AIBU to wonder if Mr Bennet was having an affair?

[Whatsleftnow]

I’m leaning in to Jane Austen to get through a tough time and no one irl understands my desire to obsess over fictional characters, so I’m hoping to find a few kindred spirits online.

Reading P&P as a middle aged, perimenopausal woman has changed my perspective of MrsB. She’s relatively young yet unable to bear more children, and suffers from a nervous disorder. Given that anything to do with women’s health was taboo, reading between the lines as a modern woman, I’m very concerned for her.

Mrs B is clearly unwell, and Mr B just doesn’t give a flying fuck about anyone, with the possible exception of Elizabeth (and even then ignores her entreaties to step in with Lydia). He’s downright nasty to his wife, and negligent towards his dc. It’s a pattern that you see over and over on the relationship board.

Of course, it is a truth universally accepted that any man’s flaws can be laid at the feet of the nearest female relative, and Mrs B’s silliness is the accepted root cause of Mr B being a bastard.

I suspect if she posted on MN we’d suggest he had a bit on the side.

Put Longbourn by Jo Baker on your reading list. I'll say no more...

Intriguing.

Hmm. Entirely plausible, but maybe one of the Indoor Staff (or several of them) as he spends so much time alone in his library.

I came on to say just this.

Probably servants or prostitutes more likely than an affair

naaah he was too busy reading and being superior and trying to come up with fantastically scathing, ‘off the cuff’ comments. Busy man.

I've often thought Mrs Bennet is an undervalued character. She was relatively young with an older husband she was highly likely to outlive and 5 daughters. Death of her husband meant it was likely she would be turned out of her house and she would have been very unlikely to have had much of an income due to Mr Bennets inability to save. She would have had to keep herself and her daughters on a pittance and would have become an object of pity much like the Mrs and Miss Bates in Emma. If she was lucky her brother would have financially supported her but with a family of his own he wouldn't have been able to help much.

Her main chance of avoiding poverty is to marry her daughters off hopefully to wealthy enough men that they would be able to help support in her her old age. Mr Bennet does very little to help her in that regard, probably because her concerns have very little impact on him and he is intrinsically a selfish man.

She has a sort of mini nervous breakdown when Lydia eloped and is found to be unmarried. Mr Bennet is very scathing about it, but it is understandable. Her only daughter is likely (until Darcy intervens) to end up a prostitute and her worst fears about ending up destitute with a load on unmarried daughters to provide for is highly likely to come true.

Im not sure about an affair, he would have had the opportunity but I always read him as somewhat of an introvert and not really someone who would make the effort to talk to people and get to the point of an affair? But maybe.

I always imagined Charlotte's father to be the sort to have an affair and be rather clumsy about covering it up which is why Charlotte is more pragmatic about marriage

Thanks, just bought this!

Too lazy. I don't think he could be bothered

WTF? He's not a bastard, especially not by the standards of the day. He doesn't beat her, he doesn't have her committed, he doesn't even really bully her. He's just bored by her. Considering how women were brought up to have separate worlds, it could be reasonably expected that many marriages were like this. Compare the rude Mr. Palmer in Sense and Sensibility.

Nah, he’s just bored, disengaged and superior, and embarrassed by his choice of wife. She would have written him as constantly disappearing to watering places, rather than holed up in the library, if she meant to suggest an affair.

Nope, an affair would require too much effort on his part and take him away frm his study and his books.

Mrs B gets a very unfair reception, I think, and a horrible representation in most adaptations (looking at you, Alison Steadman). Yes, she’s as subtle as a housebrick but she at least understands the situation the girls are in and what their realistic options are (the sort of options we see worked out in Charlotte Lucas’s storyline). Very easy to dismiss her as silly from the pov of view of a 21st century woman but far from silly at the time.

Anyway, I don’t think Mr B is having an affair, except with his own ego.

I don't think Mr Bennet was ever intended to be regarded as a good role model. He particularly doesn't seem to give a shit that he has 5 daughters who will be homeless and penniless when he dies, and all the pressure of trying to mitigate that seems to be on Mrs Bennet's shoulders (presumably because the perception of the time would have been that it was her fault they didn't have an heir). He realises with the whole Lydia incident that he has been far too lax and careless with his children (only at the point where it's going to impact on his own reputation, I should say).

He realises with the whole Lydia incident that he has been far too lax and careless with his children (only at the point where it's going to impact on his own reputation, I should say)

Not just his but those of Jane and Elizabeth, who are going to be implicated in the consequences of Lydia's behaviour by association. It's obvious he doesn't care at all about Mary, Kitty or Lydia herself.

She compares favourably with Mr Collins, (who has had the benefit of a proper education).

mrs b is in a vicious circle: the more she worries and schemes for her daughters, the more she exposes herself - but she is a t least working for their future comfort and respectability

Mr Collins increasingly exposes himself as foolish and venal - but he is wanting only to further his own interests with his flattery and interference

Towards the end he does acknowledge many of his flaws, and tells Lizzie he would hate for her to be married to someone she couldn't respect, as he married quickly for looks not love or compatibility and regrets it every day.

Read The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow. It looks at Mary's story and it's heartbreaking and beautiful and uplifting all at the same time. I'm actually preferring it to P&P which I know is probably sacrilegious but I always felt that Jane Austen had done Mary dirty. Janice Hadlow explores the toxicity of Mary's parents as a root cause for the younger sisters' behaviours. It's a very interesting and plausible take.

Mrs Bennett is far from silly and frivolous. She's actually a hard headed realist and recognises that the only way her 5 daughters can achieve comfort and respectability in their lives is to marry well.

Her mistake is that she's very open about her ambitions for her daughters, and that's just not cricket. In well-to-do Georgian familes you weren't mean to maintain the naice facade that young women just sat about demurely until such time as a suitable husband appeared, as if by magic. You certainly weren't meant to allude to the sharp-elbowed, determined match-making that actually went on.

But, Mrs Bennett is from a lower social class than her husband so isn't aware of such social niceties.

Exactly this. Her flaw is being vulgarly open and vocal about her designs on Bingley (and Darcy, Mr Collins and Wickham at various points), when in fact she's being a realist (her daughters have to marry, and at least one or two have to 'marry well' before they age out of the marriage market like Charlotte Lucas, because, realistically, some won't marry, and as soon as Mr Bennet dies (and the implication is that he's older than Mrs Bennet), the girls and their mother will be homeless, relegated to some rooms above a shop in Meryton, and genteelly poor in a way that will make it much harder to marry at all, even in terms of outfitting themselves suitably for the local assemblies.)

Pretty much the kind of fate that Miss and Mrs Bates (like JA herself the widow and unmarried daughter of a clergyman) are living out in Emma -- tiny, inconvenient rooms, dependent on neighbours' charity for lifts and gifts of food, using the common oven at the baker's, condescended to by Emma etc.

Mr Bennet has his head in the sand, after his 'efforts' to have a son to cut off the entail fail. Mrs Bennet doesn't have that luxury -- he'll be dead, she'll be the one trying to get by on a tiny income with a bunch of unmarried daughters who can't earn anything unless they're sent out as governesses like Jane Fairfax.

I've often wondered if, before they married, Mr Bennett told Mrs Bennett that his estate could only be entailed to a male heir - and that there would be little protection or provision for his wife if they only had daughters? I suspect he didn't bother to tell her. I also suspect that if Mrs Bennett had come from the same social class as her husband then the entailment would have have come to light during the all important pre-nup financial discussions between the families.

As it was, Mrs Bennett climbed the social ladder to marry a gentleman and (not unreasonably) assumed she would be financially comfortable for the rest of her life.

Leave Mr B alone!

Mrs B gets an unfair rap though.

In fact, it could be argued that Mr Bennett deliberately married a lower class woman because he knew that his weird estate entail meant he wasn't a secure financial bet?

Just saying.

I don't see anything to suggest that this came as news to Mrs B -- someone was looking out for her financially as a young woman to the extent that the income she and her daughters will have after Mr B dies and the Longbourn estate goes to Mr Collins was settled upon her by marriage articles (a sort of pre-nup which would have been negotiated by her family/friends). But I can easily believe that she (and probably Mr B, who is a bit of an ostrich) would have thought they would have multiple sons, so there was no need to worry about the entail. Until it was clear there was... But yes, they both failed to save during their marriage, to try to put aside some money for later.

Thanks for the recommend, I'm ordering this now !