Cultural Framing of Windows in Pride and Prejudice
- Nellie Downie
- 5 minutes ago
- 4 min read
One of the defining character quirks of Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Collins is his idolization of his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. The attractiveness of other ladies is measured against her daughter, as “Lady Catherine herself says that, in point of true beauty, Miss de Bourgh is far superior to the handsomest of her sex” (Austen 66); while proposing to Elizabeth Bennet, his third listed reason for seeking marriage is because it was Lady Catherine’s recommendation—and even then, he says this reason is one that “perhaps [he] ought to have mentioned earlier” (Austen 103); finally, the furnishings of Mrs. Philip’s apartment is compared to “the small summer breakfast parlour” in her estate, Rosings Park, much to the initial consternation of Mrs. Philips. To gratify Mrs. Philips and emphasize “the force of the compliment,” Mr. Collins, as he often does, described in detail the quality of Rosings Park, highlighting that the cost of the chimney-piece alone was extravagant (Austen 74). Another such case of Mr. Collins’ lauding of Lady Catherine was “his enumeration of the windows in front of [Rosings Park], and his relation of what the glazing altogether had originally cost” (Austen 158). In this case, however, Austen also highlights a cultural context that, when more closely examined, provides a literal frame through which the audience can peer: the window.
Despite the window’s necessity as a source of light and ventilation, there was a tax placed on windows in Great Britain. In 1696, “the tax… was levied on dwellings with the tax liability based on the number of windows” in an attempt to gain back some of the costs lost during the Revolution of 1688. The tax consisted of “a flat rate of two shillings upon each house and an additional charge of 4s upon houses with between ten and twenty windows and 8s upon houses with more than 20 windows” (Schwab and Oates 1). A large estate would have been taxed a pretty penny for their windows. For example, Wentworth Woodhouse, which has one thousand windows (Money-Coutts), would shell out two thousand and eight shillings, or just over £100, equal to the annual income of “moderately prosperous tradesmen” (Copeland 135).
Through Mr. Collins and his enumeration of the windows of Rosings Park, Austen directly calls attention to the wealth needed for windows’ installation and upkeep. There are also many instances in the text in which windows literally frame wealthy individuals; for instance, the first time the Bennet sisters catch a glimpse of Mr. Bingley, “they had the advantage of ascertaining from an upper window, that he wore a blue coat and rode a black horse” (Austen 11). With these scenes and the historical context in mind, it’s easy to see windows as representing monetary wealth in general, but Austen does not limit them solely to this usage. A crucial moment in Charlotte Lucas’ interactions with Mr. Collins, another layer is added to the meaning: “Miss Lucas perceived [Mr. Collins] from an upper window as he walked towards the house, and instantly set out to meet him accidentally in the lane” (Austen 119). Mr. Collins is by no means as wealthy as Darcy or De Bourgh, but he holds a different kind of wealth in Charlotte’s eyes: a wealth of security. This broadens the cultural framing of windows as an indicator of wealth to a lens that allows the audience to understand a character’s motivations in the text; when a character peers through a window in Pride and Prejudice, it represents their own desires. Therefore, when Elizabeth Bennet “goes to a window to enjoy its prospect” in her tour of Pemberley, what she sees through the window pane is indicative of what she wants:
“The hill, crowned with wood, from which they had descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance, was a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was good… from every window there were beauties to be seen” (Austen 236)
Although she obviously admires the grounds, she does not want the beauty. The handsome grounds are a stand-in for handsome Mr. Darcy. As she looks through the glass, she begins to understand Darcy’s true, “perfectly amiable” (Austen 356) nature.
The 1696 tax changed the way Great Britain viewed windows. What was once a right became a commodity. As Charles Dickens said, “The adage ‘free as air’ has become obsolete.” By Austen’s time, windows were a symbol of wealth, and through her literal framing of the scenes in Pride and Prejudice, Austen developed a wealth that superseded monetary value in a priceless legacy.
Works Cited
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York, NY: Penguin, 1813. Print.
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Internet Archive, illustrations by Hugh Thompson, London, Ruskin House, 1894. https://archive.org/details/prideprejudice00aust/page/n5/mode/2up.
Blasson, R. (British, active 1790). East Front of Wentworth Woodhouse, Yorkshire.
https://jstor.org/stable/community.18734966. <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/">The Metropolitan Museum of Art</a>.
Copeland, E. (2010). “Money.” In E. Copeland & J. McMaster (Eds.), The Cambridge
Companion to Jane Austen (Cambridge Companions to Literature, pp. 127-143). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CCO9780521763080.009
Dickens, Charles. Household Words, vol. 1. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1850.
Money-Coutts, Sophia. “Inside Wentworth Woodhouse: the UK's largest stately,” Tatler,
2016. https://www.tatler.com/article/inside-wentworth-woodhouse-the-biggest-stately -in-the-country
Oates, Wallace E., and Robert M. Schwab. "The window tax: A case study in excess burden." Journal of Economic Perspectives 29.1 (2015): 163-80.
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