Mrs Bennett - Pride and Prejudice

[EllieHJ]

I always thought she was bonkers but she was just a menopausal woman with 5 girls. I now understand the poor woman. God knows how they coped with it back in the 1700s! Any other characters who you feel were misunderstood in literature? 😂

5 daughters who were not going to inherit the home so would be a burden on their parents unless they founds husbands.
I don't think it was menopause though because Mrs Bennet had always been like that. It's not something that started in middle age.

Tbf, she could easily have been mid thirties so unlikely to be menopausal even in those days. (Married young, oldest daughter 21 or so).

There is convincing argument that she was being the responsible one - aware that her daughters would be homeless and penniless once her (significant older) husband dies, she rolls up her sleeves and does her best to create opportunities to secure her girls’ future. She’s crass and unclassy, but nothing worse than that.

I wouldn't think she would be much older than 42ish so perhaps nearing perimenopause. However she was in many ways very sensible about the situation.

I think this. Not necessarily the menopause but just knackered and anxious. And Mr Bennet is unsympathetic.

i am tired and anxious a lot. Perhaps if I referred to ‘my poor nerves’ as if they were external to me, people would start recognising it as a real confition, with doctors and funding and things (although it didn’t work for her).

Mrs Gardiner was lovely though and she must have been around the same age, maybe a bit older.

Mrs Bennet would have been kicked out of her home eventually because of the inheritance laws.

I think she was just a silly little girl who grew into a silly woman. Mr Bennet admitted he was just as silly when he was younger as he fell for her looks and didn’t consider anything else, but he seemed to mature and she didn’t.

Mrs Bennet wasn't sensible or responsible, she was a silly, selfish woman, who wanted her daughters married as soon as possible because a good marriage was the pinnacle of success for women at that time. Her daughters' martial success was more about opportunities for boasting than their future happiness, or even wealth. There is no evidance that she lifted a finger to help her girls find decent husbands, aside from Lizzie playing the piano they had no accomplishements to speak of, and the younger ones had no manners. Yes she was correct that the entail decreed that they needed to marry, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

I agree I do have some sympathy with her. Although, I feel a re-read is long overdue and in order before I make my judgement...

That’s the thing. I can see why Mrs Bennet was so furious at Charlotte grabbing Mr Collins.

She didn’t go about it well but she did understand that if Mr Bennet died, she & her daughters could all end up homeless.

Lol.

"There is no evidance that she lifted a finger to help her girls find decent husbands"

Yes, there is. She pressed Mr Bennet to visit Bingley so they could be invited to his ball and her daughters could meet him. Left to his own accord, the father wouldn't have done anything.
Also, the daughters needed to be married or at least some of them, because the house was going to Mr Collins.

I absolutely hate the idea that Mrs Bennett was who she was just in virtue of the menopause. Yet another example of how the current preoccupation with menopause is causing some people to return to the regressive anti-feminist idea that women are the passive victim of their hormones.

It is clear in the story that Mrs Bennett has been exactly the same foolish person throughout her married life. It helps to explain the exasperated withdrawal from family life of Mr Bennet. And it explains the progressively sillier dispositions of all but two of their children: The first two had the benefit of Mr Bennett's educative attention; the third strove for it as it was being withdrawn; and the rest were shaped by their mother's long-standing pettiness and stupidity.

I haven’t read it, but some one commented to me that she drank a lot in the book version.

No, I think she was worse than that. Her intentions and motivations were understandable but she went about it so wildly, desperately and insensitively that she embarrassed her elder daughters, failed to even notice the danger to her youngest and nearly ruined them all.

A woman of merely average wisdom would have managed to get those daughters (who did have some attractive traits, just no money) married off without such needless drama.

Jane Austen was only 21 when she wrote Pride & Prejudice - so I doubt very much that she even really knew about the menopause, much less make it part of Mrs Bennet’s ‘make-up'

I suspect that women wouldn’t have made it to menopause age, they frequently died in childbirth.

Wow. That is just amazing. She was so fucking brilliant.

True.

I'm just doing a re read after listening to the audible play which is lovely.

Mrs Gardiner is younger- definitely 30s as she has 4 young children. Mrs Bennet maybe mid 40s? I think Jane is 22.

Mrs Bennet is annoying but not wrong about them needing to get married!

Google says 1 in 18 so obviously not great but lots of women making it to menopause!

Mrs Gardiner has young children though (think the youngest is about 5?), I always envisioned her as mid 30s. Mrs Bennet is probably early 40s, (Mrs Dashwood was only 40). I think she is a combination of silly and anxious for the future, and being silly is unable to plan anything other than crass attempts to marry her daughters. Agree with PP above that reducing her actions to ‘menopause’ greatly diminishes her characterisation.

But she would have known older women, thought not necessarily known the reason for their anxious behaviour, fussiness and general sense of feeling ill. The stereotype of the menopausal woman is very old, and, like most stereotypes, based on a degree of truth.

Given her youngest child was 16, I think she was safely out of the woods.

I think you’ve missed the danger from the estate being entailed away from the female line - Mrs Bennett does say that Me Collins would have them out as soon as Mr Bennett dies. Remember, Mr Collins was estranged from the Bennett’s because Mr Bennett and Mr Collins’ father had “quarrelled”. It should have been Mr Collins’ father who inherited the estate, a man who hated Mr Bennett and so Mrs Bennet could reasonably not expect him to house her and the girls once he’d inherited.

The only way to avoid poverty for Mrs Bennett and the girls once their father died was for them to be already married, ideally at least one in a house big enough to take in Mrs Bennett and any of the girls who weren’t wed yet.

This is why the offer from Mr Collins to marry one of the girls is seen as so perfect, while he’ll own the house once Mr Bennet dies, nothing much else would have to change for the others, they could keep living there, and it would mean Mrs Bennett could relax about marrying the others off.

This is why modern retellings don’t work- you need the threat of poverty and homelessness to underpin the need for these girls to marry.

Perhaps we should all read this book!

I feel sorry for Mrs Bennett. Yes, she was silly, dramatic and probably not that intelligent. However, she was married to a significantly older man in her late teens who did not respect her. I can well imagine Mr Bennett, cute though his relationship with Lizzie was, being quite sly to Mrs Bennett. I imagine there were a number of pretty heartbreaking TTC years after Lydia's arrival. She had 5 kids, all girls, in 6 years, so probably by the time she was 24 she was well aware that she was in a very precarious position.

I just don't buy that Mr Bennett was a wry, funny, attentive father. I think he married a stupid girl who he fancied a lot, grew increasingly pissed off at the lack of an heir and made an exclusive little club with his eldest daughters so they could snigger at silly old mama.

My feelings in my teens and twenties were, of course, very different. I thought Mr Bennett was, I quote, "a legend."