Dive into
As I get older, I get angrier (just you wait: you’ll see). One of the things that riles me – and I freely admit this is pretty niche – is the way the character of Mrs Bennet has been talked about in the 212 years since Pride and Prejudice was published.
We all know that there are five Bennet sisters. But most people don’t stop to consider why. It’s much more than a plot device and an opportunity for generations of young actresses to look fetching in toning pastel muslin; it’s a sign of complete desperation. Of the Bennet couple trying, time after time, to have a son – presumably they only stopped, let’s not dwell on details, when Mrs Bennet’s health was ruined by so many pregnancies in such a short time. Mr Bennet’s family estate is, famously, entailed, which means that if he dies without a male heir, which by the time the book is set is pretty much inevitable, his closest male relative will inherit. That’s right, the delightful Mr Collins. (I wonder if anyone’s ever written a P&P variation in which Mrs B dies, Mr B marries Charlotte Lucas, ick, and she has a baby boy? Probably). Collins will inherit everything, so Mrs Bennet and her unmarried daughters will be homeless and very likely close to destitute. Unless any of them want to drag out a miserable, low-paid, precarious existence as a governess – for which we can all agree that only Mary would have any sort of aptitude – marriage really is their only respectable option. I have read a variation on which Lydia goes on the stage, though, which is horribly plausible.
We may laugh at Mrs Bennet and cringe at her social-climbing, but the nasty truth is, she’s right. Even when she tries to shove Elizabeth and Mr Collins together, it’s horrible, it’s not what a loving mother would do now, when women have so many more choices, but she’s right. And I defy you to call her selfish. She’s as concerned about the girls’ futures as she is about her own. Mr Bennet, by contrast, is criminally irresponsible and the secret villain of the book. When she upbraids him for not going to call on Mr Bingley and introduce himself, which is something by etiquette she can’t do herself, she’s completely justified. He does it, of course, in the end, but in an incredibly annoying way – and it’s the only time he does a damn thing to help his children. He’s every bit as self-absorbed as Mr Woodhouse in Emma, and hardly anyone seems to notice.
Jane Austen is quite equivocal about Mrs Bennet herself; she is well aware of everything I’ve just said, and expects us to realise it too, but she still can’t resist making her into one of the great comic characters of literature, and an object of ridicule. In adaptations, the character is almost always envisaged by the directors as older than she would have been in reality; she’d probably only be in her late forties, if that. The poor woman may well be going through menopause while dealing with Lydia and Kitty’s antics; you’d need smelling salts yourself, for your poor nerves. Thinking about it, I have a strong urge to embroider her a cushion that says “Ratafia O’clock”.
It’s a painful conundrum, though, for mothers and daughters, and is bound to affect their relationships. Mrs Bennet’s own marriage is far from perfect, but she has no option but to push something similar on her girls. I wanted to explore exactly this dilemma in A TALE OF TWO DUKES, in which Viola, the second of six daughters, knew she had to marry a much older man, with no love on either side. Once widowed, she receives a proposal of marriage even more insulting than Mr Darcy’s first one to Lizzy – but she has secret reasons for accepting it… and her mother isn’t impressed at all.
Austen was taken far too soon, dying at just 41. Astonishingly, she wrote the bulk of Pride and Prejudice in her early twenties – Elizabeth’s age, my daughter’s age – revising it for publication in her thirties (which still seems incredibly young to me). If she’d reached the years of one of the older women who populate her novels – Miss Bates, for example, or Lady Catherine De Bourgh – I wonder what further masterpieces she might have created?