Can speculative capitalism be good?
Jane Austen wrote Sanditon in the winter and spring following the famous dark summer of 1816. Away in Switzerland under the gloom, Mary Shelley invented her monster and Byron his vampire. The pall over Europe was caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora more than 7000 miles away. The volcano spewed out gas and particles that hid the sun; temperatures dropped, crops were blighted. Hunger was widespread.
In England landowners who had flourished under wartime protectionism made the situation worse by banding together to pass corn laws against cheap imports, ignoring the principle of free trade and the needs of a hungry population. No accident that the poor who come to the attention of Tom and Diana Parker required subscriptions from the better-off to keep afloat.
Jane Austen’s characters are all in various ways defined by money. Indeed, her novels’ tendency to dwell on the economic side of life startled the poet W.H. Auden, who described them in his poem as revealing
so frankly and with such sobriety
The economic basis of society.
‘Letter to Lord Byron’
In her fiction we learn that the dowager has her jointure, the widow her allowance, the heir his expectations, the rich girls their dowries, the poor their scrambling needs, the warriors their prizes and the peacetime officers their half pay. We know who is landed and who funded by means of investments in government stock, and whose fortune comes from trade or an ancestor’s clever speculation. In short, we know what most characters are worth.
There is much to spend on. Emma displays a traditional economy whose basic commodities are produced locally and circulated: apples and the hind-quarter of a pig travel from the wealthy to the poor, and gifts of meat, fruit and craft are exchanged among equals. Yet there are also particulars of fashionable and leisure items brought in from outside the region. These come to the fore in Sanditon; added to which, even the most necessary foodstuff is here bought and sold for money. Once self-sufficient from his own estate, Mr Parker now pays for much of the produce and meat he needs in this new commercial economy.
Regency England was afloat with consumer goods through ‘the demand for everything’, as Mr Parker puts it. Fictional Sanditon, like the real seaside resorts, was full not only of new and unfinished buildings but of all manner of expensive things that marked status and answered whims: dresses, lace, straw hats, shoes, fancy boots, bonnets, gloves, books, camp stools, harps and carriages. The whole town is for sale and to let, and visitors are consumers who must make it flourish – Charlotte feels obliged to buy something when she enters the local subscription library and trinket shop which sells ‘all the useless things in the world that could not be done without’.
Etching by Thomas Rowlandson from Poetical Sketches of Scarborough, 1813
Even people may become saleable items: Sidney Parker, the most dashing of the Parker siblings, is a useful attraction for displaying girls and their scheming mothers. The rich ‘half mulatto’ Miss Lambe, an heiress from the West Indies, is desirable as both a paying visitor and as prey for one of the town’s needy bachelors – such as Sir Edward.
Glorious British victories of the Napoleonic Wars were speedily commercialised – war tourism to Waterloo was established almost before the dead were cold; their bones were collected and sold as souvenirs. The names of battles dwindled from being patriotic achievements to become adornments, embellishing new houses, terraces and squares of peaceful England. By 1817, the naval battle of Trafalgar, which had meant so much to Jane Austen through her sailor brothers, had lost cultural, even decorative, caché through relentless exploitation. It had been replaced by the more recent Waterloo, the bubble of whose fame would likely be popped long before Mr Parker was dead. As it is, he regrets that, just a year before Waterloo, he had named his new property Trafalgar House and saw it become almost instantly out-of-date.
Although four of the complete novels – viz Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Persuasion – have financial mismanagement at their core, uniquely in Sanditon the topic of national economy is widely discussed, as it was throughout England in these years. Debates raged in pamphlets and books, in taverns and private homes, concerning profit and loss, capital and property, wealth and paper credit.
In his pioneering work of capitalist theory, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith stressed the idea that the pursuit of self-interest can benefit society generally. Yet many doubted that the greed and extravagance of the rich would benefit those below them, that wealth inevitably trickled down and that capitalist activity and consumption were good for all. Satires noted that the extravagant and dissolute lifestyle of the Prince Regent in his elaborate pavilion in Brighton failed to improve the lot of the town’s deprived inhabitants.
James Gillray, ‘John Bull ground down’, 1795
Other debates concerned speculation and types of capitalism. Can what is now called neoliberalism work for everyone in society or will it benefit only the few? Is speculation inevitably precarious? Is profit alone ever a worthy motive? Would the country prosper most under a laissez-faire system or should there always be welfare and paternalistic controls, so that development does not despoil an organic community? How does the constant need to buy new things, to enjoy purchasing then throwing away, impact on society and its traditional crafts? How does consumption affect morality? Under the urge to buy and sell, will the country dwindle into tourist haunts and shopping malls?
The Empire too was controversial. Was the home economy skewed by wealth coming from the colonies or was the Empire a drain on the Mother Country?
The characters in Sanditon debate these questions from their differing social positions – though they resemble each other in all being well-to-do. The traditional, stay-at-home landowner Mr Heywood (who however has his London investments paying ‘dividends’) is kind and welcoming to a stranger of his class, but he keeps the lower orders in their place. He leaves lanes beyond his house unpatched and his tenant cottages, pretty enough on the outside, unmodernised. Change erodes class divisions, he believes, and disturbs the tested ways of the past. The new resorts are bad for everyone because they cause inflation: they raise prices and ‘make the poor good for nothing’.
Mr Parker, the traveller and projector, disagrees with this reactionary view. He accepts the working of the market place: it may disturb the old order, turning traditional fishermen and farmers into commercial sellers, but the new economy in the long run will benefit all. He believes in what Adam Smith had termed ‘the invisible hand’, that capitalist activity can benefit all. When the rich spend, they ‘excite the industry of the poor and diffuse comfort and improvement among them’. Rich and poor are symbiotic: butchers, bakers and traders cannot prosper without ‘bringing prosperity to us’. In many respects, however, Mr Parker remains an old-fashioned gentleman and his capitalism is tempered. The rich have a duty to support the unfortunate poor, and he cares for and patronises his unsuccessful traders as once he cared for the tenants on his estate.
His partner, ‘mean-spirited’ Lady Denham, sides with Mr Heywood, wanting to retain the privilege, status and security of the old order. In her sitting room, Sir Harry Denham, baronet, has a full portrait in pride of place over the mantelpiece, while the untitled but moneyed Mr Hollis is present only in miniature. At the same time, she supports Mr Parker through greed, being avid for the spoils of the new order. Like Mr Heywood, she worries about inflation, believing that visitors raise prices of local produce. Propelled by ‘calculation’ and desire for instant profit, she opposes any move of Mr Parker’s that does not instantly bring in money or which has indirect consequences. A doctor in town would not simply attract invalids but also let servants and the poor fancy themselves ill. As Charlotte primly comments, Lady Denham degrades and makes mean those who depend on her – much like the inconstant and rich Mrs Ferrars in Sense