Quiz Tomorrow!

We need to finish strong with Jane Eyre.

There will be a short Socrative quiz tomorrow on the end of the novel - and maybe another on Friday.
PLEASE READ - and review your classmates' handouts and tweets (hint, hint). 

I appreciate the effort on the class presentations, but I suspect that not everyone is reading as they should. 


Remember, we have a final TEST on MONDAY.
Just for fun, if you missed the tweet...


Parody - SNL - Jane Eyre from Thisbe on Vimeo.




Lastly...

Question: How much is 20,000 pounds worth today? 

Depends on how you factor it....
Answer: Thanks to this Wiki post:

 English 1B

£20,000 is the amount of money Jane‘s uncle John Eyre made during his lifetime. John Eyre has no children to pass his fortune along to, so he leaves it for Jane even though he has never met her. Jane learns that she has inherited his fortune from Saint John Rivers Eyre, after he confronts her one day. Though Jane is happy she has inherited this fortune, she decides to split it among herself and her three cousins John, Diana and Mary, even though St. John advised her not to.

Twenty Thousand pounds back in the 1840 was an extremely larger amount of money; enough to last the family for generations. There are five ways to measure the relative value of twenty thousands pounds in today’s economy. The first way to measure the relative value is the retail price index. The index measures the cost the goods and services purchased by a typical consumer in a base period of time within the United Kingdom. It is used as a limited way to measure inflation. Based on the retail price index the value of Jane’s fortune is£1,369,011.04 in today’s economy. In the U.S this would be worth about $2.738 million.

The second system used to measure the relative value of £20,000 is the Gross Domestic Product Deflator. The GDP Deflator is an index that represents the average price of all goods and services produced in the economy. Changes in the Deflator is a broad way of measuring inflation. The GDP Deflector is calculated by dividing the nominal GDP by the real GDP. Based on the GDP Deflator the value of Jane’s Fortune would be worth £1,988,258.14 or $ 3.977 million in the United States.

The third way to measure the relative value of twenty thousand pounds is the average earnings index. Average earnings are wages paid in cash to cover a specified number of hours worked in a period of time. Average earnings include overtime pay, commissions and bonuses for the specified time period. Based on Average Earnings Jane’s 20,000 would be worth£14,836,122.61 pounds and about $29 million American.

The forth method to calculating the relative value of £20,000 pounds is the per capita GDP, which is the GDP divided by the number of people in the country. This gives the average amount of money per person the economy outputs over the year. Using the per capita GDP Jane’s 20,000 given to her by her uncle, is worth 21,922,071.59 or approximately $44 million.

The fifth method used to calculate the relative value of £20,000 by measuring the consumption or production of a commodity or product against the output of the economy, the monetary amount is computed as a percent of the GPD. This means that the output of a certain commodity or project is compared to the output of the rest of the economy to see how productive it is. The method is called share of GDP and it only used for commodities if they have a large percent of the GDP. Based on share of GDP Jane’s inheritance is worth £50,625,454.98 or over $100 million U.S.

Based on information from measuringworth.com the best way to approximate the value of £20,000 in 1840 to today’s economy is per capita GDP, the best way to calculate purchasing power is using the share of GDP. So for the purpose of finding the income value and purchasing power a simple solution is to find the mean of the per capita GDP and the share of GDP. So Jane Eyre’s 20,000 adjusted to today’s economy for value and purchasing power is £36,273,767. 28 or 72,547,534.57 U.S dollars.


Works Cited
"Five Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.K. Pound Amount, 1830 to Present." Measuringworth.com. 5 September 2008 <http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/result.php#>.