5. In such cases, their desperate expedients were her timely
opportunities.
This statement, which appears at the end of Chapter 7, “An Economy of
Makeshifts,” fleshes out an important aspect of Cecilia’s character: her
hardheartedness in profiting from others’ misfortunes. The economy in which
Cecilia lived, especially during the Great Famine when she launched her
career in landholding, was an economy of scarcity. The overabundance of
people combined with the shortage of resources drove many peasants to sell
their land in order to buy food they could not grow. Land prices decreased,
but peasants were forced to sell out of desperation. At this time, Cecilia
took advantage of her neighbors’ hard luck in order to amass landholdings.
In her land-grabbing endeavor, Cecilia may have shown herself to be somewhat
callous and exploitative, which indicates that she was more concerned with
ensuring her own economic security than with neighborly goodwill. Whether or
not her actions caused resentment among her fellow villagers, Cecilia
clearly did right by herself and her family and benefited by seizing the
opportunities generated by her neighbors’ “desperate expedients.”
