1.
James Thompson, Models of Value: Eighteenth-Century Political Economy and the Novel (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 11.
- 2.
Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 1.
- 3.
Ruth Perry, Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748–1818 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 7.
- 4.
Ibid., 5.
- 5.
Ibid., 8.
- 6.
Walter Scott, “An Unsigned Review of Emma,” Quarterly Review Dated October 1815, issued March 1816, xiv, 188–201, in Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, Volume I: 1811–1870, ed., B. C. Southam (New York: Routledge, 1979), 64.
- 7.
Mary Poovey, Genres of the Credit Economy: Mediating Value in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), 355.
- 8.
Sheryl Craig, Jane Austen and the State of the Nation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 166.
- 9.
Perry, Novel Relations, 7–8.
- 10.
Thompson, Models, 33.
- 11.
Gary Kelly, Introduction to Millenium Hall by Sarah Scott, ed., Gary Kelly (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 1995), 34.
- 12.
Andrea Finklestein, Harmony and the Balance: An Intellectual History of Seventeenth-Century English Economic Thought (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 3.
- 13.
Ibid., 94.
- 14.
Francis Bacon, The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, including All His Occasional Works, Vol VI, ed., James Spedding (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1872), 22.
- 15.
The mercantilists promoted government regulation of the nation’s economy.
- 16.
Gerard de Malynes, The Maintenance of Free Trade, According to the Three Essential Parts of Traffique; Namely Commodities, Moneys and Exchange of Moneys, by Bills of Exchanges for other Countries. Or Answer to a Treatise of Free Trade, or the meanes to make Trade flourish, lately Published (London: I. L. for William Shefford), 1622.
- 17.
Thomas Mun, A Discourse of Trade, from England unto the East-Indies: Answering to Diverse Objections Which Are Usually Made Against the Same (London: Nicholas Okes for John Pyper, 1621), 30.
- 18.
Ibid., 195.
- 19.
Finkelstein, Harmony and the Balance, 88.
- 20.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan or the Matter, Forme, & Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civill (London: Andrew Cooke at the Green Dragon in St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1651), Ch. XIX.
- 21.
Ibid., Ch. X.
- 22.
William Petty, The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, ed., Charles H. Hull (London: Routledge/Thoemme 1899), 113.
- 23.
As we shall see in Chapter 6, the intrinsically valuable spinster or widow has little use value and is therefore considered superfluous in her society.
- 24.
John Locke, Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money (1691), in Several Papers Relating to Money, Interest and Trade, &c. Reprints of Economic Classics (New York: Augustus M. Kelley Publishers, 1968), 79.
- 25.
Ibid., 147.
- 26.
Deidre Shauna Lynch, The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 35.
- 27.
Sir Dudley North, Discourses Upon Trade; Principally Directed to the Cases of the Interest, Coynage, Clipping, Increase, of Money (London: Printed for Tho. Basset, at the George in Fleet-Street, 1691), 17.
- 28.
Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse Concerning Coining the New Money Lighter in Answer to Mr. Lock’s Considerations about Raising the Value of Money (London: Richard Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1696), 30.
- 29.
William Lowndes, A Report Containing an Essay for the Amendment of the Silver Coins (London: Charles Bill, 1695).
- 30.
Daniel Defoe, The Best of Defoe’s Review (1705–1711), ed., William L. Payne (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1951), 132.
- 31.
Ibid., 133.
- 32.
Joseph Harris, An Essay upon Money and Coins (London: G. Hawkins, 1757), 72.
- 33.
James Steurt, An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, ed. Andrew S. Skinner, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), I.4.
- 34.
Lynch, The Economy of Character, 96.
- 35.
Kevin Bourque, Introduction to Chrysal; or, The Adventures of a Guinea, by Thomas Bridges (Kansas City, MO: Valancourt Books, 2011), viii.
- 36.
Charles Johnstone, Chrysal; Or, the Adventures of a Guinea (1760–65), ed., E. A. Baker (London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1962), 3.
- 37.
Catherine Gallagher, Body Economic: Life, Death, and Sensation in Political Economy and the Victorian Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 5.
- 38.
Johnstone, Chrysal, 4.
- 39.
Ibid., 19.
- 40.
Ibid., 36.
- 41.
Ibid., 95.
- 42.
Ibid., 230.
- 43.
Ibid., 515.
- 44.
Ibid., 517.
- 45.
Bourque, introduction to Chrysal, xiii.
- 46.
Thomas Bridges, The Adventures of a Bank-note, in Two Volumes (London: T. Davies, 1770), 26.
- 47.
- 48.
Ibid., 51–2.
- 49.
Ibid., 166–7.
- 50.
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Books I-III (1776), ed., R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 131–2.
- 51.
Ibid., 159.
- 52.
Ibid., 276–7.
- 53.
Ibid., 277.
- 54.
Anne de Bourgh would fit this description, but Mr. Darcy rejects Anne as a possible wife, although this was an apparent arrangement from their birth by their mothers (PP 83). With the hero rejecting the marriage of wealth and title—mere expressed value—a marriage that lacks intrinsic value is also rejected.
- 55.
Gallagher, Body Economic, 24.
Bibliography
Bridges, Thomas. The Adventures of a Bank-note, in Two Volumes. London: T. Davies, 1770.
Harris, Joseph. An Essay upon Money and Coins. London: G. Hawkins, 1757.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan or the Matter, Forme, & Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civill. London: Andrew Cooke at the Green Dragon in St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1651.
Johnstone, Charles. Chrysal; Or the Adventures of a Guinea. Edited, with an Introduction by E. A Baker, M. A. London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., (1760–5) 1962.
Locke, John. Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money (1691), in Several Papers Relating to Money, Interest and Trade, &c. Reprints of Economic Classics. New York: Augustus M. Kelley Publishers, 1968.
Mun, Thomas. A Discourse of Trade, from England unto the East-Indies: Answering to Diverse Objections Which Are Usually Made Against the Same. London: Nicholas Okes for John Pyper, 1621.
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) Books I–III. Edited by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.
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Hall, L.A. (2017). Money, Value, and Circulation. In: Women and ‘Value’ in Jane Austen’s Novels. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50736-1_2
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