‘Women in literature are obsessed with money’. Discuss.

Literature by or about women tends to focus largely on the issue of financial insecurity of the women, hence it becomes a pivotal feature within the novel. In both ‘Sense and Sensibility’ by Jane Austen and ‘Mrs Dalloway’ by Virginia Woolf, women are presented in their relation to the issue of money, either becoming defined by their goal to attain financial security and wealth or being defined by the consequences that have arisen from their financial situation. In Sense and Sensibility and Mrs Dalloway there are characters which are portrayed in a negative light who have an obsession with money, or their lack of money, which becomes a defining feature of their character. Jane Austen presents the character of Lucy Steele as being manipulative and greedy due to her obsession with attaining wealth through marriage, and this is clearly condemned by Austen through the description of Lucy as ‘artful, illiterate, selfish’, which could potentially be seen as authorial intrusion given Austen’s own beliefs about money and marriage. As argued by Shannon Blatt, Austen presents ‘women who use manipulation to get their goals are successful but Austen does not praise them’ and it is evident that Austen believes that the more worthy women of suitable marriages are those who gain a marriage proposal through their intelligence and suitability to their partner as seen by her contrast between Elinor and Lucy Steele in ‘Sense and Sensibility’. This feeds into other women’s beliefs in the Regency Period such as Mary Wollstonecraft who claimed that society should ‘strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience’ so that they would make better wives. The actions of Lucy Steele are thus condemned by Austen due to their manipulative behaviour, and she becomes defined as money-hungry and selfish compared to the virtuous Elinor who is arguably the ‘moral focaliser’ of the novel.