… “and both father and daughter seemed to expect that something should be struck out by one or the other to remove their embarrassments and reduce their expenditure, without involving the loss of any indulgence of taste or pride” (pg. 10).

            I chose this quote because it sums up the personality of Elizabeth and her father, Sir Walter. They want to uphold their image as baronets, although they are low on the totem pole.  They are living above their means instead of within and are paying the price. They are trying to impress people who couldn’t care less about them. They are arrogant and foolish. Maybe stupid is a better word. The very definition of reducing expenses is having to give up some indulgences, which they refuse to do. The speaker is talking about households that try to keep up with what they think are society’s expectations of them. This is mostly directed at the aristocracy and those who have fooled themselves into believing that they are a part of that group. Certainly, the latter is the situation that Sir Walter and his family find themselves in. Through this passage, the speaker is trying to show that debt was a regular occurrence among those who had money, which is ironic. Growing up, Austen was middle class, so she probably saw people in her own social class make the mistake of going into debt to prove that they were better than everyone else. Since the novel is a romance novel, this quote is setting up where Anne comes from. Her family is broke, but the man she is seeking out is now rich. It may be a difficult journey bringing together two people who are on different rungs on the social ladder. The audience, which was just regular people, would have found this quote to be persuasive. They probably didn’t know much about the aristocracy except for what they heard or read in the newspapers. It’s difficult to know what’s going on behind closed doors.