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?

Justice for Mrs Bennett. A realist in a house of idealists.

@OpenlyGayExOlympicFencer

But what does plain mean? To me that means normal, not pretty and yet not ugly. Don't most of us fall into the plain category?

Probably, but the actress in the 95 adaptation didn't!

I agree she was striking by today's standards but she did have a pinched look about her and the severe hairstyle which didn't show her beauty.

The Keira adaptation was more unbelievable, all 5 sisters were pretty.

If a girl wasn't pretty but is perfectly ordinary looking, not too fat and not too thin, she might have been described as a 'fine girl', but if she was described as plain, i think we can assume that she was quite unattractive, and i think Charlotte fits into that category. I believe that looks were important to Collins, his inflated sense of self importance would have made him feel entitled to a pretty wife, but he was flattered by Charlotte, who threw herself in his way at an opportune moment, and as he had visited Longbourne with the intention of finding a wife, he wasn't going to return home empty handed.

Agree, Mr Bennet reprehensible! No respect for women.

But doesn't Mr Collins himself says he wants to make it up to the the Bennets by marrying a dd because of the entailment? Therefore he expects to support the whole family (at least that's what he says, it might have been very different after marriage and Mr Bennet's demise).

He does, and I don't think the character comes off as someone who'd do what John Dashwood did. Not sure how Lady C would've felt about it, for one thing. But he may have thought he probably wouldn't end up supporting them all. After all, there are five of them, they're known to be good looking and Lady C loved sticking her beak in and arranging other people's lives. If he'd got what his original plan was, marrying Jane, no doubt Lizzie would've been there a lot and could well have been a marrying off project.

@OpenlyGayExOlympicFencer

I agree, he probably would have supported one or two sisters / Mrs B, but would have regularly reminded them of how generous he had been (based on his smug attitude after Lydia's scandal).

My point was not that Mr Collins would have left the other Bennet women to starve on the street, because I certainly don't think he would have, but that Mrs Bennet doesn't know enough about him to make that call and throw her daughter at him at the start of their acquaintance. It would have been a perfectly decent match (disregarding his personality) for one of them, but to see it as the salvation of all was jumping the gun, IMO.

Yeah. I think probably as well she would've had in mind the marriage to Mr Collins opening some other doors as well though.

@Fink i agree with that, she was very quick to offer a daughter, although she probably would have been less happy to offer Jane or Lydia. She was probably glad to marry off Lizzie.

Agree that Mr Bennett was a selfish prick and a useless father, and I think that one of the hugest moral lessons of the story is that if Lizzy hadn't that the honesty and discipline to correct some of her misperceptions she would have ended up just like her dad - quietly cynical, laughing at her neighbours, feeling superior to their foibles and using her disdain as a pretext for not living up to her duties to her fellow men and women.

I think Mr Bennett gets off lightly in the book because Lizzy (who is surely Jane Austen herself in many respects) is such a massive daddy's girl that she finds it hard, a lot of the time, to fully admit his faults.

Mind you, regardless of how useless Mr Bennett is, I don't think it lets Mrs B off the hook. She is dreadful.

@OpenlyGayExOlympicFencer

Yeah. I think probably as well she would've had in mind the marriage to Mr Collins opening some other doors as well though.

It's hard to see what doors it would open. She's on a much stronger footing with the connections that Bingley and Darcy bring. Mr Collins is described as having made no useful connections at university and living in retirement at Hunsford, Lady Catherine (with Anne and her companion) is literally the entirety of his social circle.

As an aside, about your username, are you actually an Olympic fencer? What weapon? DC are really into fencing (it's only coronavirus saving me from spending my evenings sitting in a sports hall during training).

They could be a fencer or they could be the Master of the Rolls.

www.independent.co.uk/news/people/jk-rowling-brexit-legal-challenge-twitter-response-daily-mail-headline-openly-gay-fencer-judge-a7396941.html

The useful connection being meddling Lady Catherine. Mrs B wouldn't be familiar with the extent of her social circle at that point: she'd just be like ooh, gentry. Actually I've always wondered whether Colonel Fitzwilliam might have wanted to propose to Lizzie if he hadn't had some awareness that his cousin was after her.

And sadly no! I am nowhere near that interesting or accomplished. It's a reference to the Daily Mail headline about some judges who had the temerity to, erm, uphold the law.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemies_of_the_People_(headline)

Truth be told, I've never done any fencing in my life!

Mr Collins is described as having made no useful connections at university

Sounds like me

@Cassilis

Mr Collins is described as having made no useful connections at university

Sounds like me

And me!!! 😂😂😂

Well, me too on the no useful connections at university, now I come to think of it. I'm forever seeing people I was an undergraduate with mentioned in the news as having done great things (or sometimes not great things, Ruth Hunt springs to mind) and it does make me feel like an underachiever!

I'd blanked out that news story about the judges. Good name. Shame about the fencing though, you should give it a go!

Actually I've always wondered whether Colonel Fitzwilliam might have wanted to propose to Lizzie

I've always read it as he did like her (he's quite flirty with her) and would have proposed if he could had afforded to, but he's the younger son of an Earl, so generally won't inherit, and as he's in the military that backs up the assumption he doesn't have much personal fortune. All the estate if his father would go to his older brother. The Colonel would have been educated, and may have a small inheritance from another relative if lucky, but would be expected to have his own profession and then marry well (i.e. an heiress). He even explains this to Lizzie.

I suspect he was also watching the whole Elizabeth/Darcy saga and knew why his cousin was acting so strangely, and probably wishing he could have his choice of wife like the rich and independent Darcy could.

I am clearly alone in the world in finding Colin Firth's Darcy not wildly appealing (particularly when wet or emotionally-engaged) and kind of constipated-looking?

No you're not. Can't say I could see what all the fuss was about either.

Re. doors Mr Collins might open (which is giving me a disturbing picture of Mr Collins pushing open the doors of Helm’s Deep in a grubby coat of chain mail), I assume that’s at least partly why the Lucases send Maria to visit Charlotte when Lizzy goes — not just as female company for a recently-married woman far from home getting used to having her own household and a dullard husband, but for potential social connections and marital possibilities. (In fact, there are none, apart from Colonel Fitzwilliam and Darcy...)

It’s impossible to see Lizzy as absorbed in housekeeping and poultry keeping as Charlotte quite happily is. Presumably we’re to intuit that Lady Lucas, as Mrs Bennet bitchily hints, isn’t too refined to keep her daughters away from the kitchen, whereas Mrs B reacts with shock and horror at Mr Collins’s suggestion that one of the girls made dinner, and snaps that they can afford a cook.

Is also recommend reading Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

I am watching this now too for about the 20th time, introducing it to my 15 year old daughter. She can not understand why the estate is entailed away to a male relative. As we have just finished Downton Abbey which had the same issue it is obviously not just of that time. The idea of women as property is thankfully so foreign to her that she finds it an incredibly bizarre concept to get her head around.
But what she really can't get over is how you could meet a person once or twice and fall head over heels and decide this was to be your life partner! And that marriage was as much a business contract as a love match. Even Lizzie was swayed in part by Pemberley.
Mr Bennett is quite up front at how laissez faire he has been, but it was the assumption that there would be at least one male heir that kept him hopeful and they do seem to live relatively frugally for their class.
As for Mrs B, she was written for comic relief and Alison Steadman is brilliant. Fickle and contrary, she has her children's best interest at heart. She says what everyone is thinking.

marriage was as much a business contract as a love match.

Plenty of evidence on MN (as current as it's possible to get) that many do not realise that this remains the case.

So many women who didn't understand how vulnerable they have made themselves, having put their ability to earn a living on hold in order to have DC with someone, without any legally enforceable contract such as marriage to provide some protection

Others from women who find themselves the financially stronger partner, whose circumstances are very different.

Marriage was, is and always will be as much a business contract as an outward sign of love between two people

I think @Pipandmum's daughter needs a history lesson in how women in the 21st Century came to this happy situation (and it is still not so happy for everyone) and how marrying 'for love' is luxury that was denied to both men and women throughout most of human history.

Perhaps Pride and Prejudice was a good place to start.

I may not be completely up to date but certainly until very recently its been the case that dukedoms in the aristocracy go to a male heir not the eldest child .

Hence the Duke of Westminster was the youngest but inherited as he has older sisters.