Pride and Prejudice: In Defence of Mrs Bennet
Mothers in fiction are constantly beleaguered. They’re usually dead, missing, negligent or overbearing, and Jane Auste fell into that trap too with one of her most famous characters.
The oft ridiculed Mrs Bennet from Pride and Prejudice: mother of five, mistress of Longbourn and long-suffering wife of Mr Bennet.
"She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news."
Often disregarded as shrill, silly or overdramatic, I really don't think Mrs Bennet is given enough credit.
In the early 1800s women and girls had no rights, no possessions, no inheritance and respectable upper and upper middle class women were not allowed to have careers or jobs; that was reserved for the lower classes who needed to work to eat.
Women were seen as extensions of the men that owned them; their fathers, brothers and husbands. They couldn't inherit and they couldn't earn if they wanted to retain their status. If you didn't have a brother who you knew would look after you and your mother after your father's death, you would be left destitute. Marriage was the only option.
"Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!"
As the mother of five girls and no boys she faced a future of possible destitution if none of her girls married well enough to be able to support themselves, each other and their mother after the death of Mr Bennet. With only Mr Bennet's cousin, the slimy and unpleasant Mr Collins, as his sole heir, it didn't look good. Mrs B had to take matters into her own hands.
Quite frankly, I don't blame her.
If you've read Austen's Sense and Sensibility then you know what happens if daughters aren't married before their father dies. When Elinor, Marianne and Margaret Dashwood's father dies at the beginning of the novel, the family home and all of Mr Dashwood's money goes to his son from a previous marriage, John Dashwood. Though he originally plans to adhere to the promise he made to his father to provide for his step-mother and sisters, his new wife soon changes his mind. The Dashwoods were sent from their home into a cramped cottage far away and reduced to very low circumstances. The only way out was for Elinor and Marianne to marry. That would have been the situation Mrs Bennet was facing, but with five children reliant on her rather than three.
With Lizzie turning down proposals, Lydia doing a runner, Mary being Mary, Darcy's interference with Jane and Mr Bingley and Kitty being young and immature, Mrs Bennet may actually have been the most sensible of them all.
Edited and re-published from www.thecopperboom.com
Written by Sophie
