Ch. 9 Cambridge Companion

This chapter of The Cambridge Companion really stressed the importance of money in Jane Austen's novels.  Money serves as a right of power and passage. The more money one man obtains in the Pride and Prejudice the more the are socially accepted by all.  The more money a man has the more likely he is to find a suitable wife. Austen openly discusses incomes specifically in all of her novels. She does this so the reader really understands what the characters feel when they know a man's income.  Money is so much more, in Austen's novels, than being able to buy a nice house.  It serves as a social standing in society and that is most important to all of her characters.