Inheritance and Meritocracy Theme Analysis

Throughout Mansfield Park, issues of inheritance and meritocracy recur as Austen explores how characters’ different positions in families and society affect their incomes. Austen models the inheritance system in the novel on that of real-world England in the early 1800s, when inheritance worked through the system of male primogeniture, meaning that a father’s entire fortune goes to his first born son. Often, childless uncles’ would set aside money for younger male children. Otherwise, younger sons could not legally inherit their fathers’ estates, unless their older brothers died before their fathers. The purpose of this system was to ensure that family estates remained intact.

In the world of Mansfield Park, the implications of this system can be seen immediately in how it affects marriage—due to the rules of inheritance, women cannot inherit, and so must marry rich men in order to lead lives of luxury. Moreover, in the Bertram family, Austen gives the reader two sons: Tom, who is older, and a younger son Edmund. Tom, although set to inherit all of his father’s fortune and his title, clearly is wildly irresponsible with money. Tom struggles with a gambling problem and prefers parties to managing estates. His debts are so enormous that the family must use money that Edmund’s uncle Mr. Norris set aside for him to pay them off. Sir Thomas tries to tell Tom he should be ashamed of to steal Edmund’s fortune like that, but Tom, who has grown up feeling that he is entitled to do what he wants, is unabashed. Tom clearly has not done anything to deserve his fortune (and, in fact, has shown that he would likely run the estate into the ground). However, according to law, Tom must inherit his father’s assets and his title.

Edmund, meanwhile, who has grown up knowing his whole life that he would not have a fortune of his own, shows himself to be much more responsible and obedient than Tom. Not only is Edmund not a drinker or gambler, but he also strives to please his father and make him proud of him. Edmund, who becomes a minister, speaks passionately about his career, showing not only his commitment to hard work, but also his inclination toward moral behavior and righteousness. By contrasting the two brothers, Austen clearly implies that Edmund would be a more deserving heir to Sir Thomas’s estate. Their juxtaposition, then, ironically highlights how ineffectively the system of inheritance works. Though the system is intended to keep fortunes intact, Tom would almost certainly squander his fortune to nothing, whereas if Edmund could be allowed to inherit, Sir Thomas could rest easy knowing that the estate will be preserved.

Austen’s implied challenge to the inheritance system becomes more interesting when considered in conjunction with the middle and lower class characters in the book. Fundamentally, Austen’s implicit judgment that the inheritance system should be more meritocratic leads to the question of inheritance in general: if characters’ wealth and social status should not be determined by their birth order, should their wealth be determined by their birth at all? In order words, why should Maria, who is vain and vapid but the daughter of a baronet, be considered of a higher social status than Fanny, who is smart and morally righteous, but the daughter of a naval officer?

Sir Thomas himself thinks something along these lines in the final few pages of the novel, and even goes a step further, when he compares how his own children have turned out to Fanny, William, and Susan. As he thinks about the Price children’s virtues, Sir Thomas acknowledges “the advantage of early hardship and discipline, and the consciousness of being born to struggle and endure.” Essentially, Sir Thomas thinks not only that his own children are no more deserving than the Price children, but also that there may be some spiritual or personal benefits to having the mentality that you must work for your livelihood and your luxuries. Placed conspicuously as the novel’s conclusion, Austen champions the merit of middle class people over the indulgence of the upper class, foreshadowing a common theme in later 19th century literature. In this way, Austen uses her mocking critique of the inheritance system to subtly undermine perceptions of class, valuing meritocracy over aristocracy.