Bennet family

Bennet family
The Bennet family at Longbourn, by Hugh Thomson. Illustration for chapter II (1894).
Full name	Bennet
Birth	Longbourn, Hertfordshire, England
Primary residence	Longbourn House in the village of Longbourn in Hertfordshire
Family
Parents	Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Bennet
Children	Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine, Lydia

The Bennet family is a fictional family created by English novelist Jane Austen. The family plays a central role in the novel Pride and Prejudice since it is the one of the protagonist, Elizabeth. The complex relationships between its various members influence the evolution of the plot. In a society where marriage is the only possible future for a young girl of good family, the presence in the household of five girls to marry with no other advantage than their good looks can only be a source of concern. Yet the Bennet couple do not assume their role as educators: the mother struggles so awkwardly under the mocking gaze of an indifferent husband that she scares the rich young man who noticed the oldest and most pretty of her daughters. These girls show very different behaviors according to the education they received or provided themselves: the two eldest daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, show irreproachable conduct and are appreciated by their father, while Mary, less physically attractive, displays intellectual and musical pretensions, and the two youngest are left almost abandoned under the sloppy supervision of their mother.

Other members of the Bennets staged by Jane Austen are, on the one hand Mrs Bennet's brother and sister - Mr. Gardiner and Mrs. Philips, on the other hand the designated heir of Mr. Bennet's estate, his cousin, the pompous and foolish Mr. William Collins. Mr. Gardiner and Mrs. Philips contribute significantly to the progress and outcome of the story, but at a level and in a different register reflecting their respective social belonging. Collins's character serves as a link between the gentry of Hertfordshire, to which the Bennets belong, and the large property owners Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Mr. Darcy.

The legal, financial or emotional interests that unite or divide the members of the Bennet family allow Jane Austen to build a complex picture of society and to raise a number of societal issues specific to her time, particularly concerning girls' education and legitimacy of certain behaviors.

Maternal branch

The three Gardiners from Meryton: Mrs. Philips, Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Gardiner.

If the narrator remains silent on the ancestors of Mr Bennet, we know a little more about the family of his wife: Mrs. Bennet, born Gardiner and married for twenty-three years, is the daughter of an attorney of Meryton in Hertfordshire. She has a brother and a sister, both married. The marriages of the two women have resulted in them revolving in different circles, while their brother has acquired an education and a higher social status in general trade (in a respectable line of trade ) in London.

Mrs Bennet

In the first chapter, the narrator warns that Mrs. Bennet is "a woman of mean understanding, little information and uncertain temper". Seduced by her "youth and beauty, and that appearance of good-humour which youth and beauty generally give", Mr Bennet married her quickly, discovering too late that she was stupid, narrow-minded and shallow. Although her first name is never mentioned, it is likely to be called Jane, since it was customary to give the name of the mother to the eldest daughter. Her personal fortune inherited from her father amounted to £4,000, which is a lot of money for someone of her condition ("their mother's fortune [was] ample for her situation in life […]. Her father […] had left her four thousand pounds").

An ignorant and narrow-minded petite bourgeoise

For 20 years, reading allowed Mr Bennet to bear the foolishness of his wife (Hugh Thomson, 1894).

Between the Gardiner siblings, Mrs. Bennet is the one that had the best wedding, since she married a local aristocrat, a member of the gentry, owner of a domain reporting £2000 annually. But this domain is under the regime of substitution for a male heir (fee tail male), a rule of succession which she never understood why her husband could do nothing to change, since it clouded his future and that of his daughters, given that she and her husband were unable to have a boy. They had hoped for years, even after the birth of Lydia, the son who would have allowed to put an end to the entail, but they only had girls, five in seven years. And now that she has lost all hope of giving birth to a son, Mrs Bennet is obsessed with the idea of losing material security and to be deprived of the social situation to which she is accustomed. The possibility of becoming a widow and being expelled from the domain by the heir terrorizes her. Thereby her fixed idea, "the business of her life" ever since Jane, the eldest, has reached 16 years old, is the urgent need to find a husband financially secure for her daughters to their safeguard and her own. Thus, she shows immediately interest in the arrival of an eligible bachelor in the region. So she sends Jane to Netherfield in the rain to make sure they retain her there, she encourages Mr Collins to ask for the hand of Elizabeth and she rejoices loudly for the marriage of Lydia, shamelessly triumphant ("No sentiment of shame gave a damp to her triumph"" specifies the narrator), indifferent to the dishonorable reasons which made it necessary, since it corresponds to the realization of "her dearest wishes".

By marrying, she has changed social status but she continues to behave like an ignorant petite bourgeoise from Meryton. She is one of the simple characters, these characters, like Mr. Collins or Lady Catherine, frozen and unable to evolve: in twenty-three years of marriage she has not changed. Soon as she is upset, incapable of analysis, reflection or questioning, she gets defensive and has an anxiety attack ("She fancied herself nervous"). Her lack of intelligence and narrowness of mind ("weak understanding and illiberal mind") quickly resulted in the neglect of her husband, who for a long time feels nothing more for her than a mocking indifference tinged with contempt. Narrow-minded and ignorant, she has only the vaguest idea of how to behave in good society, the upper class to which Darcy and Bingley belong, and where she would like to see Jane entering. Her notion of stylish behavior is summarized in what she told Sir William: "He has always something to say to everybody. – That is my idea of good breeding". She behaves with embarrassing vulgarity and lack of tact, especially at Netherfield, where her pretentiousness, foolishness and "total lack of correction" are particularly evident. She is completely devoid of empathy and is only sensitive to the appearance (Jane's beauty, militia uniforms, Mrs. Hurst's laces). For her, it is not the manners or behavior that indicate belonging to a high rank, it is ostentatious and flaunting her wealth, and the validity of a marriage is measured by the amount "of calico, muslin and cambric" to buy for the bride's trousseau. Thus, Mr. Bennet's refusal to get new clothes for her beloved Lydia in her wedding day shocked her more than the fifteen days lived in concubinage with Wickham ("She was more alive to the disgrace which the want of new clothes must reflect on her daughter's nuptials, than to any sense of shame at her eloping and living with Wickham a fortnight before they took place").

An egocentric hypochondriac

When her husband announces an unknown host for dinner, Mrs. Bennet imagines that is Bingley, and that Jane has hidden that fact from her (C. E. Brock, 1895).

Jane Austen has particularly charged the character. As Virginia Woolf wrote, "no excuse is found for [her fools] and no mercy shown them [...] Sometimes it seems as if her creatures were born merely to give [her] the supreme delight of slicing their heads off". In the tradition of the comedy of manners and didactic novel, she uses a caricatural and parodic character to mock some of her contemporaries.

Mrs. Bennet is distinguished primarily by her propensity to logorrhea, a defect that Thomas Gisborne considers specifically feminine. She does not listen to any advice, especially if it comes from Elizabeth (who she does not like), makes redundant and repetitive speeches, annoying chattering, full of absurdities and inconsistencies, which she accompanies, when she is thwarted, with complaints back loop and continual cantankerous remarks that her interlocutors are careful not to interrupt, knowing that it would only serve to prolong them. Even the patient Jane finds her complaints hard to bear, when Mrs. Bennet manifests "a longer irritation than usual" about the absence of Bingley, confessing to Elizabeth how much the lack of self-control of her mother revives her suffering ("Oh that my dear mother had more command over herself! she can have no idea of the pain she gives me by her continual reflections on him").

Another emphasized and systematically ridiculed aspect is her "nervous disease" or rather her tendency to use her alleged weakness nervous to get noticed and attract compassion, failing to make herself loved. There are characters particularly concerned about their health in all the novels of Jane Austen; those hypochondriacs that she calls "poor honey" in her letters. These egocentric characters who use their real or imagined ailments to reduce all to them, seem to be inspired by Mrs Austen, whose complaints about her health had the ability to irritate Jane, who speaks with certain ironic annoyance about it in her letters to her sister. The narrator has fun describing her displaced joy, her good humor overwhelming to those around her ("spirits oppressively high"), since she learns that Lydia's wedding is a fact, and her haste to announce the "good news" to all Meryton.

Some critics, however, point out that it would be unfair to see only her faults. Her obsession is justified by the family's situation: the cynicism of Mr Bennet will not prevent Mr Collins from inheriting Longbourn. She, at least, unlike her husband, thinks about the future of her daughters in seeking to place them socially. In an environment where there are numerous young ladies to be married (all neighbors: the Longs, the Lucases, have daughters or nieces to marry) and few interesting parties, she is much more attentive to the competition than him and she has, somehow, saturated the market. She does not neglect her daughters, while he merely treats them all as "stupid and ignorant as all the girls", and is locked selfishly in his library. Disappointed by her "mediocre intelligence", he enjoys disconcerting her with his "sarcastic humor", but he increases the anxiety of her "unequal character" by refusing to accept legitimate requests: why tell her that he will not visit Bingley on his arrival in the country, when he has the firm intention of doing so? And when she revolts against the injustice of the entail, why he replied: "we must hope that I will survive you?" She is well aware that he takes pleasure in contradicting her and feels "no compassion for [her] poor nerves". Not smart enough to understand his mindset and unsatisfied herself, she "fancied herself nervous", the narrator says. She really suffers from the mocking indifference, insensitivity and lack of empathy from her husband and feels misunderstood; her appreciation for visits and gossip is a consolation, a solace for an unhappily married woman.

But because she is stupid, the narrator is merciless and seems to take the same perverse pleasure as Mr. Bennet in mocking her and noting all her ridiculous interventions. She did not forgive her stupidity nor her awkward interferences, her absurd remarks and pretensions inherently selfish. When Jane asks her to feel a bit of gratitude to his brother, who had paid a lot for Lydia's wedding, she replied that had he not had children, that she and her daughters will inherit all his property, and he has never been really generous so far: "If he had not had a family of his own, I and my children must have had all his money, you know; and it is the first time we have ever had anything from him, except a few presents". Lydia's marriage does not satisfy her as much as she wanted because her daughter did not stay long enough with her so she can continue to parade with her environment: "Lydia does not leave me because she is married, but only because her husband's regiment happens to be so far off. If that had been nearer, she would not have gone so soon", and if she was able to happily "for all her maternal feelings [get] rid of her most deserving daughters", the marriage of Jane will only satisfy her "delighted pride" during the year that the Bingley spent at Netherfield.

Mrs. Bennet is not better treated by Jane Austen than Lady Catherine, who shows the same lack of taste, as many selfish pretensions and such ridiculous interferences. Her rudeness of rich and aristocrat pride shames her nephew like the vulgarity of her mother irritates Elizabeth. For Jane Austen, nothing can excuse the stupidity that exists at all levels of society.

Guilty negligences

Mrs. Bennet looks for ways to let Jane and Bingley alone together (Hugh Thomson, 1894).

Mrs Bennet has not really raised these girls, that she would like so much to see married, to make them good housekeepers. She never gave them any notion of home economics, which was, however, the traditional role of a mother in a middle-class family. It was Thomas Gisborne who theorized in An Enquiry Into the Duties of Men, published in 1794, and in An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex, published in 1797, the idea of areas reserved for men and women. According to him, women are by nature destined to the domestic sphere, defined as the particular area where "their excellence deploys". Therefore, their role is to keep the house and direct the domesticity. Now Mrs. Bennet openly mocks Charlotte Lucas when she is forced to go into the kitchen in order to supervise the tarts making, proudly saying that her "daughters are brought up differently"; also, she reacts with force when Mr Collins, on the day of his arrival, assumed that his cousins took part in the preparation of dinner. She adds that they lived quite well, since Mr. Bennet spends annually his entire comfortable income: Mrs Bennet "had no turn for economy", and for Lydia only the expenses amounted to approximately £90 per year.