Pride and Prejudice

[Blackdog19]

Just watching the awesome Colin Firth P&P adaptation. When I first watched it as a teenager, I thought Mrs Bennett was the annoying ridiculous one. It took reading something for me to realise that Mr Bennett was as bad in his own way saving no money and leaving Mrs Bennett with the possibility of 5 unmarried daughters and no home. If I had read the book in Jane Austen’s do you think we’d have more initial sympathy with Mrs Bennett?

I still watch it - and every time I do, Mrs Bennet reminds me of my Mum and Mr Bennet (because he rarely gave a shit) of my dad.

Poor Lizzie - 4 sisters and all of them bloody awful.

I love this version of P&P, it can’t be beaten in my view!
I don’t agree with you though. Mrs Bennett is ludicrous and as much as she wants her daughter’s married she almost sabotages their chances without intending to with her erratic behaviour. I find it hard to have any sympathy for her, she has no awareness of her daughter’s characters and their happiness doesn’t seem to feature in her thinking.
Mr Bennett could have possibly made different choices in terms of providing for the family but he says he was hoping for a son to ensure his daughter’s are secure and then it became too late.
Mr Bennett says to Lizzie that marriage where you do not respect the other person is intolerable (something like that). It must have been hard to be married to Mrs Bennett’s nerves all those years.
I like the fact he didn’t want Lizzie to marry Mr Collins and put his foot down and agreed with her decision.

Mrs Bennett is is a fairly pathetic character, & I mean that in the old fashioned sense of the word. She has little real power - Mr Bennett obviously married her for her looks, not her brains, character, or any other virtues. She's an inadequate mother & has failed to oversee the education of any of her daughters, leaving them to their own devices & largely at the mercy of men. It's down to Jane & Elizabeth's own intelligence & natural charms that they make good matches. Lydia falls into an obvious trap. Mary is constantly belittled & overlooked, & Kitty is first encouraged to engage in, & ultimately punished due to her part in Lydia's behaviour. It's pretty clear Mrs Bennet has either some MH issues and/or a pain issue. But of course, being a woman with an unsympathetic husband, in that time, she would have been characterised as a hypochondriac (or whatever the term was back then).

Mr Bennett, having failed to provide for any of his daughters or his wife - he admits as much. "I wish I had laid by an annual sum to bribe worthless young men to marry my daughters, but I have not, I confess. The reason was, of course, I intended to father a son". His income, although not very grand, would have allowed him to do this with proper management & planning.
He also frequently taunts and belittles his wife & daughters, both in private (his wife, regarding her nerves, who "have been his good friends these 20 years"), & his daughters (Mary - "give the other young ladies time to exhibit"). His scorn for his wife is noticed, by his daughters, his friends, and others. He is not a particularly pleasant character & in fact Darcy is spot on when he highlights this, although it's painful to Lizzie at the time, probably more so because she knows it's true.

The thing that always strikes me about P&P is that the Longbourne estate is entailed - can't have a girl owning it - but the much larger Rosings estate is run by Lady Catherine and presumably fairly well. I always felt there was a bit of girl power about Lady C...

I think the reason that Mrs Bennett gets a lot of stick is because she tries to manipulate and control her daughters. She may have good intentions but in the end, she should have at least respected that Jane and Lizzie at least didn't want to marry just to secure their future. The fact that Lizzie was offered up to Mr Collins without conferring with her daughters first is a great example of her lack of consideration for their feelings. Mr Bennett might have been too laid back and allowed Lydia and Kitty to turn out a bit ridiculous but at least he wasn't trying to control his daughters and respected that they had their own minds. I don't remember there being any mention of why Mr Bennett didn't have any provisions for his daughters, but I didn't get the impression that he had been lazy throughout his life or lived frivolously.

Bobcat2020 - Mr Bennett intended to break the entail by fathering a son.

I agree she knew if her daughters weren’t married well they would be out on the streets.

It was more how she went about it I guess. I love the colin firth and Jennifer Ehle adaption it’s perfection,

I’m not sure that they actually had money to save , it’s expensive keeping that house , the minimal servants and upkeep of all the daughters . I also don’t think they’d have been out on the street as her brother would have provided for them in that event .

It says in the book that they were still trying for a son for several years after Lydia was born, which would effectively safe them financially by meaning that he would inherit instead of Mr Collins (although if you look at Sense & Sensibility it's clear that a son inheriting wouldn't legally have to look after his mother and sisters, only morally). They've been married for 25 years and Lydia is 16 when the book is set, so assuming they kept trying for 5 years or so, they'd been married for 14 years by the time there was any urgency to having to save money, and it says that by then Mrs Bennet was in the habit of overspending (only Mr Bennet's pride saved them from going too far) and Mr Bennet couldn't see the point in starting to save.

One of the things to remember it's that Mrs Bennet would be much younger than she's usually portrayed in the films. She almost certainly married between 15-20, probably on the younger side of it, so she should only be early-mid 40s in the book. And Mr Bennet is almost certainly older.

They're both crap parents, as the book makes clear. He deliberately shows up his wife in front of their kids and in public. He openly says that all 5 of his daughters are remarkably silly and ignorant (well, why didn't he bloody well get them a governess or send them to school, then - I know he doesn't mean ignorant in the sense of book learning, but even so!). He blantantly favours Elizabeth (and to a lesser extent Jane) over the others. He disses Mary at the ball. He lets Lydia go to Brighton for an easy life. He pretty much can't be arsed to do anything that would put himself out for anyone and he'd rather laugh at his own family than try to teach and help them.

Mrs Bennet is not just a cackling old gossip and a cow to her neighbours, she's also shown to have pretty questionable morals. She doesn't give a shit about Lydia having sex before marriage as long as she gets the guy in the end (clearly not as much of an issue nowadays). She openly encourages her daughters to flirt and flaunt themselves (again, more of a questionable act in the period). I think the bit where she's least to blame is in trying to encourage Lizzie to marry Mr Collins. Obviously from Lizzie's point of view she couldn't possibly accept, but from the family's position there's really no guarantee that she'd be able to get a better husband financially or socially and it would save all of them from destitution. If they didn't marry they'd pretty much have to end up as governesses, which was a miserable life.

I don’t agree with you though. Mrs Bennett is ludicrous and as much as she wants her daughter’s married she almost sabotages their chances without intending to with her erratic behaviour. I find it hard to have any sympathy for her, she has no awareness of her daughter’s characters and their happiness doesn’t seem to feature in her thinking.

It's been a while since i last read it but Mrs Bennett doesn't have the luxury of thinking about their happiness. In fact, she has to be worried that they will end up destitute. They would be at the mercy of Mr Collins and his possible future wife (look how when Lizzie turns him down her friend jumps at the chance knowing that she'll either end up in their house or in a good living at a parsonage somewhere)

Mr Bennet's plan was to have a son and when that didn't happen he just buried his head in the sand. No wonder his wife (he married below his station and that is why he doesn't respect his wife - she hasn't been brought up to move in the circles that would pretty much guarantee a good marriage for a pretty girl).

I've often wondered if Wickham and Darcy were half-brothers, it really does seem to be the obvious conclusion.

I love Regency novels, i read a lot of Georgette Heyer and they are choc a bloc of the Mamas trying to make a good match. That was their life's goal if they were cursed with daughters. It must have been exhausting.

@SisyphusAndTheRockOfUntidiness

Bobcat2020 - Mr Bennett intended to break the entail by fathering a son.

It wouldn't have broken the entail, it would have been entailed on the next male heir after his son. Breaking an entail was incredibly expensive. Has anyone read wideacre?

But if Wickham & Darcy are half-brothers, are we to suppose they knew it or didn't know? It would make Wickham's pursuit of Georgiana incest....

I doubt that Jane intended them to be brothers but they could have been...the relationship was between the two men's fathers so not sure why darcy senior would have been shagging his best friend's wife.

I've never thought before that Wickham might be Darcy Snr's son, but I have wondered whether Anne de Bourgh ever got married (I go with probably yes because she's loaded so the equivalent of Colonel Fitzwilliam but slightly less picky would have gone for her regardless of how useless she is) and whether Wickham raped Georgiana. And whether Mrs Younge is a prostitute/pimp.

Both parents have their faults but I can’t bring myself to dislike mr Bennett, he loves his girls in the way he knows how. He at least accepts his faults and is embarrassed by them.

Mrs Bennett was doing the right thing but in the wrong way.

In the 90s I felt that Alison Steadman's over-the-top performance spoiled what was otherwise a note-perfect adaptation.

I watched it again this year - yep, Alison Steadman's over-the-top performance spoils it. She's like a blinking pantomime dame, shrieking and wailing.
Totally unnecessary - the writing does all the work, or should do.

It's interesting how many of Austen's fathers are either a)useless or b) absent.
Mr Bennet shows no signs of worrying about the very real possibility of the girls ending up in poverty.
Fanny Price's father is at the other end of the country, and is a feckless, drunken, not always gainfully employed lout.
Marianne and Elinor's father is dead.
Anne Eliot's father is a vain, empty-headed fool.
Emma Woodhouse's father is a querulous, whiny old hypochondriac.

Yes CodenameVillanelle Wickham was the son of old Mr Darcy's steward, which is a senior servant, though it is not mentioned if his wife was a servant also?

Did he have no money so couldn’t save or was he irresponsible spending it

For the record,

His plan was to have a son, who would inherit and look after his mother and sisters. Until it was too late to 'start saving'

Agreed she's silly and damages her daughter's chances at marriage with her big mouth but he is also imprudent in not preparing for the possibility of his death which eoukd leave them all destitute.

JA is just brilliant at the way she sees people's foibles and weaknesses so clearly.

The first time I saw P&P I was very young, certainly pre-teen and very fond of my mother. It was an amateur theatrical production which I was allowed to stay up late for. I remember saying on the way home that they were not very nice to the mother and that I liked Lydia best, as she was nice to the mother .... to the eternal scorn of my much older sister.

Since then, I have been through the cycle of admiring then seeing through the father. Even found time to be sorry for Bingley's sisters... leg would be much more comfortable for them if Darcy married someone from their 'set'.

One of my favourite books ever.

Yes! Totally agree Mrs Bennett did the right thing in a ridiculous way, Mr Bennett did the wrong thing but in a seemingly dignified way. I think even though Lizzie idolised her father that she could see this by the end of the book

Sorry, I've tried really hard.

It is Bennet not Bennett.

I have very strong reasons for caring about this.

By the way, if you haven't seen it, the Bollywood version, Bride And Prejudice is absolutely spot on perfect and I adore it. It translates perfectly to an Indian society where girls must marry, and it's so much fun.

Sorry @TeenPlusTwenties I should have checked!!