This is so true. Mr. B remained the disinterested observer within his family and outside. He took pleasure in situations brought about by his wife’s foolish conduct, to some extent even encouraged it, without making the slightest effort to guard his children from the effects. He took his responsibilities as a parent too lightly whereas it must be said that Mrs. B, however ill-informed her actions were, at least tried.
But some of the best lines in the book came from his conversations with his family and so I do appreciate his contribution.
ETA: I wish I could learn to quote correctly. I tried to fix it but don’t think it is working.
Mr. Bennett makes fun of Mrs. Bennett for spending all her mental effort trying to marry off the girls, but she’s being practical. She and her daughters are the ones who will be thrown out in the snow when he dies. He doesn’t have to worry; as long as he’s alive he has a home. She’s silly, but at least she is trying to solve the problem. He is doing nothing to provide for his daughters.
I blame him for the younger daughters lack of manners. He knows better. Mrs. Bennet really doesn’t. She isn’t a bad woman, just a silly woman. He didn’t have to allow things to get to the point they did and it was irresponsible.
OTOH, in spite of what he says, he does go call on Bingley so he can make that introduction, and he does have Mr. Collins stay at the house. HE should have had a talk with Collins about which daughter would be appropriate to court.
I think the possibility of pregnancy (and rape/assault) was probably the reason most young women of that class were so much better chaperoned and supervised than Lydia and Kitty. They are just all over the place on their own: parties, walks, town.
They are flirty. Lydia is showing off her assets. There is no concept of consent at that point in time. It’s just a disaster in the making. Lizzie sees that.
Jane Austen’s world is not all that chaste. Out of wedlock children show up in her books. Either the author of that question is reading something into the books that isn’t there or I am.
Yeah, and the idea that Mrs. Forster, the Colonel’s wife, is going to chaperone her? Yeah sure. Mrs. Forster is her age. A silly seventeen-year-old chaperoning a silly sixteen-year-old? We see how that works.
@alh, I tend to think the author of question 13 meant “lack of explicitness” more than “chasteness.” I’ve worded that awkwardly myself, but what I mean is, Pride and Prejudice, although not particularly “chaste,” is no Fifty Shades of Grey. There is plenty of sex going on in *P & P/i, but we don’t get to hear the details about any of it. I’m assuming the reason is, indeed, due to “what was acceptable in literature” in 1800. I, for one, am most happy about that! Having so much left to the imagination is part of the enjoyment for me.
There is an interesting plot parallelism and difference between the two couples - Jane/Bingley and Elizabeth/Darcy. As the book unfolds both Elizabeth and Darcy evolve in their views of each other and of each other’s social class,and in their actions toward each other – each basically doing a 180. By contrast Jane and Mr. Bingley are both static characters. They do not evolve and are the same people at the end of the book as they were at the beginning.
Also, I read somewhere that fans nagged Jane Austen for years after the the book’s publication to declare what became of Mary. Until she finally said only that Mary eventually married a school teacher of no high social standing.
I was a P&P virgin before this book club decided to read it.
I read it twice. First, I read it on a Kindle, and I could barely get through it. I kept falling asleep and could only read small portions at a time. I couldn’t tell the sisters apart! Kitty? Lydia? Mary? They all seemed the same to me, until Lydia broke away and went with Wickham. I felt at times like I was back in middle school, with all the sisters and Mrs. B yammering about men, men, men, and nothing to do but worry and plot about marriage. Mrs. B annoyed the hell out of me. That’s why, the first time I read it, I liked Mary the best!
The second time I read it, I used a real hardcover book. My understanding increased by about 80%. (But it could be just me – I find I need to read a lot of things twice these days, to understand them.)
Then, I watched the BBC version with Colin Firth, and that really brought the characters and the plot to life. Mrs. B of course suffered from borderline personality, IMO.
As a novel, P&P seemed waaaaaay too slow for the first half – that’s why I kept falling asleep-- and then waaaaay too rushed in the second half. Just too much happening, too much resolution.
To those criticizing Mr. B for not helping raise the girls with good character, I strongly doubt that 200 years ago men were involved at all in the raising of their children until they reached some reasonable age.
I just started reading Longbourne, which someone upthread suggested, and am enjoying it. It’s told from the servants’ point of view.
I find I still like reading on paper better. I never read Austen for school. Honestly I think I read Austen, because my friends were reading Georgette Heyer and if you were reading Regency romances you naturally ended up reading the originals. I’m glad I didn’t read Austen for school - few things were improved by that experience. I agree that Kitty is underdrawn. I was surprised to see that she was played by Carey Mulligan in the Keira Knightly version (who I liked a lot as Bathsheba in Far From the Madding Crowd. I never liked the way Mary just seemed like a caricature and not a real person. In all the movies she’s portrayed as plain as well as pedantic. No way Collins would have gone for her! Mrs. Bennett is annoying, but she’s also right. The entail is an abomination.
My daughters’ and I have read this book constantly. They were not thrilled when it was assigned in high school (and I was working at their high school at that time). They accused me of “undue influence” of the English Dept. We read it together and they loved it. Then they saw the Colin Firth version and it changed their perceptions of the characters they had created in their minds. They hated the clothing and stated that wearing bras would have been a priority.
Middle dd stated, emphatically, that she would never do what Kitty did, i.e. fawn and listen to younger sister, Lydia.
Eldest dd claimed that Kitty was a pushover, and probably did do whatever “spoiled Lydia” wanted. Kitty’s personality was not strong and she was unwilling to take risks unlike Lydia.
No doubt Lydia is loud, persistent and attention seeking. Would it be fair to say she was so indulged because it is the path of least resistance or is she a less constrained version of Mrs B as a teenager?
To be fair, Lydia did think that she was going to be married. She did not set out to cause a scandal, just to win the marriage competition.
First time reader, long time fan of P&P,having seen the movie versions. I’m fascinated with how many of you adore this book. It’s unprecedented in the long history of this book club. It’s great !
I’m with @VeryHappy , reading the book, was not very exciting, unlike Gone with the Wind, the romance novel I loved at 16 years old,was such a page turner. This was harder to read.
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OTOH, in spite of what he says, he does go call on Bingley so he can make that introduction, and he does have Mr. Collins stay at the house. HE should have had a talk with Collins about which daughter would be appropriate to court.
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Wouldn’t the custom of the day, be for the gentleman, Mr Collins, to ask the father for the marriage of a daughter?I found it surprising that Mrs Bennett and Mr Collins, colluded alone in the decision to ask for Lizzie’s hand in marriage.Mr Bennett was left out of the loop, and that detail bothered me.
Well, Austen is writing about her own time, so presumably she knew what might or might not happen. I think sometimes we get an idea of what is the norm of a time, but it’s really more nuanced than we imagine.
Yes, Bingley and Darcy both went directly to Mr. Bennet. I think the fact that Mr. Collins colluded with Mrs. Bennet was meant to emphasize that Mr. Collins, despite all his fawning and obsequiousness, had no sense of propriety.
It’s so fun to read everyone’s comments! A few random thoughts:
The difference is that Mr. Bennet knows he’s awful — or at least comes to know it. Mrs. Bennet has no such self-awareness. I definitely have a soft spot for Mr. Bennet. He married in haste and is repenting at leisure. He gets through it the only way he can, with humor and (unfortunately) passivity.
Congratulations @VeryHappy, you’ve managed to express an opinion that I have never, ever heard before! Like many others, I thought Mary would have been a good match for Mr. Collins. They could have discussed Fordyce’s sermons until death do they part. I think the Keira Knightly movie gives Mary just a dot more personality than the BBC (and other) versions.
The wardrobe in the BBC version was sometimes…distracting. Of course, you made me have to go look up bras:
I think Pride and Prejudice improves with multiple readings. I now savor those parts that I once thought were slow.
Gone with the Wind really was a page turner when I was a teenager! And for my daughters, too. I remember one of them took our fat paperback apart and put sections inside her textbook, so she could read the novel during her classes in high school. That said, I recently re-read it and couldn’t get over the racism. I know Margaret Mitchell’s history and I understand why she wrote the way she did, still…it was disturbing. I was bothered by how much I had either missed or simply accepted 40 years ago.
I have two banned books in this house - GWTW and Jane Eyre.
Mr Darcy writes to Elizabeth that most of her family has poor manners and behaviors. I always thought that was a bit rich coming from Lady Catherine’s nephew. She is so nosy and intruding. Perhaps it is just me but I never got the sense that he realized we all have cringe worthy relatives.
Lady Catherine and her daughter have none of the fine accomplishments that Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst have. Georgiana has musical skills and some sketching but nothing yet suggests that she speaks several languages or has that special air to her conversation. I haven’t read enough social history to know if the high level of accomplishment was common, valued by social climbers, or just an expression of the Bingley women’s attempt to make themselves feel superior.
Which leads me to Mr Hurst. I don’t have the quote in front of me but I think he was described as someone who lives for food, drink and cards and was not especially gentleman like. The Hursts live at a higher standard than they can afford.I am trying to figure out why that was considered to be a good enough catch for a Bingley sister.
