Fee Tail - Entails in Literature

Entails in Literature

Entails appear in the plot of several novels and stories; it was particularly used as a plot device by 19th century writers of fiction. Among those stories in which an entail plays a significant role in the plot are:

• Downton Abbey by Julian Fellowes
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• The Adventure of the Priory School by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Quincunx by Charles Palliser (written in 1989, but it takes the form of a Dickensian mystery set in early-19th-century England)
• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Pride and Prejudice contains a particularly thorny example of the kind of problems which could arise through the entailing of property. Mr. Bennet, the father of protagonist Elizabeth Bennet, had only a life interest in the Longbourn estate, the family's home and principal source of income. He had no authority to dictate to whom it should pass upon his death, as it was strictly arranged to be inherited by the next male heir. Had Mr. Bennet fathered a son it would have passed to him, but since he did not it could not pass to any of his five daughters. Instead, the next nearest male heir would inherit the property— Mr. Bennet's cousin, William Collins, a boorish minister in his mid-twenties. The inheritance of the Longbourn property completely excluded the five Bennet daughters, who were thus to lose their home and income upon their father's death. The need for the daughters to make a "good marriage" to ensure their future security is a key motivation for many episodes in the novel. Such entails typically arose from wills, rather than from marriage settlements, which usually made at least some provision for daughters.