#mr bennet

[dogzcats]

pride & prejudice: from book to movie pt. 2

pt 1

[didanagy]

Pride and prejudice (2005)

dir. joe wright

[anghraine]

This is unnecessarily long, but: I was just thinking about Wickham's predation on fifteen-year-old Georgiana Darcy and then, almost exactly a year later, Wickham's predation on sixteen-year-old Lydia Bennet.

There are obvious parallels between the two incidents. In fact, they're so obvious that I think the incidents are sometimes treated as equivalent, with the consequences only differing by happenstance. I don't think that's true, personally.

There are some mechanistic sort of differences—Wickham put a lot more effort and planning into the Georgiana situation. He wanted to marry her for her money and to make her brother suffer. She had to be isolated from people who would look out for her interests, he had Mrs Younge in place, he had known Georgiana as a child and was able to exploit his own previous kindness to her as her father's godson, etc.

And Georgiana, despite all of this, and despite being swept away by a teenage infatuation with an extremely attractive man, was still uncomfortable with it. She was worried about disappointing a brother who raised her and whom she deeply loves and admires. When her brother actually showed up by surprise, she decided to tell him everything; Darcy takes pains to give her credit for this. Adaptations generally downplay Georgiana's active decision-making here, but the only element of chance is Darcy deciding to go to Ramsgate at all. He insists that he was only able to act because Georgiana chose to tell him what was going on.

This isn't meant to be an indictment of Lydia, though. Does she admire the parents who raised her? No. But why would she? Especially why would she admire a father who treats her mother and sisters and herself with profound contempt and no sense of responsibility? Why would she ever confide in him?

It's not like Lydia doesn't confide in anyone. In fact, she too confides in an older sibling, her sister Kitty. And in one sense, her trust in Kitty is not undeserved. Kitty does keep the secret. Presumably, she does this because, despite her occasional annoyance with Lydia, she is very much under her influence and goes along with whatever Lydia does. Regardless, she is trustworthy in that sense. Moreover, we see at the end of the book that Kitty is easily improved by being placed in better environments and taught how to behave. She just didn't know better.

How was she going to judge Lydia's situation correctly? Who was teaching her to judge anything correctly? Certainly not their parents.

If Mr Bennet had bothered to interest himself in his younger daughters and try and influence them for the better, impressionable Kitty is probably the one who would have benefited the most. The whole Lydia/Wickham thing would have fallen apart before it went anywhere if all the girls had been been properly raised, even if Lydia did exactly the same things.

And Lydia likely wouldn't do the same things if she'd been brought up properly and, you know, treated with a baseline of respect rather than being openly mocked by her father, the person most able to affect her development. Instead, at barely sixteen, she's been continually rejected by her father, over-indulged by her mother, and flattered by adult men (28-y-o Darcy says he and Wickham are nearly the same age). And she still tells someone what's going on, even though she doesn't care about her parents' opinions or the consequences of her actions. And she was under the protection of a colonel and his wife at the time, who also could have told someone or acted, and didn't.

It's not that nobody could have done anything about the Lydia/Wickham situation. It's that nobody did until Darcy found out and tried to extract her. But it was, in one sense, too late. To Lydia, he's just some unfun acquaintance who says boring things like "go home to your family and I'll do what I can to cover for you." That is, he tries to do what he did for Georgiana.

But Lydia is not Georgiana—she did not choose to tell him about any of this. She did not want to be extracted because she didn't know and couldn't be quickly made to understand what marriage to Wickham would mean in the long term. And she didn't care what her family thought because she had no reason to, pragmatically or psychologically.

Georgiana, otoh, did care about her family's welfare and the good opinion and affection of the head of her family. But despite their radical differences in personality, the most fundamental difference between the girls IMO is that Georgiana had every reason to believe that disappointing Darcy and losing his respect would be a change from the norm.

Normally he is affectionate and attentive towards her. They write each other long letters, he defends her to other family members, and praises her frequently. Georgiana, quiet and intimidated though she may be, talks more when he's around. Disappointing him had actual stakes for her.

Put another way, the potential loss of his good opinion mattered to her because he's gone to the trouble of raising her as well as he can and forming a good relationship with her. She chose to tell Darcy the whole thing because he had earned her affection and trust in a way that Mr Bennet has utterly failed to do. Even Darcy happening to visit Georgiana at Ramsgate comes from his affection and attention to Georgiana's welfare, even if he couldn't have known what would follow from checking on his sister at that particular moment.

Chance is always part of life, and it's part of the novel and these situations. But a lot of how these scenarios wound out was not determined by chance but by long-existing patterns in these girls' educations and relationships.

[darkcademiasss]

[firawren]

[myfandomistingling]

[egosketch]

[mametupa]

[mariesstudying]

As annoying as Mrs Bennet is, I can’t fault her motives. Mrs Bennet isn’t ignorant to her family’s situation, she know that if something happened and her husband died, herself and her daughters would be screwed.

If Mr Bennet died before one of his daughters got married, the house would fall into Mr Collins ownership. They can’t guarantee Mr Collins would allow them to stay and have money because he has no real obligation to the Bennet family. This is why I think that despite his refusal to accept Elizabeth’s proposal, he was kind for proposing (I’ll discuss this in another post).

One of the Bennet sisters marrying, especially if that sister was Jane or Elizabeth, would negate this issue because the house (if I understand these concepts correctly) would be owned by the husband (naturally or by will I can’t remember). Because the owner is the daughter and sister of the remaining Bennet’s, he likely would let them remain in the home and give them money, either because he cares about his wife’s family or out ob obligation. This would apply even when Jane married Mr Bingley who had a house of his own, they just wouldn’t live with the other Bennet’s.

So as annoying as I find Mrs Bennet, I do understand her rushed desire to marry off at least one daughter. If Mr Bennet suddenly falls ill or dies whilst all the girls are single, the rest of the family loses everything.

[degankatz]

Pride and Prejudice economics!

and the dangers of being a woman in the 19th century

I started thinking about Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley and how they were considered so rich as to be the most eligible of bachelors. I then wondered what rich actually meant, since "10,000 a year" doesn't really sound like that much.

Knowing inflation would make that feel like a very different number, I did some digging using the Bank of England inflation calculator for 1813 and then converting that to American dollars. (There are some articles about how that really varies because of the difficulty of comparing the costs of goods and services then to now, but this gives a much better idea than just reading the number.

Mr. Darcy

annual income: 10,000 a year

in US dollars in 2023: $694,000

entire fortune: 200,000

in US dollars in 2023: $13,890,000 👀

Mr. Bingley

annual income: 5,000 a year

in US dollars in 2023: $374,000

This made me very curious about the Bennets, since the difference between 10k and 2k seems large, but not overwhelmingly so. Boy, was I wrong.

Mr. Bennet

annual income: 2,000 a year

in US dollars in 2023: $139,000

While that's a lot of money, it goes to supporting 7 people in the family plus staff and the entire estate. It's also only temporary. Because the estate is entailed and almost all of his income comes from the estate, that money will go directly to Mr. Collins rather than the Bennet women when Mr. Bennet dies.

While it's easy to make fun of Mrs. Bennet for being so obsessed with her daughters marrying these guys, I have to admit I get it. There weren't many respectable ways for women to support themselves back then and, even if the girls married regular guys, an entire family could fall into poverty if something happened to the husband.

I understand why the appeal of men with their own independent fortunes was such a draw. She also needed them to marry well for her own survival, since she would be entirely dependent upon her daughters' husbands once her own died. I might have been obsessed, too, if I were in her shoes.

[thepompusonefrombefore]

Me thinking about Pride and Prejudice

[nymphpens]

he's a 10 but he has no compassion for my poor nerves

[didanagy]

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1995)

dir. simon langton

[anghraine]

Sometimes, people suggest that Elizabeth is not truly romantically in love with Darcy towards the end of P&P, but just has a rational respect for his character (and property). Here are my three favorite pieces of evidence against it:

1- The coffee scene

When Darcy returns to Hertfordshire, there's a delightful period of frustrated pining between Darcy and Elizabeth. My personal favorite moment is at a gathering where Elizabeth is assigned to pour the coffee. She follows Darcy with her eyes, resents any not-her people he talks to, etc, and then gets mad at people for interrupting her by wanting coffee.

Absolutely top-tier content.

2- I do, I do like him; I love him.

Yeah, she does outright say she loves him.

There is something incredibly endearing about Elizabeth's struggle to defend her choice to her father—a choice that in this context represents many things, but IMO a big one is that she's both physically and emotionally moving beyond him.

It's also pretty funny that she has to wrangle with the legacy of Past Elizabeth's hot takes, it's bittersweet, it's a lot of things. But, ngl, my favorite part is when Mr Bennet concedes that the marriage is okay with him if she likes Darcy despite his pride and unpleasantness, and Elizabeth replies that she does like Darcy and she loves Darcy (both are important!) and it upsets her to hear him described that way. Just a lovely moment.

3- Lady Catherine v. Elizabeth

During Elizabeth's confrontation with Lady Catherine, she wonders how she could ever have thought Lady Catherine was similar to Darcy. I find this hilarious, honestly.

I mean, seeing Darcy's traits writ large in Lady Catherine is a perfectly natural and reasonable thing to do, even if it also flowed out of Elizabeth's prejudices at the time. Anyone would see the resemblance. But Elizabeth has got it so bad at this point that she's just like "how!!! could I have thought such a wrong and unfair thing." <3333

Honorable mention - Lydia aftermath

Elizabeth privately feels like she could have loved Darcy after he leaves her at the Lambton Inn post-Lydia disaster. It's only afterwards, out of scene and as the Lydia situation hits its nadir, that she realizes what her feelings for Darcy already are. It's a hellish time anyway, but she still owes half her sleepless nights to Darcy.

...out of dispassionate respect, I'm sure.

[talkaustentome]

Don’t mind me, just out here creating Jane Austen memes out of Good Omens stills while processing season 2 (Go watch it!). I’m sure Aziraphale would approve.

Pride and Prejudice x Good Omens

Just like Crowley, Elizabeth knows what’s coming, and she wishes she didn’t have to be there.

I wonder what Wickham’s punishment in the Good Omens hell would have looked like.

“Ah! Jane, I take your place now, and you must go lower, because I am a married woman.” I kinda love how obnoxious married Lydia is.

Truly one of my favourite moments in Austen’s novels, and any love story ever, is Mr. Darcy declaring Elizabeth “tolerable” and looking at her again to confirm his original verdict, only to go: “Daaamn. I was wrong.” (Also, the things I’d do to get a version of Darcy that does the Good Omens apology dance for Elizabeth.)

Thankfully, 10k a year helped Mrs. Bennet to change her mind about Darcy again very quickly.

The biggest change I’ve gone through since first getting into Austen was definitely going from loving Mr. Bennet because of his sarcasm to thinking he’s actually kind of awful.

Caroline Bingley, the original pick-me girl?

[firawren]