I think there is something so significant about Elizabeth thinking that Darcy circumvented a will to screw over Wickham in Pride & Prejudice because that is a legal document. The thing that protects married women in the gentry is also a legal document: the wedding articles, a prenuptial agreement that grants women an allowance (pin money) and money after their husband dies (jointure).
“And of your infliction,” cried Elizabeth, with energy; “You have reduced him to his present state of poverty—comparative poverty. You have withheld the advantages which you must know to have been designed for him. You have deprived the best years of his life of that independence which was no less his due than his desert. You have done all this! and yet you can treat the mention of his misfortunes with contempt and ridicule.”
Why did Austen choose to make the issue between Wickham and Darcy an inheritance? I think for the same reason that character and morals are emphasized so much in her novels. A woman is putting her life in the hands of her husband, she needs to know that he will properly take care of her. She needs to know that he won't circumvent the legal documents designed to protect her. And especially in this match, where Mr. Darcy holds so much more influence and wealth than Elizabeth's father, his reputation, character, and past dealings are everything.
“Lizzy,” said her father, “I have given him my consent. He is the kind of man, indeed, to whom I should never dare refuse anything, which he condescended to ask." (Mr. Bennet is endlessly sarcastic, but he's pretty sincere in this scene so I believe him here)
If Darcy could do something so cruel to Wickham, his father's favourite, what could he do to Elizabeth, if one day all of his objections to their marriage overwhelmed his love?
