S&S · The ledger · 1811
The money in Sense and Sensibility
This is the most romantic novel ever to open with an inheritance dispute instead of a kiss. Austen prices everyone in it — incomes are stated the way other novelists state eye color — because for the Dashwood sisters the numbers are the plot: what you have decides whom you can marry, and whom you can refuse. Here is the complete ledger: every sum in the book, straight from the text, and what the figures actually meant.
The whittlingThe ledgerWhat the sums meantAusten’s driest jokeQuick answers
Norland Park · John & Fanny · Ch. II
First, watch £3,000 become fish
John Dashwood promises his dying father he will “do everything in his power” for his sisters, and privately settles on three thousand pounds. Enter his wife. Over one conversation, Fanny talks the sum down — three thousand, to fifteen hundred, to an annuity, to fifty pounds “now and then,” to help with moving house — and lands, triumphantly, on occasional presents of fish and game. It is the most quietly vicious scene Austen ever wrote, and the whole novel’s economy in miniature: the money never moves, and everyone stays polite.
“People always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them; and she is very stout and healthy, and hardly forty.”
“The assistance he thought of, I dare say, was only… looking out for a comfortable small house for them, helping them to move their things, and sending them presents of fish and game, and so forth, whenever they are in season.”
“Altogether, they will have five hundred a-year amongst them, and what on earth can four women want for more than that?”
S&S · Every sum in the book
The ledger
| Who | The sum | Per the text | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Dashwood women | £500 a year, among four | £10,000 in the funds — “all that remained for his widow and daughters” (Ch. I) | Genteel poverty: a cottage, “two maids and a man,” no carriage, no London — and no margin for error |
| John & Fanny Dashwood | Norland, plus £4,000 a year in prospects, plus both fortunes | “The prospect of four thousand a-year… warmed his heart” (Ch. I) | Rich enough that generosity is entirely theoretical — see the fish |
| Colonel Brandon | £2,000 a year | “I believe about two thousand a year” — Delaford (Ch. XXXIII) | Solid gentleman’s money: the estate, the mulberry tree, the stew-ponds John Dashwood covets aloud |
| Willoughby | Debts, expectations — then £50,000 by marriage | “My fortune was never large, and I had always been expensive” (Ch. XLIV); “Miss Grey has fifty thousand pounds” (Ch. XXX) | The lump sum that outbids Marianne — roughly £2,500 a year, purchased at the price the book spends its final volume counting |
| Edward Ferrars | Disinherited to almost nothing; then a £200-a-year living, plus £10,000 grudgingly settled | “It is about two hundred a-year” (Ch. XL); Robert “inevitably endowed with a thousand pounds a-year” while Edward gets the parsonage (Ch. L) | With Elinor’s share: about £850 a year, by two centuries of readers’ arithmetic — the happiest household in the book, on a sixth of Fanny’s money |
| Lucy Steele | Nothing — then Robert’s £1,000 a year | Married “with the true merit of… unceasing attention to self-interest” (Ch. L) | The best return on invested flattery in English literature |
| Mrs. Jennings | An ample widow’s jointure | Her husband “had traded with success in a less elegant part of the town” (Ch. XXV) | Trade money — faintly déclassé, cheerfully spent, and funding half the plot’s travel |
Every figure above links to a scene you can read tonight — the whole novel is free in Chromatics while it’s featured.
1811 · The conversion problem
What the sums actually meant
The tempting move is a multiplier — retail-price inflation makes an 1811 pound very roughly seventy of today’s, so the Dashwoods’ £500 becomes “about £35,000” and Brandon’s £2,000 “about £140,000.” Useful, and misleading. The better yardstick is what labor cost: a housemaid earned around £10 a year, a country curate perhaps £50. Measured that way, Brandon’s income is two hundred housemaids; even the Dashwoods’ “poverty” employs three servants. Nobody in this novel is poor the way the poor were poor — the book’s entire cast lives inside the top few percent, which is precisely Austen’s subject: the fine, ruthless gradations within comfort.
One more piece of context the modern reader is missing: none of these women can earn a shilling of this. No profession is open to them; the money they have at twenty is, barring marriage, the money they will have at sixty. That is why chapter two is a horror scene, why Mrs. Jennings treats matchmaking as emergency logistics, and why Willoughby — who can earn, borrow, and marry money — is the only character with the luxury of ruining himself. The ledger isn’t background. For the Dashwood sisters it is a countdown.
Barton Cottage · The sisters · Ch. XVII
Austen’s driest joke, in two figures
Marianne, the novel’s scourge of materialism, is asked to name her “competence” — the modest sufficiency beyond which money means nothing. She names eighteen hundred to two thousand a year: roughly double what Elinor calls wealth, and four times her family’s entire income. Elinor laughs; the text moves on; and two hundred pages later Marianne marries Delaford — which is worth, to the pound, two thousand a year. Austen never points at it. She just leaves the two numbers in the ledger, thirty-two chapters apart, for readers with a pencil.
“Come, what is your competence?”
“About eighteen hundred or two thousand a year; not more than that.”
Elinor laughed. “Two thousand a year! One is my wealth! I guessed how it would end.”
S&S · Asked and answered
Quick answers
How much money does Colonel Brandon have?
£2,000 a year, from Delaford (Ch. XXXIII) — four times the Dashwood household’s entire income, and precisely Marianne’s definition of a bare “competence.”
What would £500 a year be worth today?
Around £35,000 by price inflation — but measured in servants’ wages (a maid earned ~£10 a year) it bought a staffed household and gentility. The honest translation: genteel, and one illness from trouble.
Why does Willoughby marry Miss Grey?
Her £50,000. His estate couldn’t fund his habits, his debts had come due, and his cousin had just disinherited him for what he did to Brandon’s ward. He chose solvency; Chapter XLIV is him discovering what it cost.
How much do Elinor and Edward end up with?
About £850 a year — the £200 living plus settlements once Mrs. Ferrars unbends to the tune of £10,000. Just shy of the £1,000 Elinor once called her “wealth,” which is exactly the kind of detail Austen leaves for you to notice.
What does “competence” mean here?
Regency shorthand for enough to live on without working. The joke of Chapter XVII is where the sisters set the bar: the romantic’s “enough” is double the realist’s “wealth.”
Your shelf · Nearby
Keep going
The people behind these numbers are sorted on the characters page — including who plays them in the 2026 film — and the book’s own page is here. If you’d rather hear the ledger read aloud, Karen Savage’s recording is free and follows the page. For a novel where the money is darker and the axe is real, Crime and Punishment is one shelf over — it also opens with a ledger, kept by a pawnbroker.
Read the whole ledger in context — Sense and Sensibility is featured in Chromatics now, free in full, audiobook included.
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