What Jane Austen Can Teach Us About Capital Markets

Jane Austen's novels are a window into early capital markets and the overlooked role of female investors. Humle Fonder explain what Mr Darcy's income can tell us about financial history.

Mr Darcy had an income of ten thousand pounds a year - a figure burned into the memory of anyone who has read Pride and Prejudice. But beneath the romance and social comedy of Jane Austen's novels lies a sharp analysis of money, status and security - and a story about female investors that economic history has largely overlooked.

Women made up 20 percent of Bank of England shareholders in the early 1700s. By the turn of the twentieth century, they held up to 40 percent of shares in British railway companies. Their presence in the market was not marginal - it was formative. When the South Sea Company bubble burst in 1720, women as a group came out ahead, while men collectively suffered significant losses.

Austen's novels reflect the early nineteenth century's preoccupation with money, status and security. When she was born in 1775, the Industrial Revolution had only just begun to gather pace - and in many circles, earning money through trade was still viewed with suspicion compared to inheriting it.

Money (or the lack of it) is everything for Austen's heroines. Their futures depend on making a good marriage, because most women were barred from inheriting property, taking out loans, or - if they belonged to the upper classes - earning a living through work.

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