Baronetage

The Baronetage is a book of peerage records that serves as Sir Walter Elliot's obsessive reading material, a symbol of his vanity, and a narrative device that reveals family history, social status, and the passage of time.

Identity and Function

The Baronetage is a reference work listing the pedigrees of baronets, a rank of the British nobility. For Sir Walter Elliot, it is the only book he ever reads for his own amusement, providing occupation for an idle hour and consolation in a distressed one. He finds in it admiration and respect by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents, and turns over the almost endless creations of the last century to transform unwelcome domestic sensations into pity and contempt. The favourite volume always opens to the page recording his own family: "ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL." Sir Walter has personally improved the printed paragraph by adding the date of his daughter Mary's marriage and inserting the exact day of his wife's death. The entry concludes with the arms and motto of the family, and Sir Walter's handwriting adds: "Heir presumptive, William Walter Elliot, Esq., great grandson of the second Sir Walter." The book thus functions as a private monument to his lineage, which he constantly polishes and consults.

Vanity and Self-Regard

Vanity is the beginning and end of Sir Walter Elliot's character, and the Baronetage is the mirror of that vanity. He considers the blessing of beauty inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy, and the Sir Walter Elliot who unites these gifts is the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion. The book allows him to read his own history with an interest that never fails. When he grows distressed for money, he takes up the Baronetage to drive the heavy bills of his tradespeople and the unwelcome hints of his agent from his thoughts. The book is thus a refuge from financial reality, a tool for self-soothing that reinforces his sense of inherent superiority.

Family History and Social Status

The Baronetage records the history and rise of the ancient and respectable Elliot family: how it was first settled in Cheshire, mentioned in Dugdale, served the office of high sheriff, represented a borough in three successive parliaments, and displayed exertions of loyalty and dignity of baronet in the first year of Charles II, with all the Marys and Elizabeths they married. The entry forms two handsome duodecimo pages. For Sir Walter, the Kellynch estate must be transmitted whole and entire as he received it; he would never disgrace his name by selling land. The book embodies the principle of unbroken inheritance that governs his decisions about property and marriage.

The Passage of Time and Marital Prospects

The Baronetage also marks the passage of time and the pressure of marriage expectations. Elizabeth Elliot, at twenty-nine, finds the book an evil because it always presents the date of her own birth and shows no marriage follow but that of her youngest sister. She closes it with averted eyes and pushes it away. The book also reminds her of a disappointment: the heir presumptive, William Walter Elliot, who had been expected to marry her, instead married a rich woman of inferior birth. For Anne Elliot, Sir Walter has never indulged much hope of ever reading her name in any other page of his favourite work; all equality of alliance must rest with Elizabeth. The book thus becomes a register of failed expectations and the dwindling prospects of the Elliot daughters.

Narrative Significance

The Baronetage is more than a prop; it is a narrative device that encapsulates the novel's themes of pride, social standing, and the conflict between inherited rank and personal worth. It is the book that Sir Walter consults to confirm his own importance, the book that Elizabeth dreads for what it reveals about her unmarried state, and the book that, by its very existence, defines the social world in which Anne Elliot must navigate her second chance at love. The novel's resolution, in which Sir Walter prepares his pen for the insertion of Anne's marriage to Captain Wentworth in the volume of honour, shows the Baronetage finally acknowledging a union based on genuine affection rather than mere rank.