Volume I Chapter 1

Summary
The characters are intorduced through Sir Walter's reading of his family history in the Baronetage. Sir Walter has three daughter: Elizabeth, Anne and Mary. His wife passed away 7 years ago. Elizabth and Sir Walter share arrogant qualities and extravagent spending. The famiy is forced to retrench but Sir Walter refuse to. After Sir Walter's wife passed away, Lady Russel became a surrogate mother to the family especially to Anne. Mary married a wealthy family but of little consequence. Elizabeth was intending to marry the heir to the estate but he married a wealthy woman of little consequence as well.

Family in I.1
Sir Walter takes a lot of pride in his family history and his class. His wife died leaving him, "three girls the two eldest sixteen and fourteen was an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath an awful charge rather to confide to the authority and guidance of a conceited, and silly father" (6). The girls lost the motherly influence in their lives with the exception of Anne, "Lady Russel loved them all; but it was only in Anne that she could fancy the mother to revive again" (7). When Lady Elliot was alive she complemented Sir Walter well, "she had humored, or softened, or concealed his failings, and promotedhis real respectability for seventeen years" (6). Without her influence Sir Walter and Elizabeth had no one to keep an eye on their spending and within a few years after her death they were almost broke. Lady Russel and their accountant Mr. Shepard are trying to advise the family encouraging them to retrench. Elizabeth and Sir Walter object to changing their lifestyles, they were more caugh up in appearance than logistics. When Mary married, "an old country family of respectability and large fortune", she had, "given all honor and received none" (8). Anne's, "bloom had vanished early" (7) leaving Elizabeth the obligation of marrying suitably.