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.

She wasn’t, though — we know almost nothing about the earlier version, First Impressions, that she did start writing in 1776, because nothing has survived in MS (it’s thought to have been written in letter form, though) but she seems to have written an essentially different novel in 1812/13, which is what we know as Pride and Prejudice, when she was in her mid- 30s.

She wants her daughters married and rich for boasting rights, not to secure their happiness.

Absolutely! She is absolutely awful about Darcy throughout the book, complaining about him incessantly when he visits with Bingley. When lizzie gets engaged to him, Mrs B must get whiplash from the speed of her about-turn, saying how tall and handsome he is and what fancy meats she has to order in. She doesn't give a fig that Lizzie is marrying a man she thought of as rude and unpleasant two paragraphs previously.

I really recommend Fay Weldon's " Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen" if you like the idea of discussing character's motives in more depth. To quote from the Amazon description:
"Alice is an eighteen-year-old student and aspiring novelist with green spiky hair, a child of the modern age who recoils at the idea of reading Jane Austen. In a sequence of letters reminiscent of Jane Austen's to her own niece, 'aunt' Fay examines the rewards of such study. Not only is her correspondence a revealing tribute to a great writer - it is also an original and rewarding exploration of the craft of fiction itself."

But marriage is primarily an economic institution for Mrs Bennet — it’s her daughters’ only possible ‘career’ in the sense of securing them an income — so she’s not really thinking about whether Bingley or Darcy is nice, they’re just walking incomes. She thought Darcy was rude and unpleasant primarily because he publicly dissed Lizzy at the first Assembly, thereby making it clear she wasn’t ‘in his league’, whereas Bingley made his interest in Jane clear from the same ball. Ok, Bingley is nice (in a Tim Nice But Dim way) and Darcy is stuck up and prickly, but I think Mrs B’s estimation of both comes from whether they’re (1) eligible and (2) liable to marry her daughters. Same as with Mr Collins — one minute she’s bristling with annoyance at the mention of his name because Longbourn will go to him, the next she is ‘managing’ transferring his affections from Jane to Lizzy, and furious at Lizzy for refusing him.