Jane Austen's Rich Young Women Quiz

Answer: George Wickham

Georgiana Darcy was a particularly shy and quiet 15-year-old girl when she went to live in Ramsgate and became a target for the fortune hunting Mr. Wickham. He tricked her into believing he was in love with her and talked her into agreeing to elope with him without the permission of her guardians - her brother, Mr. Darcy and her cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam. Fortunately, Mr. Darcy visited her shortly before they were due to leave and was able to rescue both her and her fortune from Mr. Wickham's clutches.

Miss Darcy had known Wickham from childhood because he was the son of the steward of Pemberley (the Darcy's estate) and her father's godson. The late Mr. Darcy had wanted Wickham to become a clergyman and left him an inheritance dependent on him taking up that vocation. Since he wasn't really suited to the job (in both his own and the younger Darcy's opinion), he had received a cash alternative, but became bent on revenge against the Darcy family once the substantial sum of money had run out.

Mr. Denny was Wickham's friend who encouraged him to come to Meryton to join the militia and William Goulding was the resident of a house near Meryton named Haye Park.

Answer: Mr. Philip Elton

Emma Woodhouse was the youngest of the two daughters of Mr. Henry Woodhouse of Hartfield in the village of Highbury. Jane Austen described the family as being "first in consequence" in Highbury, meaning that Emma was influential as well as "handsome, clever and rich". The novel focused on her attempts to use this influence to act as a matchmaker for her friends, as well as on how her lack of understanding of everyone's love lives (including her own!) caused almost all of her efforts to backfire.

One of Emma's first attempts at matchmaking involved persuading her poor friend Harriet Smith that she was in love with the local clergyman, Mr. Elton. Unfortunately, it soon transpired that Mr. Elton was seeking a rich bride and Emma's £30,000 fortune fitted the bill. Emma was left with the dual problem of declining his proposal of marriage and then having to explain what had happened to Harriet...

Mr. John Knightley was Emma's brother-in-law, Mr. Frank Churchill only pretended to be interested in marrying her and she eventually married Mr. George Knightley.

Answer: Louisa

When Mr. Bingley moved to Netherfield Park at the beginning of 'Pride and Prejudice' he brought with him his two sisters, Mrs. Louisa Hurst and Miss Caroline Bingley. Louisa's husband, Mr. Hurst, was an indolent man who had a habit of eating and drinking a lot and spending the evening asleep on a sofa. It was clearly suggested that the reason why the husband and wife were happy to accept their brother's extended hospitality was that they didn't have the level of wealth required to maintain a similar lifestyle themselves, although they did have a house on London's Grosvenor Street (a road in the heart of fashionable Mayfair).

Caroline Bingley by contrast spent most of 'Pride and Prejudice' attempting to get Mr. Darcy to marry her. She was always keen to highlight the fact that she had a fortune of £20,000, but less keen on anyone remembering that it "had been acquired by trade".

Answer: Viscountess

Despite clearly coming from a wealthy family, Eleanor Tilney's life was not one that most people would be envious of. She had lost her mother when she was only 13 years old and was then brought up by a tyrannical father, General Tilney, in a somewhat lonely large house - the eponymous Northanger Abbey. She also had a general lack of female companionship due to the fact that she had no sisters to share the experience with, although she was close to the younger of her two brothers, the hero of the novel, Henry Tilney.

When Henry fell in love with Catherine Morland, her father initially encouraged Eleanor to befriend Catherine as he believed her to be a rich heiress. When he discovered that he had been wildly misled about Catherine's wealth, General Tilney ordered his daughter's friend to be thrown out of his house and his actions caused a rift that also effectively separated Eleanor from her beloved brother. The first benefit of Eleanor's marriage that Jane Austen described did not relate to her new title of Viscountess, the wealth of her husband or even the fact that she loved him - she instead led with the observation that it had achieved "her removal from all the evils of such a home as Northanger had been".

Answer: Liverpool

Miss Mary King was a minor character in 'Pride and Prejudice' who was first mentioned as one of the ladies with whom Mr. Bingley had danced at the Meryton assembly (she was his third dance partner of the evening after Charlotte Lucas and Jane Bennet). Somewhat unfairly described as a "nasty little freckled thing" by Lydia Bennet, she gained the attention of Mr. Wickham only after she inherited her grandfather's fortune. Elizabeth Bennet (the first recipient of Wickham's attentions) was at first prepared to excuse his behaviour as the natural result of a poor young man having to make his fortune by marrying a rich woman. However, after she discovered Wickham's role in attempting to seduce Georgiana Darcy she came to realise that he was in fact "solely and hatefully mercenary".

Luckily for Mary King, she was saved from Wickham's insincere attentions by being sent to live with her uncle in Liverpool. Lydia Bennet wasn't as fortunate, as she went on to elope with Wickham from Brighton and he only married her because he was bribed to do so by Mr. Darcy.

All the incorrect options are northern cities, although only Newcastle got a mention in 'Pride and Prejudice'. It was the location of Wickham's new regiment and he and Lydia travelled there shortly after their wedding.

Answer: They were divorced after Maria ran away with Mr. Crawford

Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram had four children - two sons named Tom and Edmund, and two daughters named Maria and Julia. The two Miss Bertrams were described as the "belles of the neighbourhood" with both "beauty and brilliant acquirements". The eldest, Maria, soon attracted the attentions of Mr. Rushworth who had an income of £12,000pa (making him considerably wealthier than Mr. Darcy from 'Pride and Prejudice) and the couple became engaged to be married. Since Sir Thomas was away in Antigua at the time, the actual wedding date was postponed until his return and in the meantime Maria had the opportunity to flirt with a young man named Henry Crawford.

When Sir Thomas did finally make it home he realised that Mr. Rushworth was a fool and offered Maria the choice of breaking her engagement; she refused, and the marriage went ahead. However, shortly afterwards she met Henry Crawford again in London, embarked on an affair with him and eventually they caused a scandal when they ran away together. Mr. Rushworth simply suffered some embarrassment and the cost of a divorce, but Maria lost all her wealth, influence and reputation. She also had to go and live in a small cottage with her Aunt Norris!

Answer: Sophia Grey

Marianne Dashwood was young (just 16 years old at the beginning of the story), pretty, romantic and headstrong - Austen described her as "eager in anything" as well as "anything but prudent". When she was literally swept off her feet by the handsome Mr. Willoughby, she quickly gave him her heart and convinced herself that he was the only man whom she could ever love. Sadly for Marianne, the one key criterion for an early 19th century bride that she didn't meet was "wealthy". Following the death of her father, she, her mother and her two sisters lived in a small cottage on the estate of one of her mother's distant cousins and she had a personal inheritance of just £1,000.

As it turned out, Mr. Willoughby wasn't a respectable man. He had seduced and abandoned Colonel Brandon's young ward, who later turned out to be pregnant with his child. The elderly cousin on whom he was financially dependent disinherited him when she found out about it and instead of continuing his relationship with Marianne, he headed to London in order to attract the richest heiress he could find. He duly married Miss Sophia Grey, but in the end her £50,000 did not secure him happiness and he was left to regret the love he had thrown away. Austen didn't give her readers much of a description of Miss Grey, but she was apparently "jealous as the devil" of Marianne.

The Hon. Miss Morton was the rich heiress suggested as a bride for Edward Ferrars, while Lucy Steele was the young woman Edward was secretly engaged to. Anne Steele was Lucy's elder sister.

Answer: Mary Crawford

Mary Crawford and her brother Henry were the half-siblings of Mrs. Grant, the wife of the rector of Mansfield. She had a fortune of £20,000, while her brother had an estate in Norfolk named Everingham. When Miss Crawford arrived in Mansfield she initially thought that Tom Bertram would be the best husband for her because, as the eldest son and heir, he stood to inherit a "real park, five miles round" with the benefit "of being Sir Thomas hereafter". However, Tom went off to visit some friends and Mary was left to fall in love with his younger brother Edmund instead - although she was "aghast" when she realised that she was planning to marry a clergyman!

However, Mary and Edmund were unable to marry because her brother ran away with Edmund's married sister and brought disgrace on both families. Edmund was initially distraught at the loss of his intended wife, but quickly realised he'd actually had a lucky escape because Mary's moral attitudes didn't match his own (she didn't think her brother had really done anything wrong). Mary on the other hand regretted his loss but became "perfectly resolved against ever attaching herself to a younger brother again".

Fanny Price was the heroine of 'Mansfield Park'. Henrietta Musgrove and Penelope Clay were both characters from Jane Austen's 'Persuasion'.

Answer: Maple Grove

After the eponymous Emma Woodhouse rejected Mr. Elton's proposal of marriage, he went to stay in the city of Bath, where he met Miss Augusta Hawkins. Since one of Mr. Elton's key criteria for a wife was that she be rich, Miss Hawkins' fortune of about £10,000 was sufficient to secure her the position (although he presumably would have preferred Emma's £30,000). The people of Highbury village were keen to welcome the new Mrs. Elton to her new home, but many of the residents ended up finding her annoying as she had a habit of talking incessantly and her most frequent topic of conversation was the wealth of her relatives. It therefore didn't take long for her to disseminate the information that her sister, Selina, was married to a Mr. Suckling and lived on an estate named Maple Grove.

She also specifically irritated Emma by offering to help her get an introduction to society and calling Mr. Elton her "caro sposo". Emma's verdict of her character was typically blunt: "A little upstart, vulgar being, with...airs of pert pretension and underbred finery".

Longbourn was the home of the Bennet family in 'Pride and Prejudice', Uppercross Hall appeared in 'Persuasion' as the home of the Musgrove family and Norland Park was the Dashwood's estate in 'Sense and Sensibility'.

Answer: Pride and Prejudice

Rosings Park was first mentioned during the events of 'Pride and Prejudice' as the residence of Lady Catherine de Bourgh - the patroness of the daft clergyman Mr. Collins. The heiress in question was Miss Anne de Bourgh, the only daughter of Lady Catherine and her late husband, Sir Lewis de Bourgh. The income of the estate isn't mentioned in the course of the novel (unlike the £10,000 a year attributed to Mr Darcy's Pemberley) but the house was clearly large and expensively furnished as it had a "chimney-piece" that "alone had cost eight hundred pounds" and poor Sir William Lucas was "completely awed by the grandeur surrounding him".

Unfortunately for Anne de Bourgh, she was not described quite as impressively as the home she stood to inherit. Although Mr. Collins said she was "far superior to the handsomest of her sex", Elizabeth Bennet (whose opinion the reader would definitely be more likely to take seriously) described her as looking "sickly and cross".