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? 😂

I love Mrs Bennet. I really do think it’s genius how you can read her as being this completely ridiculous, dramatic meddler that often unknowingly makes this worse. Then you can go back again and see her as a really sympathetic product of the time she was alive in suffering from being married to a man who likes to tease her with his indifference even though it’s her whole life on the line.

I think there should be a whole new novel in which Mary and Mr Collins get married. What a pair they would be!
They would be blissfully happy together. Mary's need for approval would mesh in perfectly with Lady Cath's need to dispense approval to anyone fawning enough to flatter her into it. Mr Collins would be comically eager to show off her (non-)accomplishment to all and sundry, blind to her stolid mediocrity.

Because she’s desperate because she’s married to a stupid man who thinks he’s cleverer than everyone else?

I agree she’s a poor matchmaker. But she is who she is and Mr Bennett is responsible for much if not all of this situation.

Well, yes, that's clearly true. Both parents are hopeless really. Funnily enough I'm on another thread atm about parentification. Poor old Jane and Lizzy have to suck up a lot of that!

I really like how Mary was portrayed in “the other Bennett sister” but Caroline Bingley, who is fairly prominent in it is a bit cartoonish.

Yes, they certainly did!

One of Mrs Bennett’s biggest mistakes was pushing Mr Collins and Lizzie. Mr Collins probably could have been persuaded to take any of them. Lizzie had a better chance than Mary of marrying well and Mary, or possibly even Kitty, could have been persuaded into Mr Collins whereas Lizzie was never going to be.

Mrs Gardiner is a delight but her husband is nice and her and her children are financially safe.

P&P - negligent father, hiding in his study; S&S - no father; Persuasion - idiotic, careless father; Mansfield Park - brutish father who the heroine never sees; Emma - fusspot, hypochondriac old duffer of a father; and I can’t remember the father in Northanger Abbey, but it does seem that Austen prefers to create imperfect or absent fathers.

Yeah, I prefer Brenda Blethyn's Mrs Bennet in the Kiera Knightly film. She's still an attractive woman (though still too old) and not played as much for laughs as Alison Steadman's version.

Regarding Emma I so so agree with you. Her father is the curse of her life and in a way explains everything else that happens in the novel. He views himself as extremely attentive to others (and requires everyone else to view him in the same way) but in reality he steadfastly demands that everything, especially Emma's life, has to be ordered around his comfort.

Poor Emma understands from this that she cannot marry, but she is also "be kind" enough to deny that he is the one who is stifling her life in this way. So she has to deceive herself, she has to pretend to herself that she doesn't want to marry. It is this huge effort of self-deception (about her desires, about how resentful she should be of her nasty dad) that causes her systemic blindness and thereby generates all the events of the story. That is why the novel is such a stonkingly brilliant exercise in managing perspective. It reveals without stating the painful mental contortions that her father compels.

He was wonderfully played by Michael Gambon once, I recall. I still see his oily fake altruism. Yuck.

Mr Bennett is also awful and selfish, but much more likeable, despite his laziness and irresponsibility. He is witty and wry like Lizzy, but without her good side, and without her self-insight.

The Bennets' problem was that repeated pregnancies did not produce a son to inherit the estate and provide a home for his unmarried sisters. Girls were expensive to bring up as potential wives - they needed pretty clothes, accomplishments, and dowries - and there were five of them to provide for. Unmarried gentlemen with good incomes were few and far between in 1813, and the country was at war. No wonder Mrs Bennet was in acquisition mode when Bingley arrived. Mr Bennet was prepared to call on him and introduce himself; he too is aware of his daughters' plight.

No, he isn’t. If he was he would have stated saving for them from birth. Stupid to assume a son would come along. He did the absolute bare minimum.

"Stupid to assume a son would come along" Remember: this novel was written on or about 1812! Of course they assumed there would be a son, and they probably blamed the woman if there wasn't. By the time they are grown up, many eligible young men were away in the Peninsula at war with the French. Marrying five daughters well would be a struggle. I think the problem lies with the complicated laws of inheritance, which meant that only male family members could inherit.

I think the problem lies with the complicated laws of inheritance, which meant that only male family members could inherit.

Yes, the very unfair entail.

He could also have made sure his daughters were educated, and taken part in their upbringing so they weee all taught to think and behave. He knew Mrs B had no education, and a ‘defective’ upbringing in terms of the class she had married into. He would have made sure any his were properly taught and governed. He didn’t bother about his daughters

Mrs B had no tools except native cunning and instinct. He had education and sense. She did her best, he did nothing

Which Mr Bennet would have been aware of. He knew his estate was entailed. So what we should have done is saved for his daughters and cultivated that heir. But he didn’t. He treated Mr Collins as some laughable fool, but he was the fool, and Mr Collins no doubt laughed at him.

Honestly, I can’t understand how anyone can defend Mr Bennett, an educated gentleman with total power over his womenfolk until his death and in fact beyond. He thinks he’s better than everyone else but is a stark example of what marrying the wrong man can land you with. Mrs Bennett might not have had the wit to work that out but Jane and Lizzie knew it full well - not that marrying a Mrs Bennett was a disaster but marrying a Mr Bennett.

Mr Bennet had also failed to make any provision for his wife and daughters after his death.

I think it's one of those books that pays rereading as you get older and have more life experience. I have more sympathy for her (for them all really) as I get older!

The book version! The book came first.

Jane and Elizabeth were a credit to their father. Mary might have been, but she failed to flourish - she was not particularly talented although she fancied herself as musical. It is only the two youngest ones who are the horrors, and Kitty at least improves when Lydia is out of it.
What we are not told about is whether they had a proper governess.

Yes. Mrs Bennett was actually the sensible one regarding getting her daughters married off. Mr Bennett had his head in the sand.

Mrs Bennett had every reason to be worried. It was Mr Bennett who was the idiot.

Have you read The Other Bennet Sister? It’s told from Mary’s pov. During the book , Mary goes to live with Mr Collins and Charlotte for a while and she and Mr Collin become close.
Defini worth a read (or listen which is what I did)

Mrs Bennet probably wasn't much older than 40.

And yes, she was the one actually trying to do something to secure her daughters' financial futures, unlike her husband.

If Mr Bennet were real and lived in 2025 he would definitely be scrolling his phone whilst taking hour long poos every day.