Meaning & Analysis
People judge a woman (especially as a prospective wife) not by her character or qualities but by her wealth and possessions.
Insights
Materialist valuation
Reduces personhood to property, treating worth as a function of assets. The question shifts from identity and virtue to inventory and income.
Marriage market logic
Exposes the transactional calculus of courtship where dowry and portion outweigh temperament, education, or piety.
Status over substance
Signals a social world that confuses greatness with largeness—quantus over qualis—so size of fortune eclipses quality of soul.
Instrumental relationships
Frames intimacy as means to ends—alliances, security, mobility—hollowing affection into strategy and making partners fungible.
Cynical realism
Functions as a wry admission of how people actually behave, not how they ought, inviting either resigned acceptance or satirical critique.
Early modern dowry economy
Inheritance, land, and portion structured marriages; kin sought to consolidate estates. The proverb mirrors a system where contracts and cash underwrote conjugal choice.
Gendered asymmetry
Though phrased about women, sources note the reverse too (‘Let me have a rich Husband though he be an ass’): both sexes can be commodified, but patriarchal law made women’s wealth especially salient.
Moralists versus markets
Preachers urged ‘ask what virtue hath she,’ while satirists like Swift recorded the age’s contrary practice. The line becomes a foil against which sermons and courtesy books argue.
Psychology of halo and scarcity
Wealth casts a halo, promising safety and status; in scarcity-prone societies, prudence blurs with avarice. The proverb captures the tug-of-war between survival calculus and ethical ideals.
Rhetorical Devices
Antithesis
Balances ‘what is she’ against ‘what has she,’ sharpening the moral contrast between being and having.
Parallelism (isocolon)
Two matched clauses create a tight rhythm that makes the critique pithy and memorable.
Metonymy
‘Has’ stands for wealth, dowry, and property, letting possession substitute for a constellation of social advantages.
Irony
States the crude question baldly, letting its indecency indict the value system it reflects.
Anaphora/echo
Repetition of ‘what’ underscores the shift from essence to assets, reinforcing the proverb’s pivot.
Transcription
Quotations
Alas, poore Swaine, 'tis true what th' Proverbe saith, We aske not what he is, but what he hath.
They regard not Qualis sis, but Quantus: not how good thou art, but how great.
When thou seekest a wife, aske not, what wealth's with her? but, what vertue hath she?
Let me have a rich Husband though he be an Ass.
(It is not what). *Spoken of the Choice of Wives, where the Portion is often more look'd after than either the Person or the Virtues.
It is not What is she? but, What has she? now-a-days.
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.