]....I too have noticed a different mindset on money matters....

Yes, bragging about furniture at Rosings was definitely in bad taste. However, annual incomes and dowries were public knowledge as they were printed in annual publications and in engagement announcements. Liza Picard's "Dr. Johnson's London" is quite an interesting source for money and cost of living.

The English always had an interesting attitude to status in that it is not based on wealth alone but also on breeding and birth, nobility, occupation, education and manners. Even these can be further subdivided into "new money and old money, established nobility and newly created upstarts". I love the way that JA plays with these factors and reveals characters through individual's attitudes and the way they seek or happen to climb the social ladder. Not one of her heroines is "a poor girl who marries a Lord and is elevated to the nobility" although most of them do become financially better off than their mothers. Emma's transition is particularly interesting in that her biggest acquisitions are manners and compassion. Fanny Price is also interesting because she can be judged in two completely different ways; in sharing Edmund's maternal blood equally (both of them are children of a younger daughter too) whilst their fathers have radically different positions in society and available wealth, emphasising the importance of male inheritance and the way it governed female status.