Have you ever wondered what Mr Bennett did in his room all day?

[CurlewKate]

Obviously he was hiding from his wife and daughters-but what did he actually do all day? He read-but I wonder how many books he would have owned. He had a farm to run-but presumably he had a manager to do most of that. Household accounts? Letters to his brothers in law? Chaucer fanfic?

He probably had estate and accounts stuff to do, but like to think of him sitting there, savouring Catullus like it was fine wine, and practicing his bon mots.

And certainly not reading Fordyces sermons

😁

Loving that there's so many Janeites on Mumsnet.

Curlew Kate

I dont think the cooking comment backfired from Mrs Bennets side, so much as it was another clumsy attempt of Mr Collins to ingratiate himself that fell flat - he thinks he is paying a complement but completely offends her because she (who married a higher status/class man) sets high price that Mr Bennet is a gentleman - and thus can employ servants and run a household for his well bred ornamental daughters where they do not do manual and house work.

The same issue stands in a little backhanded comment made by Mrs Bennett about Charlotte Lucas when talking to Mr Bingley 'No, she would go home. I fancy she was wanted about the mince-pies' which is a fairly subtle denigration of Sir William and the Lucas family (self made man, employed in trade) , implying that they are not of the best class, their habits are not so genteel as the Bennetts, they are not rich enough to employ many servants and their daughters are not so refined as hers.

It didn't seem to backfire for Mrs Bennett - Mr Collins still pursues and proposes to Elizabeth but might just have tipped him over to think of Lady Catherines advice again when she refuses him ('Chuse properly, chuse a gentlewoman for my sake; and for your own, let her be an active, useful sort of person, not brought up high, but able to make a small income go a good way') although he did dine at the Lucases after Elizabeth refused him so perhaps he tasted the mince-pies and this sealed the deal. 🤔

I am another Austen lover who absolutely hated that adaption with Keira Knightly because it totally destroyed the whole comedy of manners/interplay of class strucure that underlies so much of the book and turned it into to an ahistorical pastiche where Elizabeth drips around in some sort of shapeless pirate coat. I watched it in ever growing suppressed rage....

I can only associate that with Mrs Elton in Emma, and the fact that she bangs on about it all the time in her vulgar way presumably suggests it’s like a flashy Porsche?

It’s the Bennets’ horses I mentally struggle with — when Jane is invited to Netherfield, she wants to go in the ‘coach’, but the horses are ‘wanted on the farm’. Though there’s clearly at least one other horse, as Jane rides to Netherfield, but I think of farm horses as heavy horses, like Clydesdales, suitable for ploughing, and don’t really see them pulling carriages. But if, as JA suggests, Mrs Bennet and all five girls travel in it around the locality I suppose they’d need to be powerful horses… (Mrs B and the girls go to Netherfield for a visit altogether, and I can’t imagine Mrs B walking six miles there and back, even to snare Mr B.)

I think it’s a sign of the Bennets’ gentility. I mean, I don’t think the girls actually do any cooking at all (can you imagine Lydia burning water?) , and Mrs B is genuinely outraged at the slur on the class of her daughters. It had become something of a badge of gentility to be able to support one’s womenfolk in idleness (apart from the eternal home dressmaking and mending, as well as the kind of embroidery that could be done in front of visitors (rather than darning your smalls), but it’s not entirely clear to me whether JA intends this as a sign of faulty parenting. It’s true that once Mr B dies, if no daughter has married well, five girls and their mother will be living in small rented rooms in Meryton with one maid of all work…

Charlotte, who clearly has more domestic know-how, will clearly be far more capable of running a small household, poultry etc than Lizzy would have been if she’d snapped up Mr Collins — but in RL, JA and her mother and sister did cooking, preserving, cheesemaking etc with their servants, though JA got a pass later in life when she was an established writer.

I love how JA uses food to make social points, like the difference between the Longbourn (rural, unfashionably early) and Netherfield ( Londonish, fashionably late) breakfast times. Lizzy gets Jane’s note about being ill at breakfast and has time to put on outdoor clothes and walk three miles cross country before being shown in to Netherfield, where they’re only now having their breakfast.

Remember the Bennetts dined with four and twenty families so Mr B probably did some socialising with the menfolk, playing cards, afternoon walks with the dogs, shooting, comparing farming methods etc.

I think corresponding. I remember as a child having to keep a list of who (pen pals, grandparents etc) had written so I could write back in order…admittedly I had school but I also didn’t have to write to huge numbers of friends.

I suspect that Mrs Bennet is well past her child bearing years.

It says at the start of P&P that Mr and Mrs B. didn't give up hope for a son for some years after Lydia arrived, but have now accepted that one is not forthcoming.

I always thought of the Bennet parents as being no older than 43/44 which would fit an eldest daughter of 21/22

What did he do all day? Same as my father I suppose. DF went into the shed around 1991 and re-emerged around 2005. Coincidentally his eldest daughter hit the teenage years around 1991 and youngest left home in 2005. He didn't have a hobby and the shed was small, he didn't even have a chair. We were told he was listening to soccer matches on BBC radio. Another funny coincidence, a "match" always began as I walked through the door and ended after I left the house.

This, and Lydia is what, fifteen at the start of the novel? The Bennets have been married for 23 years, Jane’s age suggests they conceived pretty much immediately, and there’s only a seven-year gap between the eldest and youngest of the five. Mrs Bennet was clearly pretty fecund, and was still hoping for a son for years after Lydia’s birth — possibly a birth injury or infection ended her capacity to conceive or sustain a pregnancy?

If she was young when she married, 17 or 18, which is possible, she could be 40 or 41. She’s always cast far too old in adaptations —we’re told she was beautiful as a young woman, which is why Mr B married her. I think it would be interesting to cast a good-looking actress who still oozed sex appeal and was 40ish. It would make her ‘silliness’ and desperation to marry off her girls code quite differently.

Possibly, lots of other people have responded on that point, but what I said was in reply to someone suggesting that they should have stopped after Lizzie! They couldn’t, they needed that son.

You sound like the Brontes!

I suspect he had a handy door in his study that meant he could "retire to his study", fuck straight off out of the house without answering any stupid questions, and hare off for a long walk (maybe Lizzy got it from him), to visit any sensible male neighbours (perhaps the vicar?), maybe do some fishing, or just hide away discreetly under a big hat at the pub and have a few pints.

In Sherlock Holmes (which I realise is later but quite a lot of the houses mentioned in it are presumably supposed to be old) plenty of studies have a door to the outside. I presume that's so that estate managers, tenants etc could visit without coming to the front door? Or maybe just so they could nip out for a thoughtful smoke and stroll.

Didn’t the girls/women do their ‘work’ (sewing) in the mornings? Unless people were extremely well off, a lot of their clothes, and e.g. the men’s shirts, would have been home made - all by hand.
And that’s besides the fancier, ornamental stuff.

Maybe he was thinking about the Roman Empire?

Thanks to these excellent suggestions, I now have a plan for my retirement. 😀

Ive thought about this again and perhaps Mr Bennett was some sort of 1800s Hikikomori, in an apathetic protest against the constrictions of life as a gentleman and his general state of disappointment. Or maybe he has PTSD from Mary's terrible piano playing.

I can just see Mrs Bennett posting here with her dilemmas.
'AIBU to feel my husband has checked out of our marriage'
'Is this a fair distribution of money for wedding clothes?'
'My youngest daughter has eloped- AIBU to go no contact?
Surely Elizabeth would have a thread in classics about meeting Darcy , while Jane is on the relationships board - 'Met this great guy but now ghosted'

Yeah, doesn't Jane Austen basically say the girls didn't get a great education?

Doesn't Elizabeth say they had all the masters they wanted? That would be music, drawing, languages. But only Jane, Elizabeth and Mary would have bothered - unless one of the masters was young and good looking.

Yes, something to the effect that those who wanted to learn were able to.

Personally, I think Mr B locked the study door then slipped out the window to visit the mistress he kept in the next village. That's one of the reasons they were so 'poor'.

From now on I will rebrand wasting my days on Reddit and TedX wormholes as 'mildly scholarly pottering'.

@stayathomegardener I thought of the Schlegel sisters in Howards End when I read about your childhood.