While reading Vanity Fair, I came to wonder why Miss Crawley became such a rich woman in the story.
According to the law that existed in 19 century England called "primogeniture", only the eldest son was to inherit family's property but not women. But Miss Crawly is a woman. So how could this be? Why is she even richer than Sir Pitt who is the eldest brother?
Let's see how she got rich.
1. She's from a very rich family: Queen's Crawely.
2. She has inherited from her mother's large fortune.
3. She's an married woman. -> married women at that time had no property since her husband take it all. Since she's single, she didn't need to share her property.
From this we can guess that this is a special case where daughter inherit money from her mother. So the primogeniture law isn't working in here.
So now I'd like to pose a question: is this example of Miss Crawley (breaking the rule of primogeniture) good for mending the inequality of the law between men and women?
Primogeniture can only work if there *is* a son! Miss Crawley is Sir Pitt's half-sister. Sir Pitt inherited from their father (=Walpole Crawley), but Miss Crawley had a different mother from Sir Pitt.
ReplyDeleteTHackeray doesn't make it very clear in the novel, but evidently Miss Crawley's mother had independent wealth and no male child. Therefore, when she died she left the money to her daughter.
Thank you for providing me with the correct information about the background's of Crawley family.
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