#mrs bennet

[besotted-with-austen]

Modern Readers: hey, what if Mrs Bennet was the smart one all this time and we were too blinded by MiSogYnY to see it?

Jane Austen: Mrs Bennet’s brain conveniently removed the part where Wickham was a gambler and a scumbag just because he was the one that married her daughter.

Modern Readers: no, really-at least she was the one that was taking her daughters’ future seriously!

Jane Austen: she willingly ignored what this marriage would have meant for Lydia in the long run simply because she had a marriage to brag about.

Modern Readers: she was stil better than Mr Bennet! He didn’t think about it at all!

Jane Austen: Mr Bennet was just as bad as his wife, just in different ways.

Modern Readers: stop putting Mr Bennet on a pedestal just because he is funny!

[bennetsbonnet]

Pride and Prejudice (1995) + Text Posts (6/?)

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Short comment on Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice: They’re both basing their parenting priorities on their own experiences.

Mrs. Bennet married into the gentry and is determined that neither she or her girls will fall out of that class, and that if possible they will, like her, raise their family’s social position. For that end, she is content with having married a man who is incomprehensible to her and makes fun of her constantly, and she does not expect her girls to be any more scrupulous about marrying for advantage. (Unfortunately, in addition to her naked ambition being actively offputting to rich suitors and thus undermining her goals, she has actually communicated to her girls an attitude of “marry anyone you can get, no matter what”, leading to Lydia’s pride and sense of accomplishment in running off with and marrying a man who has little of his own to live on, needed to be paid off to marry her, and who absent other events would have reduced or even destroyed her family’s social prospects.)

Mr. Bennet married a foolish woman whom he cannot love or even respect, and above all wants to prevent his favourite daughter - the one who shares his brains and wit - from making the same mistake that he did and landing in an unhappy marriage. (He in fact says this outright when talking to her about Darcy near the end of the book.) Hence his absolute support for her rejection of Mr. Collins, and hence his concern that she may be marrying Darcy (a man she previously openly disliked) without love or respect for him.

While both parents have their flaws, Austen does clearly appear to be presenting Mr. Bennet as better than his wife - his concerns about his daughters (or rather, the two daughters whom he respects and hasn’t given up on) having happy marriages are more sympathetic than his wife’s desire that they have rich or any marriages with no concern for whether those are happy. Mr. Bennet visits Elizabeth and Darcy regularly, and there’s no indication that Elizabeth is unhappy about this, though he remains a troll (‘especially when he was least expected’). On the other hand, she and Darcy seem to have managed to prevent her mother’s visits (‘she visited Mrs. Bingley and talked of Mrs. Darcy’).

[firawren]

Pride and Prejudice 1995 text posts, part 7 of ? - prev set

More: Persuasion 1995 text posts | Sense and Sensibility 1995 text posts | Northanger Abbey 2007 text posts | Emma. 2020 text posts

[lackadaisycal-art]

Let's gossip with mama 🤭

[wlwarhammer]

If I was mrs bennet I’d also loose my fucking shit because why am I the only one worried about destitution AND you’re all treating me like I’m crazy and hysterical for it

[didanagy]

First look at the new Netflix series Pride and Prejudice

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2025)

dir. euros lyn

[anghraine]

what happens to charlotte lucas if mr. collins dies early (before he inherits longbourne)?

That is the worst possible scenario for her, basically.

Mr Collins's living with regard to Hunsford only lasts for the duration of his life, so she gets nothing from it. Unless her child (she's implied to be pregnant at the end of P&P) is a son and, iirc, falls within a set number of generations as laid out by the original entailment, she also gets nothing with regard to Longbourn (and if the child is a girl, she now has another dependent to worry about and provide for; I think Mr Bennet's daughters would receive preference over Charlotte's if Mr Collins never inherits and there's no son).

There would have been legal documents accompanying their betrothal that laid out exactly how much property or money Charlotte and her potential children would receive during and after the marriage (this is what is meant by references to pin money and jointure; pin money is what the woman will regularly receive for her private expenses during the marriage, and jointure is what she gets if she survives her husband). There's a straightforward example of this with Mr and Mrs Bennet, for instance.

Mrs Bennet brought a dowry of four thousand pounds to the marriage. Mr Bennet or his family settled an additional one thousand pounds on her at the time (23 years earlier). So there's five thousand pounds attached to Mrs Bennet and her children specifically that is essentially secure—the income from it can only go to her or her children. Since her children are all daughters, however, this pretty much automatically includes her daughters' husbands as well, since women were legally and financially subsumed into their husbands' identities upon marriage and it took some legal shenanigans to protect their resources. Lydia's share of Mrs Bennet's fortune, one thousand pounds, effectively goes to Wickham as part of the marriage arrangements, and it's not clear if Lydia's money is legally secured to her in the same way since it was part of bribing Wickham to marry her at all.

(Tangent: a lot of analysis tends to assume that income from a lump sum of this kind would generate an income of 5% of the principal via low-risk, low-reward government investments. Mr Collins himself explicitly estimates that Elizabeth's portion of Mrs Bennet's settlement would generate an income at a 4% rate, leaving her with a mere 40 pounds a-year. This might seem Mr Collins-style negging, but in reality these kinds of safe government investments could and did drop to rates closer to 3% due to various economic upheavals at the time.)

Returning to Charlotte's situation, eighteenth-century advice urged men (even much less affluent men) to set aside a significant portion of their incomes every year to add to what was settled on their wives/children, so that if they died, their children and widows would have more to live on. The original settlement, as in Mrs Bennet's case, could be pretty small, especially for multiple people to live on. Mr Collins is enough of a rules guy that he might set aside the suggested percentages of his income, especially if Lady Catherine considers it proper. But even if we assume he's setting aside, say, 20% of his income, I doubt that would amount to very much if he dies soon; the Hunsford living is good, but not that good, and he's only 25, so there just hasn't been much time. Charlotte would essentially be a poor cousin by marriage of the Bennets and dependent on her own family (already in straitened circumstances) for anything more than her settlement, which given the circumstances wouldn't amount to much.

People often kill Mr Collins young to given Charlotte a chance at a better life, but in reality, this would likely be a disaster for her.

[jupitersmegrim]

Someone hand her the smelling salts!

Day 10 of @janeuary-month: wedding breakfast | my other memes

[besotted-with-austen]

Keep in mind that from Mrs Bennet’s POV Mr Darcy is still the worst man alive and Elizabeth still dislikes him, but she doesn’t care because he is her son-in-law now.

[bennetsbonnet]

If Mrs Bennet was indeed the only one 'doing something about the situation' like I often see argued when Pride and Prejudice is discussed... surely she would have spent frugally to ensure her daughters had substantial dowries? Surely she would have employed governesses to educate her daughters to ensure they had the accomplishments necessary to enable them make a successful marriage? Surely she would not have relied on desperate schemes to throw her daughters in front of eligible men and instead allowed them to be judged on their merits?

And yet...

We are told in Chapter 50 that Mrs Bennet has 'no turn for economy,' and only Mr Bennet (a waste of space himself, mind you) prevents them from exceeding their income,

Elizabeth tells Lady Catherine in Chapter 29 that 'we never had any governess' and that 'those who chose to be idle, certainly might.' So even in the absence of having someone around at Longbourn who was entirely dedicated to the girls' education, no pressure was exerted upon them to study... and Elizabeth smilingly reassures Lady Catherine that Mrs Bennet was not a slave to their education,

In Chapter 18, thanks to 'a manoeuvre of Mrs. Bennet,' the party are the last to depart after the Netherfield ball and 'had to wait for their carriage a quarter of an hour after everybody else was gone.' Which is not only rude but highly embarrassing... but she really wanted Bingley and Jane to spend a few extra minutes together, just to make sure...

As you see, there were plenty of opportunities for Mrs Bennet to ensure her daughters were better prepared to find husbands. Yes, in marrying Mr Bennet, she married 'up,' and so might not have had these advantages herself (and Mr Bennet does share some of the blame).

But it's honestly somewhat of a miracle that Jane and Elizabeth turned out so well and were able to make such good marriages, even in spite of such a calamitous upbringing...

[mariusslonelysoul]

Hand flex this, rain proposal that WHAT ABOUT the half hug from behind lizzie gives her mother after lydia and wickham leave longbourn, i wanna talk about THAT

[firawren]

Pride and Prejudice 1995 text posts, part 1 of ? - next set

More: Persuasion 1995 text posts | Sense and Sensibility 1995 text posts | Northanger Abbey 2007 text posts | Emma. 2020 text posts

[santhamantha]

Me: no worries I’m pretty chill all the time

Me at all times:

[firthbetterorfirthworse]

You know what's crazy to me? Mrs Bennet's line in the opening chapter:

"Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to go, merely on that account; for in general, you know, they visit no new comers."

That's wild! I feel like we've all mentally put Sir William in the role of super friendly, very talkative, welcome-to-Meryton-I'll-be-your-tour-guide type of dude. And here he is, not even bothering except for rich single men

[didanagy]

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1995)

dir. simon langton