He finds Mr Collins ‘as
absurd as he had hoped; and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment,
maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance…’ And
we laugh with him.
But there is a less admirable side to Mr Bennet, one which
leads to a great deal of unhappiness for his elder daughters, Jane and
Elizabeth, and near disaster for the flighty Lydia who runs off with the
caddish (though handsome) Wickham.
19th Century Reticule
At the end of Chapter 1, Jane Austen sums up Mr Bennet’s
character. He was an ‘odd mixture of
quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve and caprice...’ He enjoys winding
people up. He allows his wife to think that he has no intention of paying that
essential courtesy call on the newly-arrived Mr Bingley, a young, unmarried man
with £5000 a year, without which Mrs Bennet will not be able to introduce her attractive
daughters to him. He leaves her in ignorance until he’s extracted the maximum
enjoyment from her agitation before telling her that he has paid the call.
He can be unkind, too. At the Netherfield ball, his middle
daughter Mary eagerly sits down at the piano and begins to sing. ‘Mary’s powers were by no means fitted for
such a display; her voice was weak and her manner affected.’ Elizabeth is in agonies of embarrassment and ‘looks at her father to entreat his
interference.’
Mr Bennet telling his wife and daughters that he has called on Mr Bingley by Charles E. Brock
He picks up her hint and says, after Mary’s second song,‘That will do extremely well, child. You
have delighted us long enough. Let other young ladies have time to exhibit.’ Elizabeth must have heard the irony in his
tone for she felt ‘sorry for (Mary), and sorry for her father’s speech.’ He
could have done it more kindly.
But Mr Bennet is not a particularly kind man. When Mr Bingley suddenly leaves
Netherfield without having made the expected offer to Jane – and it’s
obvious to Elizabeth that Jane and Bingley are very much in love – Jane is
deeply upset, and Elizabeth and Mrs Bennet are full of sympathy.
Mr Bennet’s reaction is quite different. He says to
Elizabeth: ‘So, Lizzy, your sister is
crossed in love, I find. I congratulate her. Next to being married, a girl
likes to be crossed in love a little now and then. It is something to think of
and gives her a sort of distinction among her companions.’ He suggests that
Elizabeth will not want to be outdone by Jane, and recommends Wickham for the
role: ‘He is a pleasant fellow, and would
jilt you creditably.’
It is callous, inappropriate, and he completely ignores Jane’s
very real distress.
Regency man
The tone of Elizabeth’s response is interesting: ‘Thank you, sir, but a less agreeable man would satisfy me. We must not
all expect Jane’s good fortune.’ On the surface, it sounds as though she is
content to echo her father’s irony, but I wonder? She doesn’t call her father ‘Papa’ she calls him ‘sir’, as if distancing herself, a
reaction further emphasized by her use of ‘We’
rather than ‘I’. The reader suspects that Elizabeth is hurt by her father’s
reaction and that this conversation will not be passed on to Jane.
Mr Bennet in his Library about to be harangued by Mrs Bennet on Elizabeth's obstinate refusal to accept Mr Collins' proposal, by Charles E. Brock
Then there’s the question of the Bennet girls’ education. When
Lady Catherine de Bourgh cross-questions Elizabeth about her and her sisters’
education, she discovers that they grew up without a governess; and that,
although Elizabeth and Mary are both musical, they never went up to London to
be properly taught.
‘My mother would have
had no objection, but my father hates London,’ Elizabeth tells her.
Lady Catherine might be nosy but she asks questions to which
the readers, too, would like answers.
‘Why did you not all learn? You ought all
to have learnt. The Miss Webbs all play, and their father has not so good an
income as yours.’
Later she says: ‘No
governess? How was that possible? Your mother must have been quite a slave to
your education.’
These are pertinent questions; and surely it is Mr Bennet’s
duty as a parent to see that his daughters have a decent education, especially
considering that they might have to work for a living if they don’t find
husbands. We also learn from Lady Catherine that Mr Bennet’s income could well support
proper music teachers.
Of course, the reader knows that it is extremely unlikely
that Mrs Bennet would have taught her daughters. So how were they educated? Possibly
they went to a girls’ school in Meriton, to an establishment like Mrs Goddard’s
school in Highbury in Emma, where ‘a reasonable quantity of accomplishments
were sold at a reasonable price.’
The Bennet girls can all read and write and are numerate. They would have been taught to sew (Lydia pulls apart a newly-bought
hat prior to redesigning it) and they had obviously had dancing lessons – they
are all good dancers. We know that Mary and Elizabeth were taught the piano by
somebody (even if not a London professional) and they had singing lessons.
Two Girls at School, 1817
The sisters would have learnt a modicum of British History,
even if only through Miss Mangnall’s
Historical and Miscellaneous Questions for
the Use of Young People (1798). They know various card games. Jane, at
least, can ride.
As Elizabeth says, ‘We
were always encouraged to read, and had all the masters that were necessary.
Those who chose to be idle certainly might.’ It is not very satisfactory.
In my view, Mr Bennet should have seen to it that none of his daughters were allowed to be
idle. And he certainly failed Mary.
Mary isn’t pretty like her sisters; instead, she tries to be
‘accomplished’. But, although she is obviously intelligent, Mr Bennet doesn’t
bother to teach her to think clearly.
Her trite observations are allowed to stand and, doubtless, give her father
some amusement, but that is, surely, not enough. He could have helped her – he is a thinking man - but he can’t be
bothered.
Furthermore, a man of breeding should treat his wife with
respect – even if they have very little in common. To do otherwise sets a bad example
to their children. Sir Thomas Bertram in Mansfield
Park, for example, always treats Lady Bertram courteously, even though she does
very little apart from lying on her sofa and petting her dog, Pug. The Bertram children
are expected to treat their mother with the respect which is her due.
Mr Bennet's reaction on hearing that Lydia has eloped with Mr Wickham
Mr Bennet also allows himself to criticize his wife in front of
his children. He says of Charlotte Lucas’s engagement to Mr Collins: ‘It gratified him … to discover that
Charlotte Lucas, whom he had been used to think tolerably sensible, was as foolish
as his wife and more foolish than his daughter!’ And he obviously enjoys
Mrs Bennet’s distress about the Lucas-Collins match – and we sympathize – after
all, the Netherfield estate is entailed and it is Mr Collins who will inherit
it when Mr Bennet dies not Mrs Bennet
and her daughters. They will be homeless.
It is not Mr Bennet’s fault that he only has daughters, but
it is his responsibility to see that his wife and children are properly
provided for after his death. We are told, towards the end of the book, that he
had ‘often wished that, instead of
spending his whole income, he had laid by an annual sum, for the better
provision of his children, and of his wife, if she should survive him.’ It
was his duty to have done so, as he eventually
recognizes.
His income is £2000 a year. If he’d saved 10% - surely not
too difficult – it would have meant that the marriage settlement of £5000 would
now be worth well over £9000. Luckily for Mr Bennet, Mr Darcy’s generosity
enables Lydia to marry Wickham, and Mr Bennet himself ‘would be scarcely ten pounds a year the loser.’
And it is Mr Bennet’s refusal to listen to Elizabeth’s
advice to forbid Lydia to accept Mrs Forster’s invitation to go to Brighton, which
precipitates the final catastrophe of Lydia running off with Wickham. Elizabeth’s
plea is heartfelt: she points out that she and her sisters’ social acceptance
and ‘respectability in the world must be
affected by the wild volatility and disdain of all constraint which mark Lydia’s
character.’ And she sees Kitty, who follows her sister, being drawn in,
too. ‘Vain, ignorant, idle, and
absolutely uncontrolled! Oh my dear father, can you suppose it possible that
they will not be censured and despised wherever they are known, and that their
sisters will not be often involved in their disgrace?’
He listens, and he has an answer to her points which satisfies
him and he gives Lydia permission to go to Brighton. When push comes to shove,
he always goes for the option which will cost him the least trouble.
Jane Austen, after Cassandra Austen. National Portrait Gallery.
At the end of the book, Mr Bennet has married off three of
his five daughters, so money will be less tight. He could, if he so chose,
start saving for Kitty, Mary and his wife’s futures. But he doesn’t, ‘he naturally returned to all his former
indolence.’ Perhaps he assumes
(probably correctly) that his two rich sons-in-law will make sure that his wife
and unmarried daughters will be comfortable, financially. It is not an admirable trait.
There are other fathers in Jane Austen’s novels whose
characters may be worthy of censure: General Tilney’s bullying, for example, or
Sir Walter Elliot’s snobbery and financial fecklessness, but it is Mr Bennet’s disengagement
from his daughters’ upbringing which makes him the most blameworthy, in my opinion.
Elizabeth Hawksley
