To think Elizabeth Bennett is shallow?

[WobblyArse]

Pride and Prejudice in reality:

He is a massive twat.

She changes her mind about him only when she sees his massive house.

The end.

Oh I meant took after in character rather than looks. Imagine having a brood of simpering Mr Collins at your feet!

Jane Austen was not Romantic in the way that the term was understood in the early 19th century. Her books were unusually realistic. They do involve courtship - but I think there is a very much a moral/philosophical stress on how, within the constraints of society, can one get to know what other people are like. How can you make good choices? She's not a sensual writer in that there is very little physical description/writing about the body. This article might be of interest. www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/jane-austens-social-realism-and-the-novel

I think Mrs Bennet was a much better parent worrying about her daughters futures which her husband didn’t really seem to care about.

Both dhs siblings had arranged marriages. Finances were very much discussed.

Dh & I had a semi arranged marriage. We met & liked each other but the details (ie cash) were sorted out by our parents.

Dsil says she agreed to marry dbil as she knew he had a good education, came from a decent family & would take care of her & not be like some of the men we know. No different to Charlotte.

Can’t people just read things in the context of the time they were written?
She was a smart cookie.

Jane Austen was not Romantic in the way that the term was understood in the early 19th century.

Her heroines always end up marrying the man they love (and who loves them) by the end; and that is the backbone of each novel .. the story is then concluded with a quick wrap up/summary of the side plots. That constitutes a romance to me.

Writers at that time did not tend to sensual or physical; the focus seemed to be cerebral, emotional .. I imagine anything else was seen as smutty, not respectable writing etc.

(I should add that one might think Marianne Dashwood was the exception in that she did not end up marrying man she loved, but I presume (haven't read it in a long time) that by the time she married Colonel Brandon she had realised Willoughby's failings, no longer him and lived Brandon, albeit in a different way.

• no longer loved him and loved ..

I'd also do Maxim de Winter.

You could argue that Lizzie is fundamentally selfish and unrealistic. She turns down two reasonable proposals. What exactly is her life plan? Is she going to let her widowed mother and sisters starve when Mr B is gone (look at the Dashwoods, forced to throw themselves on the mercy of rich relations). She fails to play by the practical rules of the day. As do almost the whole family.
Mr B fails to manage his finances so as to leave them secure. He also makes a foolish marriage for looks.
Mrs B knows she needs to marry the girls off, but damages their chances by her own behaviour.
Kitty and Lydia, totally fail to play by the social mores of the day.
Mary, goes her own sweet way and in some ways is pretty egotistical. Her way is the best with all the little homilies.
Only Jane falls in to line.
Of course a novel tends to prefer a rebel over a conformist, hence why Jane and Charlotte are not the heroines.

Austen herself turned down a similar proposal to Collins', and she advised her niece not to marry without affection, believing it to be wrong. Elizabeth could be viewed as selfish to refuse an eligible proposal, but surely it was selfish to marry only for financial gain, and not fair on the suitor in question, especially if he really loved her? It took courage to be a non conformist in those times, I think a lot of people admire Elizabeth for her courage more than anything else. Plus, she was only 20, she wasn't ready to give up on finding love.

I don't judge her at all for turning them both down, I just think we need to see them as decision with different consequences from me turning down a marriage proposal today.

@FFSeverynameisused re: the futures of Mary and Kitty Bennet: I understood that it was Jane Austen herself who said it. I was basing it on the following from 'Memoir of Jane Austen' written by her nephew, James Edward Austen Leigh in 1869:

She would, if asked, tell us many little particulars about the subsequent career of some of her people. In this traditionary way we learned that ...Kitty Bennet was satisfactorily married to a clergyman near Pemberley, while Mary obtained nothing higher than one of her uncle Philip's clerks, and was content to be considered a star in the society of Meriton ....

no, all of that about him being a twat was all her own prejudice based on him being a bit rude the first time he saw her. Yep, he was indeed rude, but it turned out, his life was impossibly stressful right then and the solution of staying with a friend whose entire family irritated the heck out of him was not a solution to that stress. in reality, he is a pretty reliable and overly considerate guy. But not that day. truthfully, he behaved better around her pretty quickly, but she was determined to interpret his ever word and action as horrible, even when her friend and sister could see it was not and argued with her about it.

As for Elizabeth, she is a spoiled daddy's girl in one of the leading families in the area, an area she has never actually left except to visit relatives and be equally sheltered in their home. she values her own opinion, based on experience she doesn't understand is limited, far too highly and truthfully makes a fool of herself.

Haughty, reserved and fastidious is how Darcy is described in the book, 1moremum . Everyone at the ball is disgusted with his behaviour, at a time when rich people could afford to give offense wherever they went, and lower class people could ill afford to displease their betters. People were pre-disposed to like him because of his wealth, all he had to do was compliment a couple of people and pass a few pleasant remarks. It was his place to do that, or stay at home, but he strode around, speaking to no one, and displaying very clearly that he looked down on everyone present. Austen also said that Bingley made friends wherever he went, while Darcy was continually giving offence. He is a good man, but he has never bothered to learn small talk, or pay attention to people who are beneath him, unless they were part of his cohort. This is not just Elizabeth's opinion, it is the opinion of almost everyone who meets him. Elizabeth's character is left more to the reader to determine, but she is well liked by aqquintances old and new. She is her father's favorite, but she doesn't play on this or manipulate him to get what she wants, ever. She is ashamed of her mothes vulgarity yes, but she loves her and is respectful and obedient to her nonetheless. (Except on the subject of marriage to Mr Collins). Elizabeth knows that her upbringing has been slightly unconventional, but she is not ashamed of it, even when lady Catherine takes her to task about it. She is the smartest in her family, and as such her opinion is sought frequently, so yes she is confident and inclined to be opinionated, but she eventually learns that she cannot always trust her first impressions, and can admit her mistakes.
Pride and prejudice is my favorite book, I have read it countless times but this thread has prompted me to read it again. Cheers op.

I actually think Charlotte got the better long term deal.

She is a Vicar's Wife - that's a full time job, a productive role in society.

What is Elizabeth Bennet? A chatelaine of a big house. Don't you think she'd get bored?

Charlotte will be busy, busy, busy , involved with the parishoners lives on a daily basis, running her own house hands on ( not from a distance) and possibly even getting into some political activism as her social consiousness grows, as often the clergy did.

I think for an educated, critical thinking woman, Elizabeth actually missed a trick.

No. She'd have had a very busy time of it being the mistress of a house like Pemberley/Chatsworth as well as the surrounding villages and tenant farms and cottages. I mean if you wanted I suppose you could spend your days painting watercolours and acquiring walnut side tables but if you wanted to get stuck into something meatier I'm sure there was plenty of scope for 'doing good'.

Charlotte did okay for herself in the scheme of things but I think she herself would do a polite little raised eyebrow at the thought that she did better than Lizzy.

Of course Elizabeth did 'better' socially and monetarily.
But Charlotte will have a rewarding life.

DArcy will be bored of Elizabeth within 4 years.

And Charlotte would have been dropping the arsenic into Mr Collins mock turtle soup after 2 years. Nothing rewarding by being married to someone you don't particularly like. What was it Mr Bennet said? something along the lines of 'it would cause me grief to see you married to a man you didn't respect'.

DArcy will be bored of Elizabeth within 4 years

But she'll have a couple of kids to focus on by then and he'd take a mistress - so they'd still be realtively content.

I'm rusty and heavily influenced by the 1995 version, but having made a marriage for the correct social/ economic conventions, Mr Bennet can't face seeing Elizabeth in a marriage for financial contract to a man such as Mr Collins whom she finds contemptable. Charlotte is much more pragmatic and better suited to cope. Elizabeth would probably be happier as a governess or companion than setlling for an intellectually inferior husband.

Mr Bennett has been foolish with regard to finances and regrets that he has left it too late upon realising that he won't have a male heir. Mrs Bennett realises the importance of marriage to her daughters but damages their chances by rushing them out to be avaliable and does not constrain the behaviour of the younger girls with their music playing and over enthusuastic dancing which is to the detriment of the whole family.

The social settings have changed, but the flawed characters endure 200 years later. We recently had a thread about "settling" in relationships, exactly what Charlotte Lucas did.

I like to think Elizabeth and Mr Darcy had a happy marriage. They fell in love for each other's brains and personalities and Pemberly has plenty of parkland for Elizabeth to go rambling through

And Charlotte would have been dropping the arsenic into Mr Collins mock turtle soup after 2 years

Charlotte will arrange for the vicar to have all his meals in his study where he's not to be disturbed. :-)

And she'll be too busy doing the essential community work that a clergy wife undertakes ( not just doing good as the fancy takes), the vicarage is the local social work department of its time - and her own child rearing that there will be really very little time spent one-to-one with Mr Collins.

She'll go to bed knacked every night, but with a plan for tomorrow....

Elizabeth? She will become the bored wife of an absent husband, indulging spoiled children and dreadfully discontented, even if she does visit the poor.

Anyway, it's a good thread :)

Has anyone read Longbourn?

I enjoyed the realism of the beginning, with the description of the sevants lives and the chilblains...but the actual storyline was tosh .

Alternatively if she managed to keep her hand from the arsenic bottle Charlotte would have had her head turned by a travelling lay preacher called Hepzibah. She would have then traded in life at the vicarage for a life on the road with Hepzibah, hot gospelling by day and hot sapphic passion by night.