오스틴의 비(非) 장남들: 오스틴 소설에서 유산 상속과 자녀 간의 위계 문제 가르치기

Austen’s Younger Sons: Teaching Inheritance Laws and Sibling Hierarchy in Austen’s Novels

The inheritance system depicted in Austen’s novels has been discussed in the classroom in relation to the author’s preoccupation with economic conditions of women and her acute critique of the patrilinial system which privileged sons’ and limited daughters’ inheritance of family estates and landed properties. Drawing attention to the portrayal of younger sons in Austen’s novels, however, this essay offers a new teaching method of examining the ways in which the practices of primogeniture and entail affected younger sons as well as daughters. The essay begins by showing how landowners and new bourgeois parents started to adopt patriarchal laws of inheritance, and then investigates how this patriarchal system produced sibling hierarchy and thus the potential conflicts of interests between the eldest son and younger brothers. The essay argues that daughters and younger sons face similar problems of dependence and lack of autonomy under the patriarchal inheritance system. At the same time, complication arises when the first-born son becomes dissipate and morally flawed, not deserving the privileges of the heir, or refuses to provide financial support to his siblings. While emphasizing in her earlier novels that the heir as the proprietor of family estates should be educated to be socially responsible and morally respectful, Austen calls into question in her last novel Persuasion the traditional value system itself based on inherited title, estates, and lands.