Aibu to think in Pride and Prejudice Mrs Bennett is actually the good parent and Mr Bennett is the silly one?

[SuburbanFraggle]

Yes, she is shrill and annoying and he is chilled out and cool HOWEVER they have five daughters, unmarried who together with his wife will be basically destitute if he dies.

In those days a simple infection, broken arm or whatever could quickly kill you. Even if there was a small sum set aside for them they would end up like Miss Bates in Emma; a very meager existence, at the bottom of their social class and unlikely to marry, thus making it a lifelong situation unless they became governesses - the only respectable employment they could find.

The mother realises this and is trying to get them their own households ASAP before they lose the entailed property. There is not much of a dowry, split between five to make them attractive to suitors. Marriage was a BUSINESS DEAL in those days, and if you're lucky you'll be happy too. Mr Bennett just didn't GAF. All this follow your heart business is not helpful when the six of them (widow and daughters) are stuffed in a tiny cottage and relying on handouts.

It was not unreasonable to try and match one with Mr Collins SO THAT THEY COULD STAY IN THEIR HOME. The bookish one would have been a better match with hindsight but she was not unreasonable to expect Elizabeth to do her duty and save the family. For every story that ends with a Darcy there are a hundred more ending in the Workhouse.

Of course they would not end up with zero, probably some small allowance would be in place, the reality is that the women COULD NOT LEGALLY INHERIT Mr Bennett's estate because of the law at that time regarding entailed property.

AIBU to think Mrs Bennett was the better parent because she cared about the welfare of her children even if she went about it in a bumbling way?

Mr Bennet may be considerably older than his wife, though JA marries seventeen-year-old Marianne Dashwood to 35-year-old Colonel Brandon, who is only slightly younger than her mother which may make Mrs Bennet's efforts to marry off the girls before he dies rather more urgent.

I mean, her desperation to marry Lizzy to Mr Collins and her hysteria when Mr Bennet goes to London looking for Wickham and Lydia in case he challenges him to a duel and is killed (!) are played for solely laughs in most Austen adaptations, but from the point of view of a woman with five dependents who will lose her home and almost all her income on her husband's death, it's not actually so funny.

I voted for Mrs B, who is much hard done by, and not just because of the way she’s been played on film as an hysteric old hag (most egregiously by Alison Steadman).

And adding to the recommendations by @Chemenger and @ThursdayLastWeek for The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow, which is an incredibly satisfying take on the character of Mary, and for that matter, Mr Collins.

I enjoyed Longbourn too, but I’m embarrassed to admit that one of the reasons I found it less pleasing is because it reinforces how tough life was for servants at the time.

@Aethelthryth there is also Sir Walter in Persuasion another appalling parent.

Dads weren't hands on parents when the books were written. Just enjoy them for what they are. YABU.

RedHelenB

It's not about being hands on and braiding their hair. It's about making sure that when you are in your grave (which could happen anytime really pre-antibiotics) they are not left living in a tiny cottage, on virtually nothing.

In those days if you got appendicitis it's not a couple days in hospital; you're dead. He knew they would be completely effed but dgaf. Just sat in his bloody study.

Oh my goodness, time for a huge plug for 'the other Bennett sister' by Janice Hadlow - it follows Mary, starting during the same period as P&P but then continuing on after the family leave Longbourn. I hugely recommend it - would say a lot more but would ruin the plot

Even Sir Walter actually does something about his appalling financial position and spendthrift habits. Mr Bennet is passive in the extreme.

Sir Walter is massively in debt and his creditors need paying. Even so it takes a lot of persuasion by people much cleverer than himself to force him to live on less. He makes such stringent conditions for the rental of kellyhynch hall too that it's almost a miracle that they manage to get a tenant. Mr Bennet on the other hand makes sure that they don't fall into debt by careful management.

There is no doubt though that Mr Bennet is too passive when it comes to planning his daughters futures.

Where do you get the 'careful management' from?

The BBC adaptation shows him sitting down, totting up expenses and working on his books - one of those little unscripted additions that serves to steer our view of the character. The book doesn't actually portray that and says very clearly that he never learned to be economical as he was expecting a male heir.

Every JA heroine has bad parents. The brilliant thing about them is that they're not drunks, abusers or negligent; they ruin their DDs' chances in life in much more subtle ways.

Mr Bennett is laidback and witty, but too detached. Mrs B busts a gut for all the girls but is squealy, pushy and grabby. They have the faults of their qualities. The Bennett DD marry in spite of their parents' behaviour, not because of them, which is rather a condemnation in the 18th cent.

He is indulgent to his wife and daughters but very incompetent as a father. I think at one point he realised that having a hot but very un intellectual wife lost its glamour and retreated into the library, leaving his wife to take care of the future of their children.
They’re both woefully lacking as parents and Austen is good at depicting this and the impact it had on their daughters.

Every JA heroine has bad parents
The Dashwood mother wasn’t bad from what I remember.

Mrs Bennet had no turn for economy, and her husband's love of Independence had alone prevented them from exceeding their income Mr Bennet didn't save for the future, something he later regretted, but unlike sir Walter, he didn't allow his family to slip into debt. He is not comparable to sir Walter in that respect imo. And although he did not save for the future, unlike his wife he didn't try to force his daughters into marriages that would make them miserable.

Mrs D was very passive, an unremarkable flaw that leads to a flamboyant crisis when the Dashwoods end up broke. She indulges Marianne, another harmless silliness that triggers a not-remotely-harmless crisis.

With all JA's parents, small foibles cause big trouble.

When all of a sudden there are no more or at least no more surviving, when she can't have been any more than mid 30s and could theoretically have been still in her 20s. Austen does talk about them not having given up hope of a boy for many years after Lydia, so I'm not sure if she was trying to allude to something there?

My mum had 6 kids by the time she was 30. The doctor told her another child would kill her so she stopped. Maybe something similar was said to Mrs Bennet and she denied Mr Bennet his marital rights?

@TheMustressMhor

In "Fifty Shades of Mr. Darcy" (which is a most amusing book) the author says:

Mr. Bennett retired to his library and waited for television to be invented

I know this is an old thread but I'm reading the Fifty Shades ofMr Darcy book and I love the line where, after Jane says how lovely the Bennet sisters are, what kind friends, it says

Elizabeth could only sigh. Jane could be such a dumb-ass sometimes

FFS BINGLEY sisters not Bennet sisters

@HebeMumsnet I fear if there were any group of women who literally didn’t have the option to “get their ducks in a row”, it’s Georgian ladies.

@annamie

When all of a sudden there are no more or at least no more surviving, when she can't have been any more than mid 30s and could theoretically have been still in her 20s. Austen does talk about them not having given up hope of a boy for many years after Lydia, so I'm not sure if she was trying to allude to something there?

My mum had 6 kids by the time she was 30. The doctor told her another child would kill her so she stopped. Maybe something similar was said to Mrs Bennet and she denied Mr Bennet his marital rights?

I don’t think it can be that - the quote about them not giving up hope indicates that they were still DTD but it just didn’t happen. Unlikely for a woman in her early thirties but not impossible that a combination of male or female decline in fertility and increasing number of early miscarriages would prevent her having another baby after Lydia.

Of course Austen’s knowledge of the ins and outs of reproduction may not have been exhaustive. She’d presumably have seen a lot of couples stopping having babies after three, four or five and not been privy to the reasons why that was happening (sexless marriage, birth injuries, or couples taking various measures to prevent pregnancy due to health risk to woman or just because they didn’t want more). From an outsider’s POV a family like the Bennett’s where babies just stop happening even though the woman is still quite young would be very common.

You are not wrong. I think we had a thread on the same subject recently.

There is an interesting parallel between Mrs B’s situation and Elizabeth’s. Both women marry above their rank and move in a higher level of society than they are used to navigating. Mrs B flounders but hasn’t the self awareness to notice. Elizabeth is self aware but also struggles to modify herself to her circumstances - it is satisfying that she cannot be cowed by Lady C but it also shows a contempt for social convention.

Mr B despises his wife, and Mr D despises everything about Elizabeth except Elizabeth herself. Presumably before they were married Mr B was also smitten with his fiancée.

It’s hard to be very hopeful about how it all works out.

@StrangerHereMyself and @annamie I wondered if Mrs Bennet’s “nerves“ were a genteel allusion to what my grandmothers generation discreetly called “women’s troubles”, which in my own grandmothers case were dangerously heavy bleeding, anaemia and exhaustion, hormonal mood swings and untreated birth injuries. I doubt Austen would necessarily have known very much of that kind of thing but would likely have seen all sorts of female weakness, moodiness and general oddness ascribed to nerves.

I’m so glad lots of other posters have enjoyed The Other Bennet Sister as well. I finished it a couple of weeks ago and thought it was wonderful. So clever the way it shows a completely different side to Mary, Lizzie and Charlotte. And I love that it hints that Jane was totally insipid, because I always thought that.

Yet another hearty recommendation for The Other Bennet Sister! I really enjoyed it. The character of Mr Collins was beautifully portrayed.