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? 😂

Mr Bennet is a disgrace. He laughs at the foolish Kitty and Lydia, talks disrespectfully about his wife to his children, does nothing practical to support his wife's schemes, and hides in his study.

He does accept Lizzie's decision not to take Mr Collins.

He does, but that means he is supporting his daughter over his wife, which is not brilliant parenting.

Oh dear. His adult daughter and wife isn't always right. At least in this case it led indirectly to her extremely good marriage.

Lizzie and her father are right about the loathsome Mr Collins. Mrs Bennet is wrong but is driven entirely by economic considerations. With five daughters, who can blame her?

Of course and Charlotte was able to make that decision with a clear head. Mr Bennet knew that Lizzie would suffer too much though.

To be fair to Mr B he is also really concerned when Lizzy first says she will be marrying Darcy. Hedoesn't yet know what Lizzy knows, about how lovely Darcy secretly is, and he is afraid she is marrying someone she dislikes, just for the money, which he knows would make her very unhappy.

Sure, he is pretty irresponsible and disengaged, but he genuinely loves his older daughters and has a more realistic perception than Mrs B of their overall needs. I think that some of the very harsh criticism of Mr B on this thread may arise from a misconception that he has never been properly held to account by Austen and many of her readers, so that Mrs B takes an overlarge share of the blame. But this just isn't true. He is squarely in Austen's sights. We can't understand Lizzy's emotional growth in the story without acknowledging how far she has exceeded her father in virtue.

Charlotte and Mrs Bennet are cast from the same mould, although very different in manner. Lizzie is Mr Bennet's favourite, so she is confident in following her heart.

Jane Austen is clear about Mrs Bennet. "She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous."
Mr Bennet isn't much better. "Mr. Bennet had very often wished before this period of his life that, instead of spending his whole income, he had laid by an annual sum for the better provision of his children, and of his wife, if she survived him. He now wished it more than ever.
When first Mr. Bennet had married, economy was held to be perfectly useless, for, of course, they were to have a son. The son was to join in cutting off the entail, as soon as he should be of age, and the widow and younger children would by that means be provided for. Five daughters successively entered the world, but yet the son was to come; and Mrs. Bennet, for many years after Lydia’s birth, had been certain that he would. This event had at last been despaired of, but it was then too late to be saving. Mrs. Bennet had no turn for economy, and her husband’s love of independence had alone prevented their exceeding their income.

It was not a successful marriage, and neither party showed enough determination to improve the situation.

I love this thread. Reminds me so much of ‘Mumsnet of yore’.

And it’s prompted me to get my JA books out and re-read all of them again.

It's surprising them, that Mrs B encouraged Mr Wickham. He had no money, apart from his soldiers pay and no way of supporting a wife. He was soon off when he found a better prospect. I eould guess we all know a Mr Wickham.

It must have been very difficult to even find suitable young men, let alone get them to marry! Especially if you weren't grand enough to do the season. The young men must have felt hunted.

Great thread!

My favourite Mrs Bennett on the screen is the one in the 1995 tv series. The actress playing her is Alison Steadman, and she was around 48 years old during filming.

Different take on Alison Steadman—I thought that she wildly overacted the role.

I have to say my views on Mr and Mrs Bennet have definitely reversed as I’ve got older.

Is Mrs Bennet unwise and crass? Undoubtedly. But I think she’s probably also pretty terrified by this stage. She’s failed to produce an heir, which it could be argued was her only job. In the process she’s managed to bring five daughters to (almost) marriageable age.

Her husband patently dislikes her and has made zero attempt to provide for her or their children, and the future staring her down at the beginning of the novel is pretty damn scary.

Could she be mortifying ? Yep. But she was also frightened and desperate and getting less than no help, or even acknowledgement of how bleak things were looking, from her feckless and somewhat mean-spirited husband.

It wasn't Mr Bennett's fault they didn't save: "Mrs. Bennet had no turn for economy, and her husband's love of independence had alone prevented their exceeding their income."

Mrs Bennett would have loved a lavish lifestyle, a 'house in town'- Mr Bennett kept them in the country and tried to get the horses occasionally to do some work on the land.

Mr Bennett has his flaws, of course, but Mrs Bennett was a terrible mother- she was wasteful with money, and put no time or thought into educating or understanding the characters of her daughters.

This is bonkers... Mrs Bennet is only interested in the reflected glory of her daughters being well married. When her 16 year old disappears she does nothing but make a nuisance of herself, and then when she is married (under less than great circumstances) the first thing she does is get dressed and tell her sister.

She is very much the "Wendy Williams" of the day.

I think Mrs Bennett suffered from anxiety and I think her husband’s attitude to her was the cause of it. He’s emotionally abusive and she has no choice but to put up with it.

Well I think it is fair to say that had they met 200 years later they wouldn't have had 25yo marriage. As with all dysfunctional relationships there is fault on both sides. He probably could have been more supportive/ responsive to his very young and quickly pregnant wife ( bit like Charles and Diana?). She just became less and less sensible and more emotionally heightened. Either of them could have worked to make it work better. But as the book opens they are pretty entrenched in their behaviour.

When Lydia runs off to ‘live in sin’ with Wickham, it is absolute disaster for the family, the female side anyway. The sisters’ hopes of any marriage, let alone a ‘good’ marriage, would have been massively impacted, and Mrs Bennet’s hopes of a comfortable old age moving from daughter to daughter pretty much nil

so Lydia’s patched up
marriage was a miracle for them all. Mrs B’s rejoicing is less shallow and her recovery less over the top, in that context

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.

It wasn't till I saw a couple of Mum friends with that dynamic in RL that I realsied how destructive it was for confidence - nether had control over the kids and any vauge attmept to correct behavior the dad immediately undermined it.

Her aims to get her DD married is good but she is no good at it - she make it harder for them. I think the modern equivalent would be a parent piling on the pressure around exam marks while somehow undermining the ablity to get them - I don't know insisting on some big hoilday during revison period of something.

I think she late 30s worried sick about her future and future of her daughters and doing head in the sand and panic moves at same time and feeling completely unsupported by her DH.

She could with better support or education have done more to help get a better future for her and her daughters and that's perhaps her tragedy - a different husband or even sons with this one may have changed her whole life outlook and focus - and while Mr Bennet blames her character I do wonder if she had a son or a few sons whether he'd have been a better husband to her at very least she'd have likely felt less pressure and stress.

Am in the middle of rereading pride and prejudice so loving all these comments!!

don't want to derail the thread but to answer OPs original question on other literary characters being misunderstood… I recently finished Wuthering Heights to see what all the fuss was about and thought throughout that Cathy would be on the waiting list for an ADHD diagnosis if it was set today!!!

I am wondering where the idea of Mr Bennet being much older that Mrs Bennet came from? If to judge by the book, Mrs Bennet has always been stupid, with "weak understanding and illiberal mind", which has driven away any love on Mr Bennet's side early in the marriage. And I do not justify Mr Bennet as a father or a husband, he was bad in his own right. But the only positive features that Jane Austen had attributed to Mrs Bennet are the distinct lack of evil and malice, and love for some of her daughters. And being a good hostess.

Certainly some kind of diagnosis.

@gordianknott it was common among the aristocracy for men to not settle down until their 30s but to want to marry a teenager for maximum childbearing years.

In the book it says Mrs Bennett had charms when younger and yes, if she'd had a son early on and had a husband who had lovingly encouraged her to develop sense.

Mr Bennet did not belong to the aristocracy, the average age for the first marriage in the second half of the eighteenth century was early 20s for women, and middle-to-late 20s for men. So there is no reason to think that Mr and Mrs Bennet were the exception. On the contrary, thinking that he was easily charmed by her, I can easily imagine him quite young. I can argue that she was older than him.