Thanks for mentioning Austen, Nigel. Whatever their literary value, all of her novels are essentially the same: social satire on the upper and lower gentry of her time. Feminists have renewed her popularity but only by interpreting it through a gynocentric lens--that is, by replacing Austen's interest in class with their own interest in "gender." They comment only, therefore, on the plight of women from "poor" families who needed desperately to marry titled men. Their alternatives were to live with relatives, become governesses or rely on some unusual talent (which is what Austen herself did as a writer). The reality, for both women and men, was somewhat more complicated than feminist theory (which accounts for only those of the aristocracy and gentry of early nineteenth-century England).

It's true that some men chose careers in the government, the army or the church (whether they had any interest, let alone competence in any of those careers). Other choices were discouraged. Only men of the uncouth nouveau-riche class built industries or worked in "trade." Only parents of the dreaded middle classes encouraged their (presumably eccentric) sons to become physicians or lawyers. So most upper-class men--the most prestigious ones--did not earn money at all. They lived on the rents of tenant farmers at their ancestral estates . As Austen observes, they had to either gamble for money it at the faro tables or marry it (which was in itself a form of gambling). This meant that those "marriageable" men, like women, seldom married for love in any modern sense of that word. These were marriages of convenience for both sexes, usually arranged by the parents (although they were not necessarily unhappier than modern marriages).