Thanks! I never get tired of the 1995 adaption of P&P🙂. During the pandemic the lovely Jennifer Ehle read the whole book in 44 videos all accessible at UA-cam!
I adore the 1995 version ..the best cast and true to the book which not all productions are! Nothing is more disappointing to a lover of classic literature than a production which takes so many liberties with the original
In the 2005 film, an excited Mrs Bennet rushes around the house to tell the servants of Lydia's marriage and Lizzy says, is that all you think about Mamma? Her reply is " When you have 5 daughters, tell me what else will occupy your thoughts and then perhaps you'll understand" I can't find that quote in the book, but it has stuck in my mind as explaining her behaviour as you so clearly stress in this video. HAPPY NEW YEAR and keep them coming!
I just finished re watching the series a few days ago and I payed attention to the things you’ve mentioned in previous videos! It made it even more interesting and enjoyable 😊
One more excellent video ! Great job. Your analysis of Mrs Bennett is very interesting. I recognize her value and her commitment to their marriage. Alison Steadman did a great job in this adaptation. Thanks for your work. I hope you continue producing more videos like this.
Mrs Bennett always reminds me of one of my maternal aunts. A hysterical woman mrs Bennett maybe, but good natured, far from unkind, or unaware. And maybe deserving of a better husband.
The older I get the more sympathetic I feel towards both Mrs. B and Charlotte. They need to be seen through the lens of their time and you did that so well Tudor! Mrs. B didn’t have the advantage of being raised in the gentry class and ended up getting in her own way more than once. However, her motives were pure and with Mr. B being a bit of a lump she did what she had to do in the best way she knew how. ❤
Thank you 🙏 I must admit I did miss a number of points but thankfully people have left many brilliant comments which certainly help us see the bigger picture!
You don't need to be raised in the gentry class to have common sense, which Mrs Bennet lacks completely. Her husband has 2000 a year, an income that puts them in the top 1% of their society, yet they somehow fail to save a single penny. Hell, the book even mentions that only Mr Bennet's distaste for being in debt is keeping them from spending more than their income, though he's too lazy to put his foot down until that point. Mr and Mrs Bennet are basically each the worst possible partner for the other, elevating eachothers' faults.
Mrs Bennett married up (her father was an attorney in Merton, so they were small town trade family) solely on the basis of good looks and the appearance of a good humour. It is no wonder then that she puts so much emphasis on Jane's beauty and Lydia's good humour. Should Mr Bennett suddenly die, all she and her daughters would have would be £5000 settled on them in the marriage contract. That's £250 per year on 5% and only £200 on 4%. That's not enough to support 6 women. Mr Gardiner's support would have been crucial, but he only has a house in London and 4 children of his own. He would have to spare at least another £250 a year for his relatives to even survive at some bare minimum (if he didn't want them to live like peasants and laborers but with some semblence of gentility). Mr Bennett could have been saving even a £100 a year to add to their safety net, but he never did. With Jane being almost 23, that would have added £2,300 to their £5,000. He also has 5 daughters in real danger of becoming destitute but doesn't seem to try very hard to introduce them to eligible men. Local society seems very stagnant, so if none of the local men wanted to marry them, why wasn't he more worried? Mrs Bennett was left to shoulder the burden on her own. And here her coming from trade also plays a part. Although many of her social faux pas seem to come from her personality, there were many unwritten social rules that helped to distinguish the born gentry from nouveau riche, and Mrs Bennett simply didn't know them. Her clumsy attempts were obvious signs to every snob that she was a social climber. And her coming from small time trade also made her daughters 'connection poor'. Basically, her daughters had no much dowries (£40 or £50 a year), no important connections and no prospects of anything greater. No wonder she has nervous complaints 😅 In real life, where there are no rich men waiting to marry penniless girls because they are super nice or banter well, all her fears would have been realised and her daughters would most likely have to quit the gentry sphere by marrying smaller tradesmen who would have them. It may not seem like a bad deal to marry a grocer or a baker but from their perspective that would have been a tumble down the social stairs.
And if they never married at all, they'd find themselves in positions comparable to Miss Bates in "Emma", or needing to seek out employment in the very limited options available to them, like Jane Fairfax. A generation later, the Brontes, and their single women friends Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor, would find themselves in a similar situation. Mary Taylor, rebel that she was, went all the way to New Zealand to break the mold.
The reason Mr Bennet didn't save any money was because Mrs Bennet was spending it all. The book lets us know that only his distaste for going into debt kept them from spending more than their income, but he was too lazy to do more than that to curb her spending. I'm sure he indulged in buying books and port wine, but the vast majority of their expenses were down to Mrs Bennet.
Alison was the perfect Mrs. Bennet. She is my favorite to portray her. I completely understand her drive to marry them off well, and to secure their futures in whatever way she can. But I always wondered why Mr. Bennet didn't seem at all worried about his 5 daughters futures. They would literally be put out if the house? Have no income, no food, no shelter? How does this not concern him? He should be worried about this, and he should have been setting aside some money all these years the 5 of them were growing up. He could have tried to make his farm more profitable, investing in something else. He lacked ambition and drive and care.
Mr Bennet is in his own way just as flawed as his wife. He's selfish and lazy, and can't be bothered to deal with Mrs Bennet's whining whenever he denies her anything she wants, unless it would mean going into debt. So for 20+ years of marriage he just hid away in his library giving her more spending money whenever she nagged him for it, only putting his foot down once she'd blown through their entire income for the year and more would have meant taking on debt. A less selfish woman would have wanted to save some money for their daughters, and a less stupid one would have realised a respectable dowry would go a long way towards securing a better match. A less lazy man would have put in the effort to curb his wife's spending, and a less selfish one would have done so even if he was lazy, for the sake of his daughters. Basically, they're designed to be as incompatible as humanly possible, which is why the plot can happen.
Your take is spot on, and very relatable even today. Women often times carry the emotional burden for the family when the men “check out”. Her support for her daughters, even if she has her favorites, is to be commended.
I never understand why people think that Mary would be a perfect wife for Mr Collins. She admires him, at the same time assessing him as ‘not as clever as herself. We can assume that by that she means that he hasn’t read as many religious texts as herself. She proposes to herself to help him improve, in other words, to ‘encourage’ him to adopt a similar course of study to the one she engages in. Mr Collins, on the other hand, is described as being better suited for walking than reading. At his home, too, we see most of his time divided between working in his garden and running after Lady Catherine de Burgh. Straightforward Mary would probably fail to properly flatter her Ladyship. She’d be more likely to preach to her face. Charlotte manages Mr Collins much better than Mary ever could.
One thing I've pondered upon, is how quickky those 5 daughters were birthed...5 prgenancies in the space of 7 or 8 years in the quest for a male! Childbirth was dangerous (nerve-wracking), and she wouldn't be giving much attention to the young ones while dealing with the fatigue and hormonal changes. When Alison Steadman appeared on the screen, I could see she nailed the character and really gave her life & motivation.
Since Jane was, I think, 22, it's a fair assumption that her mother was probably in her early to mid forties, so one wonders why the pregnancies stopped with Lydia. Mrs Bennett had a good fifteen or so child-bearing years left after the birth of her youngest daughter. Why did they not keep trying for a son? She was obviously very fertile with so many pregnancies in six or seven years.Did marital relations cease? And if so, why?
@@livvymunro1929 Presumably something happened to make her unable to have more kids, because with the entail hanging over their heads it makes no sense to stop at 5. It's not like they couldn't have afforded more kids... don't you know they had 2000 a year? 😉
I think part of Jane Austen's genius is to create characters who are almost always a mixture of the good and the bad, the sensible and the ridiculous, in order to make a point. And I think Mrs. Bennet is no exception. In a way it is Lizzy Bennet who is ridiculous, when she makes it clear that nothing but the deepest love will induce her into matrimony. In this way, the many many troubled marriages and ideas of marriage in the novel are contrasted against her. Her approach feels both morally superior, yet also terribly precarious, in a world where everyone else around her seems to have different priorities. Jane Bennet tries to find love through a slow study of character, and her love gives up on her. Meanwhile many other characters rush into love-less marriages and find short term success. It seems like the whole town is playing a game of musical chairs, and breaking all the rules just to keep from being the "last man standing." Mrs. Bennet does not care about doing things the proper way, and does not even really seem to understand the difference between a *good* and a *bad* marriage (i.e. Mr. and Mrs. Wickham). Perhaps this is because her marriage is so mediocre? All of this further shows Lizzy's strength of character, because there are real consequences to holding out. Mrs. Bennet is not (intentionally) malicious, yet she still manages to cause her family constant grief, and I believe another part of her purpose in the story is to show the failings of the Bennet parent's marriage. Lizzy Bennet would not have been happy in an "unequal" marriage, (and neither would Jane Austen I expect), and I can't help but wonder if this is a bit of social commentary. As I understand it, the novels at the time largely depicted very gentle, placid, Jane Bennet-like heroines, which I'm not sure Jane Austen would have related to. While I'm not sure what Jane Austen's intentions were exactly with the character, I think we can all agree that Mrs. Bennet works tirelessly to get her daughters married off - even if she seems to get in her own way more often than not!
I think that anxiety can have a profound effect on people's behaviour--to the degree of rendering them neurotic at times, or perhaps of drawing out their worst traits and magnifying them into severe problems in their own right. For example, I totally understand Mrs Bennet's anxieties for her daughter, and I believe any reasonable parent would feel the same way in the circumstances. It must also be very hard to not only have these anxieties, but to have a husband who seems perfectly unconcerned and resigned in the face of so precarious a future. If I were Mrs Bennet, I would probably be very aggravated by my husband being so insensitive to the dangers that would face me after his death--not to mention the dangers his daughters would face! If I were her, I think I would rant a great deal about my nerves too; surely, my nerves would be out-of-sorts, in the circumstance... Furthermore, we know that Mrs Bennet is not a particularly learned or clever person. I think that those of us who are well-educated often have very little empathy for people who are not so learned--but I think this isn't morally ideal. People aren't suddenly worth less simply because they aren't so clever. Mrs Bennet's anxieties tend in the right direction; however, she simply does not realise that her behaviour is damaging her daughters' chance at happiness. Clearly Mr Darcy and the Bingley sisters look down on her and make their disdain apparent to any socially aware individual--but Mrs Bennet was not raised in their class, and is not clever enough to feel any danger in their disdain even when she notices it. There is one scene that really emphasises this to me--at the Netherfield ball, Mrs Bennet is talking quite loudly about her expectations of Jane and Mr Bingley's marriage, and Elizabeth says to her, "What advantage can it be to you to offend Mr Darcy? You will never recommend yourself to his friend by so doing." However, her mother does not alter her behaviour--she clearly does not understand that Mr Darcy can prevent the union between Jane and Mr Bingley, and even telling this to her directly cannot make it obvious. It makes me wonder if this is perhaps a feature of polite society that is simply out of the grasp of Mrs Bennet, who spent her youth in different circumstances where such nuances simply are not relevant. We know her sister Mrs Phillips is just as tactless, and that only her brother Mr Gardiner is at all superior in graces--something Austen attributes to "nature" and "education." This seems to imply that Mrs Bennet isn't inferior to her brother by any fault of her own; she merely lacks the gifts of nature and education to make her the mother Elizabeth wishes she was. That is quite pitiable, in my opinion; there is something fatalistic there in Austen's depiction, that suggests the impossibility of remedy. I think in all, it is hard not to see Mr Bennet as responsible for the misfortune of the family. Lydia, for example, resembles Mrs Bennet in behaviour more than any other sister, and we know that a large part of why Lydia is the way she is stems from her mother's overindulgence. However, Mrs Bennet is only raising Lydia in the light she herself knows; as mentioned before by Austen's comparison between Mrs Bennet and her brother, Mrs Bennet is not naturally sensible, nor is she educated. However, Mr Bennet is both of these things, and he therefore ought to have taken care that Mrs Bennet did not go on to raise her daughters into versions of herself--especially since we know that he himself is quite aware of his wife's shortcomings. Mrs Bennet by Austen's description cannot overcome her own failings (and in my view, is much to be pitied for that, since her goals are quite sensible) but Mr Bennet could, if he wished, counteract these failings for the sake of his daughters. He chooses not to, and goes so far as to exacerbate the flaws of his wife, which a more serious man would have endeavoured to temper. Altogether, though I cannot say I have much in common with Mrs Bennet, I think she is much to be pitied. Also--yours was an excellent video, and I think you treated her character much more fairly than most people do. I'm very proud to be subscribing! All the best :)
Alison is also a bird lover she is a lovely lady my friend met her at the rspb rainham marshes and said that she was extremely friendly. A fantastic actress too.
I think the bigger issue isn’t that the Bennets ‘only’ have 2k a year which was actually quite a good income at the time. It’s that Mrs Bennet is from the middle class, meaning that she a) hasn’t been drilled in upper class social norms from infancy and therefore she’s going to get it wrong and b) she brings no advantageous social connections.
The Doings of Hamish and Dougal is sublimely funny! Love her in that. I think Mrs Bennet never pointed Mr Collins to Mary as she thought Mary would be there to look after her and Mr Bennet after the others are married.
It’s a guilty pleasure of mine. Some people drift off to sleep at night listening to audio books or ASRM stuff. Me? I drift off chuckling to the doings. You’ll have had your tea? 🤣
There's a wonderful modern version of Pride and Prejudice called Jane Austen in Boca, where the main characters are elderly retirees and the Jane character, instead of having a scheming mother, is a widow with a scheming daughter-in-law.
I’m really enjoying your series on characters in Pride and Prejudice. Your insights are really interesting. You’re so right about Mrs. Bennet. Once I got over my annoyance at her, I realized that she was the only one in the family taking a serious situation seriously. Her own behavior makes it harder to solve the problem, however. This is a tangent, but when I realized that, one thing that really surprised me was that Elizabeth did not seem to take the situation seriously. She’s certainly intelligent enough to realize what she and her mother and sisters will face after Mr. Bennet dies, but she doesn’t seem to worry about it. Maybe that’s because she realizes that she can’t do much about it anyway, so there’s no point in worrying. Do you have any other explanations? Perhaps I misunderstood you, but I thought you indicated that the Bennett‘s income of 2000 pounds put them on the lower rung of the gentry ladder, but from what I’ve read, the average gentry family income was about 700 pounds. If that’s the case, while the Bennets were nowhere near the level of the Darcys or even the Bingleys, neither were they on the lower rungs of the gentry.
@@kkitao217 yeah I’d read that 2000 a year was on the lower ring of the gentry ladder. It’s interesting that 700 a year secured someone into that class too! And yes, as much as I have sympathy for Mrs. Bennet I’m quite sure that her irrational behaviour does her no favours!
I had read that Alison Stedman showed up for the audition in full costume and used the, now all too familiar, voice of Mrs. Bennett that she would go on to use in the series as she read the script. They were bowled over immediately and she got the part.
Food for thought. Mr Bennett lost interest in his daughters after the first two I think and was increasingly distant from mrs. Had he shown more interest in them maybe they would be less vapid .. The genius of austen is that she conveys the absurdity of Mrs B as well as the reality of the familys social standing.
Your remarks about the proprietary of helping inlaws made me think of Austens own situation. Brother Edward could easily have given more support and made his sisters and mothers life easier. Ive always considered him tight-fisted (and i still wonder whether there is an element of him in John Dashwood). But other than the provision of the cottage, the cost of providing the Austen womens allowance was spread between the brothers despite the wide difference in circumstances.
Yes that’s an interesting comparison and Edward Knight was super well off. Perhaps as I mentioned, propriety meant it just wasn’t the done thing. It’s easy to make the comparisons with modern day standards too I guess.
I agree that Edward Knight could have provided more support for his mother, Cassandra, and Jane Austen. However, he was a widower himself (at some point) and had a large brood of his own to also consider. Maybe that's another reason he didn't contribute more to their support. Having a roof over your head is wonderful. But they did have to live on a shoestring otherwise!
What a mismatched couple the Bennets are. The father has the intelligence to recognize the position that his family is in but feels that he can't do anything about it. His lack of respect for his wife makes him mocking and sarcastic instead of supporting her. You see it when the ladies come home from the ball and Mrs Bennett is talking about Mr Bingley dancing with Jane twice. Instead of being interested he just rolls his eyes at her. He is aware that regardless of the value of his older daughters, they are likely to be passed over for women of fortune and there is nothing that he can do about it.
I wonder if Mrs Bennet saw a potential marriage between Elizabeth and Mr Collins as more viable than one between Mary and Mr Collins for a couple of reasons: 1. she sees that Mr Collins is fixated on beauty, and while Mary might be a better match on paper due to interests, she is not as pretty as Elizabeth; 2. marrying off Elizabeth to Mr Collins might have been her strategy for securing the future for her most "problematic" daughter. I imagine she saw Elizabeth's cleverness as something that might scare off other suitors, and while I am confident she loved her, I believe she fundamentally misunderstood her. Her relief at having Jane marry might not be (solely) due to the possibility of Mr Bingley's financial support. I imagine she saw Jane's marriage to someone with other wealthy connections as a source of other men for the potential marriage pool. Like you said, her chief "job" after not producing a son was to make sure she married off as many daughters as she possibly could before her social status and financial resources changed for the worse. If nothing else, I imagine she counted on Mr Bingley and Jane hosting one or more of her daughters for a season in Town to shop for husbands.
I think the anxiety of Mrs. Bennet would have also increased because of their location. They were just in the gentry but I don't believe went to Town etc. so they had to rely on the eligible men in the area which must have been few and far between. Plus none of the girls had been properly educated so they wouldn't have made good governesses even. So all of them would have been living in a tiny apartment getting poorer and poorer as the years went on. And her husband didn't seem to care, he was the one in control of the money and saving dowries for them all and didn't; preferring to bury his head in the sand. When I first read the book/watched the mini-series I had the same common reaction to Mrs. B. But if you start to dig deeper you have far more sympathy for her and the stress she must have been under. As an aside: Has anyone ever wondered about the circumstances that had Netherfield Park up for rent?
I have often wondered about who owned Netherfield Park (any eligible bachelors connected to that estate?) and how it came to be "let at last." I wonder if it belonged to some family like the Elliots of Kellynch Hall, who hadn't managed their money very well.
It wasn't uncommon for those originally well off and living in a manor house/landed estate to end up with financial problems and go abroad while renting out their house. It was cheaper for them abroad, they wouldn't wholly lose their family estate like they would if they sold it, and they'd get paid rent too.
Mrs. Bennett says Netherfield is let ‘at last’. That could be her dramatic way of speaking, but if she isn’t wildly exaggerating it sounds like the owner was trying to rent it out for a while unsuccessfully, or that they have been absent for a while and finally decided to put it up for lease.
Thanks for the interesting glimpse of society in this era, and the insights into this character’s behavior. For what it’s worth, I think Alison Steadman did a brilliant job in this role, as it must be difficult to believably portray a person who tends to come across as this unlikable and silly. I enjoy your videos- and the 1995 version is my favorite, as well! Happy new year…..
7:22 I thought Mrs Bennet didn't steer Mr Collins towards Mary because it was thought, in those days, daughters should marry according to age with the oldest marrying first. Jane is oldest but Mr. Bingley is hovering on the horizon so Elizabeth is next.
That is most probably the case. It is strange that whilst in the garden scene, the camera pans around to show all the “available” daughters as if to suggest Mr. Collins could choice any one of them.
I think Mrs Bennet was aware that Mary, as plain as she is, has no chance to attract even Mr Collins. He is, after all, considering the Bennet girl he should marry in order of their attractiveness. Jane is the prettiest, but almost spoken for, Lizzie is the second prettiest.
A literary scholar had a similar video on the same topic quite some time ago and brought up the same points. Wish I could remember who it was. I enjoyed both videos. Thank you.
We see what actually happens to a family of daughters whose patriarch dies before the rich hero comes along in JA's other great novel, Sense and Sensibility. Luckily, Mrs Dashwood has a very generous cousin with an empty cottage, but she and the three Dashwood daughters live there in some discomfort compared with their former lifestyle, and also have to endure the sneering of people who were formerly their social equals - Fanny Dashwood and the Ferrars family for instance.
I think your point that just one advantageous marriage is not enough is very accurate. Jane was delighted when she thought that she had secured her family's future, but there is also Mr. Bingley's unmarried sister Caroline to consider. When her prospects of marrying Mr. Darcy were dashed by Elizabeth, she was back in the marriage race. If she didn't marry, she would be her brother's responsibility along with his new wife Jane and whatever children they may have. Mrs. Bennet was very worried and rightly so!
@@TudorSmithA consideration with a dowry though. She is new money but she has money, so her prospects are better. Similar to her sister grabbing Mr. Hurst. Actually, her prospects were improved by Darcy marrying Elizabeth, as he wasn’t going to marry Caroline anyhow. Now she can stop wasting her time.
Caroline had 20,000 pounds, so finding a husband was never gonna be too hard for her once she set her sights at more reasonable targets than the nephew of an Earl. Even if she never married, her expenses would be paid for by the interest on her fortune.
Thanks again Tudor very interesting and thought provoking. Watched P&P 95 over Xmas as there is nowt on the TV as usual. My goodness its so beautifully made and like yourself i have avoided Gavin & Stacey like the plague! Have you heard the rumor that Netflix may be doing P&P this year....ye gods no!! Happy new year to you.
I have always thought that about the poor woman, too. As much as Lizzie loved her father, I have considered him pretty self-centered about the inheritance. After all, when the problem would come to a head, he'd be dead! And he must have found something attractive about Mrs. Bennet to marry her since she does not seem to have come from money or social standing herself. Perhaps she was in the same situation her daughters find themselves in and understands the fine line walked. Thanks for your videos; I enjoy them very much!
@angieallen4884 I think in the book Mr. Bennet tells Lizzie he fell for a pretty face and a lively spirit. (Someone in the comments please correct me if I'm wrong)
When I look at Mrs Bennet, she DOES have really strong reasons for feeling the way she feels...it's her lack of moderation that makes her "difficult". Jane Austin was a truly brilliant author. While several of her characters are silly or obnoxious, they all have some depth and aren't just "paper dolls". I still can't stand Lydia.
🤣 Maybe Jane Austen’s writing style allowed us all to choose our favourite characters based perhaps on our own personalities or maybe of someone we know. And similarly we can dislike characters for the same reasons.
@@TudorSmith I think Austin intended us to be like her father and prefer Lizzie to her sisters...I think it goes like this: both parents love Jane and have from her birth. She's very pretty and has a graceful nature and bearing...what's not to love? Lizzie is her father's favorite and they have a little team. Lydia is her mother's favorite...they both enjoy conspiring and getting their own way and they prop each other up in terms of their egos and desires. Poor Mary and Kitty. Both parents hang each of them out to dry, most obviously their father, but how many times does Mrs Bennet just give Kitty's stuff to Lydia? (a lot) Mary is REQUIRED to play and sing at all kinds of events, and the one where she finally might shine turns into a total disaster for her. It's a relief that her father tells her to step aside, but such humiliation! When Mr Bennet tells Kitty that she's never going anywhere or getting to see anybody who might be slightly fun company since Lydia has blown it for her I feel so sorry for her. I do hope they had happier futures than it seemed that they would at the end of the story...because not being destitute is a wonderful thing, but being "old maids" who depend on the kindness of their sister's husbands doesn't sound like a fabulous lifestyle. The awful truth of women's status and ability (or not) to support themselves makes this such a stealth feminist story...and let us all hope that none of our fortunes are "entailed away". lol...as sympathetic as I am to Mrs Bennet's position, I HOPE that after her more senior daughters were so advantageously married she stopped treating them all like superfluous puppies...and MAYBE gave Lizzie a little credit/apology for being smart enough to marry way way way up from Mr Collins.
I love Mrs Bennett and that actress in the role. I agree with your read and hadn't thought of it. She has to provide the love and leadership of a mother and father since Mr Bennett didn't get involved till after the Lydia scandal woke him up.
It’s easy in modern times to forget the lack of agency women had in the past. Mrs Bennett comes off as silly because of exactly what you’re talking about- marriage was the only option women had. I will have more charitable thoughts towards her next time. Very thought provoking analysis!
Mrs. Bennett wasn’t the only one that was aware that the girls needed husbands. Mr. Bennett had always planned to go visit Mr. Bingley. He was going to facilitate his girls meeting the eligible bachelor. He just wasn’t ever obnoxious about it. He was droll.
I think one missed opportunity in every production I've seen is to reflect Mrs. Bennet as a very beautiful woman. She is always portrayed as rather homely. But Mr. Bennet once mentions that she might be even better looking than all her daughters, and I don't think he was being sarcastic there. Mrs. Bennet had to have some powerful attractiveness to catch him, and we see it could not have been her gentility or wit.
I think she has been played by beautiful women, but they dress her rather comically and her behavior obscures her beauty. For example if you look at this actress without the screechy voice and dowdy outfits, she's quite pretty.
@@robtooley4002 I agree, the actress is very pretty in some of the pictures they showed. Maybe I don't know historical fashion enough. It would work if she were styling herself in looks that were man-catching twenty years ago when she first wore them, but looked comically out of date for whatever year her daughters are coming out. Kind of like a Peg Bundy situation.
Many people peak young. Not everyone is lucky enough to age gracefully. A better looking older woman probably wouldn't have had the looks he'd be attracted to when she was younger.
Very thoughtful vlog about a much misunderstood character. Jane Austen's own life reflects the issues single women of her age faced and it could be said Mrs Bennett reflects some of the attitudes of her own mother
Mr. Collins wanted to marry the oldest prettiest daughter. It was one thing that she wasn't available but pushing him toward the third and plainest could have alienated him all together.
You have given me a new appreciation for the poor woman. 😂 Silly creature though she is, she did try to help her daughters. She just didn't have the sense to do so effectively.
I agree with you in general, and I think Mr. Bennet has a great deal to answer for. He made an imprudent marriage based on physical attraction. He has foolishly assumed that there will be a son to inherit, and he has put no money by to provide for his wife and daughters in case of his demise. He is far more intelligent than his wife, but he puts that intelligence to no practical use. He simply withdraws and snipes, and when action is required (the search for Lydia), he fails. His sarcasm is funny but unhelpful, except when he supports Lizzie's refusal of Mr. Collins. However, Mrs. B. is indeed oblivious---and obnoxious. She is hopelessly vulgar (e.g. in her loud public blithering about finding her daughters rich husbands) and does nothing to control Lydia. (I think she sees Lydia as a younger version of herself, given her comments about having fancied a red coat herself when she was younger.) Despite Wickham's appalling behaviour and the likelihood that such a cad will be a disastrous husband, she seems to approve of him. To me, that doesn't show love for her daughter. Of course, maybe she is just too stupid to understand his character. So, is she a woman more sinned against than sinning? I'd say it's fifty-fifty.
Mrs Bennett has also been charged with being, in effect, the sole parent of her daughters, as Mr Bennett has removed himself from that responsibility. She has obviously never been equipped with the ability to do this in the way society demands, possibly due to her own family's more lowly origins? In contrast to expected practices, Mrs Bennett's daughters are all allowed 'out' at the same time, and were never taught to be 'accomplished' ladies by a governess. In failing to raise her daughters this way, she has made their situation more precarious. There are several conversations amongst the Bingleys and Lady de Bourgh about the importance of women having such accomplishments in order to move in society. I think Austen is saying that where girls are naturally solid and intelligent like Jane and Elizabeth, such things are not a barrier, but the neglect of a proper ladies education in the other girls has left them to drift whichever direction the wind blows. Mrs Bennett's character shoulders most of the blame for this pitiable situation.
But would Mrs. Bennet understand this, when she comes from the trade class? Mr. Bennet, being a member of the gentry, should have a better understanding of the kind of education his daughters would need. Lady Catherine is wrong about a lot of things, but she was absolutely right that the five Bennet daughters should have been taught by a governess (this would have given them the proper skills to move within the gentry or to become governesses themselves if needed), and they should not all have been out at the same time.
Mr. Bennett had the higher social standing of the two, he was certainly aware that proper education would be in the best interest of his daughters. I daresay he is more to blame than his wife for his daughters' circumstances. He had options: make sure a governess is hired (especially knowing - by the time his eldest daughter was in need of a governess - that his wife cannot provide the necessary education), save money for more substantial dowries... he simply neglected to do anything at all.
I've always felt sorry for Mrs Bennett. She is not an intelligent woman, and she knows she's alone in marrying off her daughters. She gets little or no help from her husband, who doesn't seem to care at all for her and their children's future security.
I love Alison Steadman's and Benjamin Whitrow's portrayals of Mrs. and Mr. Bennet, respectively. They are both complex characters when we really view them in their times and are willing to look below the surface. Mr. Bennet admits that he realizes he should have planned better. And he comes across as self-absorbed, reading in his library and trying to stay away from the frenetic chaos his wife provides in the household. Not to psychoanalyze him, but I wonder if some of his behavior could be explained by his own depression that things didn't turn out differently (i.e., his fathering a son). Perhaps his own upbringing allowed him to be rather idle and not very good at planning for the future. If Mr. and Mrs. Bennet had had a son, can you imagine how spoiled he would have been! Yikes! Perhaps Mr. Bennet had been in just such a situation and had been a spoiled child himself. To his credit, he doesn't want his daughters to wind up in an unhappy, unequal marriage as he has.
Her problem is very real, but she goes about solving it in a very silly, ridiculous and offensive way. Thanks for this video! It's actually quite thought provoking.
Thank you for another wonderful video. I feel like I have met many Mrs. Bennett-like characters in my life. While she is annoying, she is also striving in a world stacked against her. It is hard not to have some admiration for her determination as well as eye rolls at her 'nerves'.
There’s definitely a little of both regarding Mrs. Bennet. We can appreciate her position and motives but at the same time, the way she goes about things can grate on the nerves 🤣
To understand the precariousness of Mrs. Bennet's situation (and that of her daughters), one need look no further than "Sense and Sensibility". When Mr. Dashwood dies, Mrs Dashwood and her daughters are left with practically nothing. And in those death, death could come suddenly.
Alison Stedman played the overwrought Mrs. Bennett perfectly! 👏👏👏 Mrs. B. was likely a woman in the 'change-of-life', what with all the 'fussings and flutterings' she was experiencing. She did gave her younger daughters more slack than was proper for those days. But then she herself so much as admitted that she had had her bit of fun in her youth. 😉
I have been curious about the tensions in Mrs Bennett's character stemming from her *not* being from the class of "gentlemen". She married "up" but always had to prove herself -- which she could not do because she was not bred for it (or apparently capable of learning it).
I read an well reaearched analysis several years ago on the wealth of the Bennets, Darcy, and Bingley relative to the population of England at that time. Their 2,000 pounds per year placed the Bennets in the top 2% of income. (That makes their trashy depiction in the dreadful 2005 version all the more galling.)
Yes, plenty enough income for Mr Bennet to have saved decent dowries for his daughters. Even if he’d started when Lydia was 10, they could have tightened their belts just a little & managed.
Mrs Bennet is underestimated and easily disregarded, but I do think Mr Bennet is more responsible for how his wife and daughters are and behave, than he himself and many people like to admit. In that time and age he would have had to take up a more active role in his family's life and in his daughters. That said, not Mrs Bennet's intentions, but rather the "how" is, admittedly, quite grating at times... I'd be interested in a video about Lydia's life as Mrs Wickham, and Mr Wickham's future after the events of Pride and Prejudice, if you're amenable to make such a video!
Hello from Montreal, Canada. What a nice gift for the new year to have another of your analysis! Thank you. Wishing you a happy new year. French is my first language. Therefore, please excuse spelling or syntax mistakes. You said something very interesting about the fact that Mrs Bennett wasn't aware of Marie's feelings for Mr. Collins. You said that a relationship between Marie and Mr Collins would not have worked. Can you elaborate on the subject? I think the contrary. He is an idiot but he is very sensitive to beauty and to appearances. Therefore, Marie could not be a good choice based on these external criterion. Mrs Bennett talked about Jane's beauty many times. He needed a wife that will leave his status as it was or elevate it. He would not been admired if married to Marie but would have been if married to Jane or Lizzie. It is interesting that the three young daughters are seen as idiots and are not very attractive. It is a little bit cliché but I wonder if it is not one reason the father was not that nice to his youngest daughters. Thank you very much.
Your points about their predicament are all very true. I also think the 1995 BBC production exaggerated how awful Mrs. Bennett was (and downplayed Mr. Bennett's flaws). Despite this, I still think you are giving her too much credit. She certainly was obsessed with security, her own as well as her daughters', but I think it's questionable how much love for her daughters was in that. She was fond of Lydia, presumably because Lydia was similar in character to herself. But you can't really love someone you don't even see, and her pushing Mr. Collins toward Lizzie proves that she didn't see Lizzie at all. Her view of people was so instrumental that she couldn't see something as absolutely obvious as that a marriage between Mr. Collins and Lizzie would be torture to both of them. Her values were more narcissistic, like the parent who expects their children to bring social status to them, without ever considering the wants and needs of the children as separate selves. I find her less annoying and more affectionate in the book, but no less silly and selfish. "Selfish" might be a little unfair, due to the truth of what you say about their predicament and her lone dedication to solving it. But I still don't see much genuine interest in her daughters (or anyone else) as people, so I'm going to stand by it.
I agree; I saw a lot of my own mother in Mrs Bennet's attempt to marry off her children and how she treated them in her downtime, and my mum would absolutely marry me off to someone I loathed if it meant her own social standing and security was assured. When my sister married at 20 years old after knowing the guy for less than a year, mum only made a small fuss against it since he was a minor celebrity where she's from and she thought she could capitalise on that.
I don't think it downplayed Mr Bennet's flaws, I think they're just so damn fun to watch that people blinded themselves to them. Mr Bennet could have written to Bingley and admonished him for making Jane fall in love with him and then disappear, but instead he chose to make a joke out of her disappointment. He could have made it clear right away that he had no intention of allowing anyone to go to Brighton, but instead he chose to make a joke out of it, teasing and baiting his wife and youngest daughter about the potential trip. Then when his silly, boy-crazy 15-year old daughter got invited to go there with only a very silly, very young officer's wife as a chaperone, he allowed it, risking the entire family's reputation because he'd have had to put up with some whining otherwise. If he was a real person, he'd be a terrible husband and father, but because we're watching a funny tv show, many just focus on how funny he is.
I actually deeply empathize with Mrs B. Im an outgoing type A anxious type, married to a casual, introverted lassaiz faire bloke, whose cest le vie attitude can sometimes be infuriating. I completely agree that Mr B actively provoked her. Thankfully I think I have 100x better tact than Mrs B lol.
Points well taken. Much easier to disparage such a character through the modern lens, and the dangers she feared and toiled against were real. However I do still think she has some essential flaws beyond just being less sharp-witted than her husband. She has preferences among her daughters, favoring irresponsibility and superficiality and scorning sense and propriety. She is quite narcissistic in her reactions to her daughters' ups and downs. Everything is about how it reflects on her and nothing is about the girls' happiness. Her daughters are objects to dispose of. Lydia is married off to the worst person any of them has ever met, and she rejoices. Is Wickham going to find upstandingness in marriage? He'll blow all their (Darcy's) money, seek out "wenches," make Lydia miserable out of bitterness. With any luck, he'll board a ship one drunken night and try his fortunes in America, and Lydia can move in with Jane to the torment of Bingley's sister.
There is an unofficial sequel called 'Pemberly', where Lydia is widowed by murder, and Lizzie and Darcy try to find out why as it happened when the Wickhams were on their way to Pemberly to visit.
Not to mention that with the Bennets' income, she could have by now saved up enough money that Mr Bennet's death wouldn't mean starving in the hedgerows, but she instead has been spending money on luxuries for over two decades, so I genuinely don't understand why people think she's such a swell mom for trying to get her daughters married off.
Alison Steadman is a sensationally good actress and I think she knew exactly what she was doing with this portrayal. What we can't get away from is Mrs. Bennet's stupidity, which time and again works to her daughters' disadvantage. When we first meet her she's fretting and fuming because Mr. Bennet won't call on the newly arrived Mr. Bingley but, knowing the correct etiquette, Mr. Bennet has already done so. When Jane has been ill and has stayed at Bingley's home, she visits and takes such umbrage at any suggestion that their country company should be considered limited that her reaction makes Lizzie flinch. Over and over, she is in fact her daughters' worst hurdle when it comes to making a good match, to such an extent that I long to slap her. She doesn't care whether her daughters are married to idiots or rogues, just so long as they are married, and no matter how important it is, in that society and at that time, that they should be, Mr. Bennet is far more concerned that they should actually be happy. He has been saddled with a pretty idiot and knows how awful unhappy marriage is. It's no surprise that when Jane Austen adds a footnote about the situation after Lizzie and Darcy are married, we find Mr. Bennet visits them - he must get tired of his own library sometimes and seek refuge from his wife elsewhere.
You summed up my thoughts exactly .. There's such disparity between Mr and Mrs Bennet, both intellectually and temperamentally, that I often wondered how well, in such a restrictive society, he was able to get to know her before they married, since, if he knew what she was like, I wouldn't think he would've proposed.
That's interesting, and very true. Mr. Bennett is wrong not to be putting effort into finding good marriages for his daughters, but on the other hand he doesn't want to see them unhappily married. Mrs. Bennett is actively trying to help them marry, but she doesn't care whether they'd be happy or miserable. Also, Mrs. Bennett's chaotic personality and terrible lack of social grace and tact are a serious hazard to her daughters' chances. I don't understand why she was so delighted about Lydia's marriage to Wickham, because he'll be lucky to even be able to support the two of them. Their finances and social standing are precarious, and sooner or later Lydia will wake up to Reality and realize that she's miserable. The only advantage to the Bennet family is that they avoided the worst of the scandal and no longer have to support Lydia themselves, but if she ends up widowed in the future, what would her situation be?
@@rowanaforrest9792 Just a thought about why Mrs. Bennet is so pleased about Lydia and Wickham's marriage (although it doesn't make up for the fact that she doesn't seem to register how bad the whole elopement looks from a "respectability"/local gossip point of view); Lydia is fairly obviously her favourite - sociable, energetic, not especially serious or intellectual, frittering away her allowance on things like bonnets - and I wonder whether that's because Lydia is the child who most closely resembles her mother's character as a young woman? After meeting Wickham, Mrs. Bennet does say (with a bit of nostalgia) that she also liked a red-coated soldier when she was a girl, and admits that (in her heart) she's still got a soft spot for a man in uniform. So could there be an element of Mrs. Bennet being pleased that her daughter has managed to marry a soldier, almost like Lydia living out Mrs. Bennet's teenage fantasies from years ago? (Incidentally, I'm not sure whether - if Wickham had been killed in the Napoleonic Wars - the army would have given Lydia a widow's pension, but after Wickham and Lydia get married, both Mr. Gardiner and Mrs. Bennet refer to Wickham accepting a commission in the "Regulars", so the regular Army, rather than the local militia, who - I think - were more like a local volunteer force, to be assembled and disbanded as needed. If Wickham did go into the regular army, maybe that would have put him in a better position to expect a pension, or some provision for a widow/children.) I definitely agree that they would have had a precarious life; I think troops moved wherever they were needed, so they could easily have moved from place to place as long as Wickham was alive and/or fit to serve in the army.
@@annebowman5954 He probably attended an assembly, was infatuated with her beauty and lively manners, and proposed way too quickly, not getting to know her until they were already married. Literally any other woman in the area(except her sister who is equally silly) would have been a better match for him.
Mrs Bennett had a very good motivation to marry off all of her daughters, but her methods were questionable at best. People died in their times from trifle cold, so it was not so good idea to sent Jane on horseback to Netherfield. At other times Mrs Bennett was focused only on the fact of marriage. She not really care if husband would make Lizzie miserable for the rest of her life (Mr Collins) or even can provide for Lydia (Mr Wickham). Many of Mrs Bennett beloved officers were too poor to support a wife. But she seems totally oblivious to all of that. Her only redemption is the fact that Mrs Bennett did all of that because she is a little bit naive and simple, not cruel.
Tudor, if the daughters had had boy children before the death of Mr Bennett, would the grandsons have been able to inherit the Longbourne Estate instead of Mr Collins?
I'm not sure. The entail specified a male heir...possibly the first male heir, so even after marriage and the birth of a son, then wouldn't that make the son 2nd in line to inherit?
Yes. The house goes to the person they choose when they inherit. In the story Emma, the father chose his daughter. Mr and mr and mrs Bennett chose their future son, but since there is none, the entail goes to the nearest male relative.
No. Entailing to "heirs male" means it must be male all the way down. aka French Salic law. (it all depends on the will of the original deceased) This means Mr Bennet and Mr Collins are male descent cousins despite having different last names (which can happen when a man adopts another name to be made heir to an estate, see Frank Churchill, son of Mr Weston, in Emma for example). @mrscarlier: Mr & Mrs Bennet didn't choose their future son, otherwise they can then choose their daughters. More likely that, just like Sense & Sensibility, it's Mr Bennet's father who entailed the Longbourne estate to "heirs male" in his will, which can be broken if and only if the third generation heir consents to it (this is even mentioned in the book as "this son will join in to BREAK the entail"). Since the third generation heir ends up being Mr Collins who would obviously not impoverish himself for a distant cousins, that's why Mrs Bennet had to panic about marrying off her daughters before they have no chance to go about in society on their father's dime.
I find myself sympathizing with many of Jane Austin’s characters that are seemingly not the heroines. Mrs Bennett and Mary Bennett are two examples. I am learning enough about their era to understand they are in a difficult situation, but I also see them as bullied or emotionally abused by Mr. Bennett. I also have sympathy for Lucy Steel in Sense and Sensibility. She is in the same boat as the Bennett daughters; I.e. in need of an advantageous marriage. So it is understandable that she is warning off Eleanor and brown nosing with her future in-laws. Mrs. Clay in Persuasion is also desperate. No wonder she eats up the Elliott attention. Seeing them, not as merely lower class, but as humans, gives you sympathy for them.
Even understanding Lucy Steele's need to find security in a wealthy marriage,, I can't sympathize with her because she is so ruthless and cruel, particularly to Eleanor. She not only jabs a big knife into her wile looking her in the eyes and pretending to be sweet and nice, she then twists the knife. And her enthusiasm as she gossiped to Robert Ferars about Marianne's writing those letters to Willoughby. Her basic motive is understandable, but her methods are sly and cold-blooded. I think she and Robert Ferars are a happy match, but that's not a compliment to either of them.
Not sure why you think anybody misunderstands Mrs Bennet. It's perfectly clear that Mrs Bennet is doing what she needs to do in the family's circumstances. The reason why she is funny is because she is overtly doing what all the other families are doing covertly. They all need to get their daughters married to the best economic prospect that is available. All this is obvious from the book. Maybe people who really on film and tv adaptations don't really understand what's going on in Jane Austen's work because they don't read it.
Mr. Darcy's initial disapproval of Bingley being married to Jane is also explained now.Bingley might have been responsible for the whole Bennet Family as well as his sister Coraline should she also fail to find a husband.
Presumably the entail could not skip a generation and the Bennet property pass to a grandson? With three daughters married by the end of the book one may very well produce one before Mr Bennet died. If the first was a little Wickham, would it have passed to him?? The 1995 P&P is by far my favourite, though I do have a soft spot for the 1980 version, Mrs Bennet wasn't nearly so annoying! Thank you Tudor, and a happy New Year to you.
I’m with you Tudor on most of your comments. And it was terrible that women couldn’t inherit the family property. But Mrs B is SO annoying. And uncouth, especially at the dance when she’s talking about money and Darcy overhears her. So embarrassing to the daughters. What I don’t understand is why she didn’t put more energy into making the 3 younger daughters more marriageable.
I think she had subconsciously given up on having a son and it shows in the upbringing of her three younger girls. Jane and Elizabeth show that they had been parented and well - but the youngest Bennets have almost been ignored in their upbringing. Lydia stands out because she is most like her mother, and therefore, got more attention.
I think she does what she’s able to do with the tools she has. She IS herself a bit of a Lydia. She isn’t sophisticated or clever like Elizabeth or sweet and charming like Jane. She can’t bring to bear those skills for the task she has. She’s more socially aware than Lydia by dent of years but ultimately enthusiastic throwing herself and tasks (and people) is more her instinct and she doesn’t quite understand that that is the opposite of what’s needed to catch a Bingley or Darcy. Imagine if Lydia had managed to be plucked by a Bingley type and thrust into Caroline Bingleys world- she would also always be out of place as Mrs Bennet is. She’d likely never lose her vulgarity or gauche manners. She couldn’t make up for her lack of reading or wit. If such a gentleman was attracted by her looks and youthful energy - seems to have been what Mr B was - then it makes sense she is both earnest but annoying
I think she didn't put more energy into the younger three because Jane and Lizzie were the prettiest of the bunch - and as mentioned in another scene, as the eldest they would be expected to marry first.
I think because it was customary that the younger girls couldn't marry until the older ones had. So she probably wanted Jane and Elizabeth to marry and then would move on to the others.
While the 1995 production is by far my favorite adaptation, and while I fully sympathize with Mrs. Bennet's fears, I have three complaints. First, Austen's character's social behaviors are mortifying. Second, she is a terrible mother who fails to guide her younger daughters to more acceptable behavior. If she is so concerned about their prospects, why doesn't she raise them to behave properly? And, third, I have an intensely negative visceral response, and so hate Alison's piercing vocal choices, that I have to fast forward through her scenes.
Happy new year! I agree with you that poor Mrs Bennett is misunderstood. She is up against a husband who is almost neglectful and socioeconomic concerns. One of her major failings is her apparent favouritism and indulgence of Lydia. Her preference of a handsome officer for a flighty youngest daughter, resulting in marriage, yes, but probably not the best Lydia might have found her way into it she'd been taken better care of and guided to be responsible.
Actually in BBC series the level of concern of Mrs Bennet is portrayed quite patently from the very first episode, where despite the comedic and chaotic behaviour of Mrs Bennet Mr Bennet does exaclty what she sais: writes to the wealthy neighbours. Also noone argues with her, when she sends Jane on horseback to the dinner at Bingley's: idea is cruel and ridiculous, but noone is stopping this, because all the adults in the family understand her motivation. Another thing is that Mrs Bennet probably knew that Mary is better suited for Mr Collins, but he preferred Lizzy and for her it was not that important, which daughter (given that this daughter is available) he would take. Btw this was the _only_ time where mr. Bennet overruled her idea. All other ideas were tolerated, again, because her motivation was clear and supported by the adults in the family.
Great video and I agree partially, but I think she either overlooks or misjudges some pretty key things about her daughters' characters and their suitability for certain men. Darcy is misjudged by virtually the whole of the society they live in, and it's only Elizabeth who comes to see him for what he really is, so she can't help that. Wickham is also misjudged generally, but that's got a great deal to do with his own lies and how previous bad events concerning him have been kept secret until Lydia's elopement with him. I think she misjudges Elizabeth's character in some respects, especially when it comes to Mr Collins' proposal to her and the fact that she seems to favour Lydia, indulging her flirtatious and flighty nature and I think Mrs Bennet misjudges just how determined Lydia seems to be to have fun by any means, ignorant of any reputational damage she might do herself and/or the rest of her family. Indeed, Mr Collins comes across as being rather silly and his consideration in terms of who to marry from the Bennet sisters appears to be based only on age - he looks at Jane until Mrs Bennet informs him of Mr Bingley's interest in her, and then looks no further than Elizabeth, and as Elizabeth is the more intelligent of the Bennet sisters and prefers sensible, practical men, she is clearly unsuitable for Mr Collins, as she points out in her refusal of his proposal. Indeed, Mary would have been a much better match for Mr Collins, but he took no interest in her and after Elizabeth's rejection, he went to Charlotte Lucas instead.
I think that Mr Collins choice of the Bennet girls is not by age, but by looks. Jane is the prettiest, so she is his first choice, until he finds out that she is unavailable. Elizabeth - second in looks as in birth - is his second choice. Mr Collins’s professions of wanting to help out his cousins by marrying one of them are patently false, as he is only prepared to marry one of them if she is good looking. At least that was the plan until he was rejected by Elizabeth. If Mary had Charlotte’s cunning, she could have got Mr Collins, in spite of being plain, but in my opinion she’s better off without him.
I feel Mr Bennet gets off lightly in the tv version. Jane Austen is less kind to him. Instead of tempering their faults by marrying, Mr and Mrs Bennet irritate each other into becoming caricatures of themselves. I mean that she seeks attention and so he hides and round and round they go.
I’m currently rereading the book (for an audio book) so I’m hoping to pick up a lot more that I’ve obviously missed (and maybe the TV and film productions have missed too).
I think his charisma and funny lines blind people to how bad he is at being the head of the family, but the tv version doesn't try to hide that. As a person, he fails miserable, but as a fictional character he's amazing, stealing every scene he's in with his zingers.
It's always good to sometimes look at things from 'the other perspective', but let's make no mistake that Jane Austen probably did not mean for the reader to empathize with mrs Bennet all too much. After all, in another book of Austen, Sense & Sensibility, the main characters Elenor & Marianne are victims of the exact fate which seems so mortifying to mrs Bennet, because they are forced to move out of their ancestral home and live in relative poverty and partly dependent on the goodwill of others. And they bear it with grace and fortitude rather than nervousness and silliness. I don't think there is too much lost in translation here with regards to 'Oh but if you only understood the situation of women back then' -> mrs Bennet is so focused on marriage because she is a superficial, unintelligent, self-centered woman who has never really been instilled with proper values. All she understands, wants to understand really, is this: when a woman is able to achieve 'a good marriage' then everyone congratulates her and her family. I don't think she has any interest beyond that to be honest. And even her definition of 'a good marriage' is only based on the utmost superficial things such as money and maybe status - and even those superficial values become less important to her when she is able to boast of Lydia being married at 'only sixteen', even though she lost all of her reputation, the chance of real happiness or financial stability in the process. I can feel bad for the situation the Bennet family is in, but I personally cannot really make any allowance for mrs Bennets silliness because of it. She causes more harm than good with her behaviour and not only does she not understand it, I don't think she even cares that much, because any attempt by Jane, Elizabeth or even mr Gardiner to rein in that behaviour is ignored or protested against.
I think you said the Bennet's situation was similar to Jane Austen's own family. But didn't Jane Austen actually have brothers and they (the brothers) were married well?
Yes a brother who had been adopted by a wealthy relative and he did provide a house for Jane's mother, Jane and her sister, without which they would probably have been in extreme poverty.
As I understand it, when Jane's father died in 1805 (Jane was 30 years old), Jane's widowed mother plus Jane and Cassandra, the two unmarried Austen daughters, were left on a low income. They no longer had the income from Rev Austen's job, or from the school that he used to run. Plus they no longer had the social status of "rector's family" (as a new rector would have been appointed when Rev Austen died) They were in the lower social position and income level of Mrs and Miss Bates in "Emma". So the Bennet situation was very close to home for Jane Austen, except that there were brothers. But, having one or more brothers was no guarantee of financial security for a widow and unmarried daughters. Brothers were not obliged to support their mother or sisters, and some resisted any pressure to do so. In Sense and Sensibility, this exact scenario plays out when the patriarch Mr Dashwood dies. His widow and 3 unmarried daughters are forced out of their grand home to go and live in a remote cottage which is all they can afford. The Dashwood daughters' wealthy halfbrother was expected to support them, but his selfish wife had talked him out of giving the husbandless Dashwood women more than a pittance as their annual income. The 3 husbandless Austen women were indeed lucky that Edward, one of Jane's brothers, had inherited wealth. If Edward had not had a warm relationship with his mother and sisters, or money to spare, or if his wife had opposed it, his support might not have been forthcoming. Luckily for them, he bought them a small but decent house to live in, in Chawton, plus he gave them a modest annual income. At the end of P and P, Mrs Bennet and her 2 unmarried daughters Mary and Kitty will still have to leave their mansion when Mr Bennet dies; but they are unlikely to "starve in the hedgerows" afterwards as Mrs B fears. With Bingley and Darcy being so wealthy, it's likely that between the two of them, these husbands can provide a decent income for Mrs Bennet and Kitty and Mary (if they are still unmarried). That is, so as long as Jane and Elizabeth are alive. But if Jane or Elizabeth died early, say in childbirth (very common, I think Jane lost 4 sisters-in-law to childbirth) and Darcy or Bingley then remarried (also very common) Mrs B's position could once more be precarious. It is in her own personal best interest to get Mary and Kitty married off too, so that she has a pool of sons-in-laws to appeal to for financial support.
Yes. At last a view of Mrs Bennett's perspective. Mr Bennett is in hiding through most of the book, though Lizzie was armed with his wit and intelligence to make her way through her world. He still hides in his study most of the time. He did make the effort to visit Mr Bingley pretty smartly on his arrival to the district and invite him to dinner. I do wonder why she is quite so pleased with Lydia's early marriage, even though it's the first of 5. Her husband will surely be a burden on the family, though the potential disgrace if it had not happened might have been worse.
It being new year's day, and having watched several (perhaps ten) of your posts over the past half year, I subscribed. While I think the videos I've watched have all been about Pride and Prejudice, this discussion has me considering the financial situations in Sense and Sensibility... And if someone else has already spoken on a topic you thought about doing, please don't let that stop you. I'm sure a discussion can occur there too.
Thanks for subscribing. Most topics are usually subjective aren’t they, and that being the case, I’m sure I can put my spin on something even if it’s been said before 😀
I mean, she's still very much is overbearing and comical! But we all know why, and still tend to dismiss it all too often ;P So it behooves us to remember WHY she's that way and why does what she's doing. It grates even her own family, and certainly our modern sensibilities, but she has very valid reasons for it all!
I believe the book indicates that Kitty benefitted from her relationship with her two older married sisters and improved her character and social graces. Mary benefited as the last daughter at home and was no longer suffering from constant comparison to her other sisters. Once Lydia, Jane and Lizzy were married and out of the house, there would not have been as much financial pressure on Mr Bennett. Kitty would likely meet some nice young man through Jane or Lizzy and even Mary might meet some nice young curate someday. Kitty and Mary could often go visit their sisters and stay for several weeks. Mr Bennett would have peace and quiet and Mrs Bennett would have Mrs Long and Mrs Phillips to talk to. Or Like in Sense and Sensibility, Mr and Mrs Bennett could move into some cottage on the Pemberley estate in their old age and live quite comfortably on quite a small amount that Lizzy could provide, if Mr Bennett’s dignity could allow it. All’s well that ends well. The thing is, we come to care about these characters and want them to be happy.
There is absolutely no reason for Mr Bennet to move anywhere at any age. As long as he is alive, he is the owner of the estate that provides him with the 2000/year income. The issue was the fate of his wife and unmarried daughters in case of his death. Unfortunately for Mary, she really doesn't have anything to attract even a "nice young curate" to marry her - no beauty, no dowry. In the best case, a middle-aged widower clergyman with several children who needs a wife to care for the children might marry her. She will most likely remain a spinster, living with her parents while they are alive and after that with one or other of her sisters.
I'm sure you are right that even the very sweet and kind Bingleys would not be supporting the widowed Mrs. Bennet and a passel of unwed daughters anywhere close to the gentry level of 2,000/year. Jane Austen wrote," Mr. Bingley and Jane remained at Netherfield only a twelvemonth. So near a vicinity to her mother and Meryton relations was not desirable even to his easy temper or her affectionate heart." At the end of the novel, he Bingleys move within 30 miles of Pemberley, and I always assumed Mrs. Bennet, Mary, and Kitty end up as Jane Austen, her mother and her sister did after their father's death, making themselves useful to rich relations and staying too long, and renting ever meaner quarters as their own funds and the sympathetic support from their relations ran out.
No wonder Bingley and Jane moved farther away! Even a very patient person's patience isn't unlimited. Also, I'm sure Jane and Lizzie (and their husbands) preferred to live within a more convenient distance of each other since they were all such close friends. In my mind, Kitty probably improved a lot once she had the opportunity to spend a lot of time away from her mother and Mary by visiting the Bingleys or the Darcys along with her father. She was pretty enough, and spending a lot of time in better company would have been the good influence that she needed to improve. She may not have married high, but she'd have done all right.
Ah, but after we learn that Jane and Bingley have moved closer to Pemberley, and that Mr. Bennet often visits Lizzy and Darcy, we learn that Kitty spends most of her time with her two elder sisters (up North), and Mary spends her time with her mother Mrs. Bennet-- and they both improve from this change! Kitty gets the focus of Lizzy and Jane, and Mary (finally) gets the sole focus of their mother, which makes them all happy.
Years ago, I read somewhere (and I cannot remember where I read this, sorry) that Jane Austen was asked at some point what happened to Mary and Kitty after the end of the novel, and her response was that Mary married an attorney in Mereton and Kitty married a clergyman. I remember thinking to myself that I would have expected it to be the other way around, given Mary's fondness for reading Fordyce's sermons. Again, I read this somewhere years ago, so don't know how accurate my memory about that truly is.
Jane Austin apparently told her family her imaginings of further adventures of her characters. Supposedly, she imagined that Kitty married a clergyman near Darcy's estate, and Mary married her (small town lawyer) Uncle Phillips's law clerk. So they both married somewhat down, but certainly into respectable situations.
Mrs Bennet’s concern for the future of her family must have been a great worry for her and for that she has my sympathy. However, did she really have to be so loud and vulgar? The 1995 version is the best version as far as I’m concerned. Come on Tudor,more of your wonderful postings please. Love your comments everyone and a happy and healthy 2025 to you all.
Poor Mrs. Bennet! I'd be interested in your thoughts on the entail. I've often wondered if Mr. Collins died before Mr. Bennet (perhaps run over by Lady Catherine's carriage, lol!) and if Mr. Collins had no male heirs, and assuming that Mr. Bennet and Mr. Collins were the last male heirs of their line, wouldn't the entail pass to Mr. Bennet's first male grandchild by Jane or Elizabeth? Worth a ponder!
That's what i was thinking. Also, what if Mr.Collins died without issue. could it have gone to one of the girls sons. If like their mother they had no sons . what would happen then.
There are so many aspects of life from those bygone eras that we perhaps measure against the standards of our modern day but it was the norm back then so until social reform took place, I suppose society accepted it?
I have had a thought about Lady Anne, the sickly girl and first cousin to Darcy . If she died childless, would there be a possibility that a son of Elizabeth and Darcy would inherit Rosllyn (?) name. Oh the irony.
I imagine there would have been a (protracted?) search for another male heir before the Bennet daughters or their sons would even be considered. And their sons would almost certainly be considered before themselves.
@@TudorSmith Except the opposite would occur. Mrs. Bennet, knowing Mary wasn't pretty, would take extra pains to make her look more attractive in other ways, by concentrating more on Mary's personality and abilities...such as her being studious and a wonderful reader, which could only help Mr. Collins (or anyone else for that matter) in his work. As desperate as Mrs. Bennet was to get her daughters married, the fact that she didn't push any of her other daughters onto Mr. Collins is an apparent and contrived plot device Austen used to continue the direction of the story. It's as simple as that.
I think even if she tried to encourage Mr Collins to Mary he wouldn't be interested because she isn't beautiful. He want a beautiful wife because it reflects well on him
I very much like your Pride and Prejudice videos and enjoy reading the comments they inspire. Thanks for your look into Alison Steadman's career - she is a lovely actress. That was an interesting analysis of the precarious financial position the Bennet women would be in if Mr Bennet died, but I think you are far too kind to Mrs Bennet. I see no sign of genuine motherly love in her and if she were not so ridiculous she would be quite sinister in her willingness to pimp her daughters out to secure her own future. Only a blithering idiot would be happy that Lydia had fallen into Wickham's clutches. For all his faults as a father Mr Bennet at least understands his child well enough to know that she could never be happy with Collins and even questions the very advantageous proposal from Darcy because he is not sure she respects him.
Thanks! I never get tired of the 1995 adaption of P&P🙂. During the pandemic the lovely Jennifer Ehle read the whole book in 44 videos all accessible at UA-cam!
Ah yes I watched them. ❤️
Alison was an absolute joy to watch, she's a wonderful actress. Lovely lady.
I adore the 1995 version ..the best cast and true to the book which not all productions are! Nothing is more disappointing to a lover of classic literature than a production which takes so many liberties with the original
I so agree with you. I can’t get through the Kiera Knightly version at all.
@@mlhawken I can't get through a single scene of that version, let alone the whole movie!
In the 2005 film, an excited Mrs Bennet rushes around the house to tell the servants of Lydia's marriage and Lizzy says, is that all you think about Mamma?
Her reply is " When you have 5 daughters, tell me what else will occupy your thoughts and then perhaps you'll understand"
I can't find that quote in the book, but it has stuck in my mind as explaining her behaviour as you so clearly stress in this video. HAPPY NEW YEAR and keep them coming!
I’ve only seen the 2005 version once so I don’t recall that quote but it might provide some explanation right?
HNY to you too 👍
I made a comment trying to remember this quote. I love Brenda Blethyn as Mrs. Bennett.
Fantastic realistic assessment of Mrs Bennet. Good to see a realistic understanding of a historical context!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I just finished re watching the series a few days ago and I payed attention to the things you’ve mentioned in previous videos! It made it even more interesting and enjoyable 😊
One more excellent video ! Great job. Your analysis of Mrs Bennett is very interesting. I recognize her value and her commitment to their marriage. Alison Steadman did a great job in this adaptation. Thanks for your work. I hope you continue producing more videos like this.
Many thanks!🙏
Mrs Bennett always reminds me of one of my maternal aunts. A hysterical woman mrs Bennett maybe, but good natured, far from unkind, or unaware. And maybe deserving of a better husband.
The older I get the more sympathetic I feel towards both Mrs. B and Charlotte. They need to be seen through the lens of their time and you did that so well Tudor! Mrs. B didn’t have the advantage of being raised in the gentry class and ended up getting in her own way more than once. However, her motives were pure and with Mr. B being a bit of a lump she did what she had to do in the best way she knew how. ❤
Thank you 🙏 I must admit I did miss a number of points but thankfully people have left many brilliant comments which certainly help us see the bigger picture!
You don't need to be raised in the gentry class to have common sense, which Mrs Bennet lacks completely. Her husband has 2000 a year, an income that puts them in the top 1% of their society, yet they somehow fail to save a single penny. Hell, the book even mentions that only Mr Bennet's distaste for being in debt is keeping them from spending more than their income, though he's too lazy to put his foot down until that point. Mr and Mrs Bennet are basically each the worst possible partner for the other, elevating eachothers' faults.
Mrs Bennett married up (her father was an attorney in Merton, so they were small town trade family) solely on the basis of good looks and the appearance of a good humour. It is no wonder then that she puts so much emphasis on Jane's beauty and Lydia's good humour. Should Mr Bennett suddenly die, all she and her daughters would have would be £5000 settled on them in the marriage contract. That's £250 per year on 5% and only £200 on 4%. That's not enough to support 6 women. Mr Gardiner's support would have been crucial, but he only has a house in London and 4 children of his own. He would have to spare at least another £250 a year for his relatives to even survive at some bare minimum (if he didn't want them to live like peasants and laborers but with some semblence of gentility). Mr Bennett could have been saving even a £100 a year to add to their safety net, but he never did. With Jane being almost 23, that would have added £2,300 to their £5,000. He also has 5 daughters in real danger of becoming destitute but doesn't seem to try very hard to introduce them to eligible men. Local society seems very stagnant, so if none of the local men wanted to marry them, why wasn't he more worried?
Mrs Bennett was left to shoulder the burden on her own. And here her coming from trade also plays a part. Although many of her social faux pas seem to come from her personality, there were many unwritten social rules that helped to distinguish the born gentry from nouveau riche, and Mrs Bennett simply didn't know them. Her clumsy attempts were obvious signs to every snob that she was a social climber. And her coming from small time trade also made her daughters 'connection poor'. Basically, her daughters had no much dowries (£40 or £50 a year), no important connections and no prospects of anything greater. No wonder she has nervous complaints 😅 In real life, where there are no rich men waiting to marry penniless girls because they are super nice or banter well, all her fears would have been realised and her daughters would most likely have to quit the gentry sphere by marrying smaller tradesmen who would have them. It may not seem like a bad deal to marry a grocer or a baker but from their perspective that would have been a tumble down the social stairs.
And if they never married at all, they'd find themselves in positions comparable to Miss Bates in "Emma", or needing to seek out employment in the very limited options available to them, like Jane Fairfax. A generation later, the Brontes, and their single women friends Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor, would find themselves in a similar situation. Mary Taylor, rebel that she was, went all the way to New Zealand to break the mold.
The reason Mr Bennet didn't save any money was because Mrs Bennet was spending it all. The book lets us know that only his distaste for going into debt kept them from spending more than their income, but he was too lazy to do more than that to curb her spending. I'm sure he indulged in buying books and port wine, but the vast majority of their expenses were down to Mrs Bennet.
Alison was the perfect Mrs. Bennet. She is my favorite to portray her. I completely understand her drive to marry them off well, and to secure their futures in whatever way she can. But I always wondered why Mr. Bennet didn't seem at all worried about his 5 daughters futures. They would literally be put out if the house? Have no income, no food, no shelter? How does this not concern him? He should be worried about this, and he should have been setting aside some money all these years the 5 of them were growing up. He could have tried to make his farm more profitable, investing in something else. He lacked ambition and drive and care.
Mr. Bennett probably was concerned, but he got over it....more quickly than he should have.
Having a son or grandson might not have guaranteed the welfare of the Bennet sisters (i.e., Sense & Sensibility).
Mr Bennet is in his own way just as flawed as his wife. He's selfish and lazy, and can't be bothered to deal with Mrs Bennet's whining whenever he denies her anything she wants, unless it would mean going into debt. So for 20+ years of marriage he just hid away in his library giving her more spending money whenever she nagged him for it, only putting his foot down once she'd blown through their entire income for the year and more would have meant taking on debt.
A less selfish woman would have wanted to save some money for their daughters, and a less stupid one would have realised a respectable dowry would go a long way towards securing a better match. A less lazy man would have put in the effort to curb his wife's spending, and a less selfish one would have done so even if he was lazy, for the sake of his daughters. Basically, they're designed to be as incompatible as humanly possible, which is why the plot can happen.
Very enjoyable and informative video. I watch the 1995 Pride and Prejudice every year. Alison Steadman's performance is one of my favorites.
Your take is spot on, and very relatable even today. Women often times carry the emotional burden for the family when the men “check out”. Her support for her daughters, even if she has her favorites, is to be commended.
I never understand why people think that Mary would be a perfect wife for Mr Collins. She admires him, at the same time assessing him as ‘not as clever as herself. We can assume that by that she means that he hasn’t read as many religious texts as herself. She proposes to herself to help him improve, in other words, to ‘encourage’ him to adopt a similar course of study to the one she engages in. Mr Collins, on the other hand, is described as being better suited for walking than reading. At his home, too, we see most of his time divided between working in his garden and running after Lady Catherine de Burgh. Straightforward Mary would probably fail to properly flatter her Ladyship. She’d be more likely to preach to her face. Charlotte manages Mr Collins much better than Mary ever could.
I never considered this, but DAMN you're right!
Excellent analysis. Thank you!
Glad you liked it!
what a new years treat - thank you Tutor
@@jennifernash9117 Thank you. Happy New Year.
@ can’t wait to find out what/who you will ‘do’ next 🥰
One thing I've pondered upon, is how quickky those 5 daughters were birthed...5 prgenancies in the space of 7 or 8 years in the quest for a male! Childbirth was dangerous (nerve-wracking), and she wouldn't be giving much attention to the young ones while dealing with the fatigue and hormonal changes. When Alison Steadman appeared on the screen, I could see she nailed the character and really gave her life & motivation.
Since Jane was, I think, 22, it's a fair assumption that her mother was probably in her early to mid forties, so one wonders why the pregnancies stopped with Lydia. Mrs Bennett had a good fifteen or so child-bearing years left after the birth of her youngest daughter. Why did they not keep trying for a son? She was obviously very fertile with so many pregnancies in six or seven years.Did marital relations cease? And if so, why?
@@livvymunro1929 Presumably something happened to make her unable to have more kids, because with the entail hanging over their heads it makes no sense to stop at 5. It's not like they couldn't have afforded more kids... don't you know they had 2000 a year? 😉
I feel we were robbed by not seeing Ms. Steadman perform a scene where Mrs. Bennett finds out Elizabeth is to marry Mr. Darcy!
The 1995 adaptation did miss out a number of key moments despite being quite faithful to the book!
Ouch! I can imagine it: the 180deg switch from “terrible” man to “wonderful” would be as painful as any scene.
@@judithstrachan9399 🤣
I think part of Jane Austen's genius is to create characters who are almost always a mixture of the good and the bad, the sensible and the ridiculous, in order to make a point. And I think Mrs. Bennet is no exception. In a way it is Lizzy Bennet who is ridiculous, when she makes it clear that nothing but the deepest love will induce her into matrimony. In this way, the many many troubled marriages and ideas of marriage in the novel are contrasted against her. Her approach feels both morally superior, yet also terribly precarious, in a world where everyone else around her seems to have different priorities.
Jane Bennet tries to find love through a slow study of character, and her love gives up on her. Meanwhile many other characters rush into love-less marriages and find short term success. It seems like the whole town is playing a game of musical chairs, and breaking all the rules just to keep from being the "last man standing." Mrs. Bennet does not care about doing things the proper way, and does not even really seem to understand the difference between a *good* and a *bad* marriage (i.e. Mr. and Mrs. Wickham). Perhaps this is because her marriage is so mediocre? All of this further shows Lizzy's strength of character, because there are real consequences to holding out.
Mrs. Bennet is not (intentionally) malicious, yet she still manages to cause her family constant grief, and I believe another part of her purpose in the story is to show the failings of the Bennet parent's marriage. Lizzy Bennet would not have been happy in an "unequal" marriage, (and neither would Jane Austen I expect), and I can't help but wonder if this is a bit of social commentary. As I understand it, the novels at the time largely depicted very gentle, placid, Jane Bennet-like heroines, which I'm not sure Jane Austen would have related to.
While I'm not sure what Jane Austen's intentions were exactly with the character, I think we can all agree that Mrs. Bennet works tirelessly to get her daughters married off - even if she seems to get in her own way more often than not!
I think that anxiety can have a profound effect on people's behaviour--to the degree of rendering them neurotic at times, or perhaps of drawing out their worst traits and magnifying them into severe problems in their own right. For example, I totally understand Mrs Bennet's anxieties for her daughter, and I believe any reasonable parent would feel the same way in the circumstances. It must also be very hard to not only have these anxieties, but to have a husband who seems perfectly unconcerned and resigned in the face of so precarious a future. If I were Mrs Bennet, I would probably be very aggravated by my husband being so insensitive to the dangers that would face me after his death--not to mention the dangers his daughters would face! If I were her, I think I would rant a great deal about my nerves too; surely, my nerves would be out-of-sorts, in the circumstance...
Furthermore, we know that Mrs Bennet is not a particularly learned or clever person. I think that those of us who are well-educated often have very little empathy for people who are not so learned--but I think this isn't morally ideal. People aren't suddenly worth less simply because they aren't so clever. Mrs Bennet's anxieties tend in the right direction; however, she simply does not realise that her behaviour is damaging her daughters' chance at happiness. Clearly Mr Darcy and the Bingley sisters look down on her and make their disdain apparent to any socially aware individual--but Mrs Bennet was not raised in their class, and is not clever enough to feel any danger in their disdain even when she notices it.
There is one scene that really emphasises this to me--at the Netherfield ball, Mrs Bennet is talking quite loudly about her expectations of Jane and Mr Bingley's marriage, and Elizabeth says to her, "What advantage can it be to you to offend Mr Darcy? You will never recommend yourself to his friend by so doing." However, her mother does not alter her behaviour--she clearly does not understand that Mr Darcy can prevent the union between Jane and Mr Bingley, and even telling this to her directly cannot make it obvious. It makes me wonder if this is perhaps a feature of polite society that is simply out of the grasp of Mrs Bennet, who spent her youth in different circumstances where such nuances simply are not relevant. We know her sister Mrs Phillips is just as tactless, and that only her brother Mr Gardiner is at all superior in graces--something Austen attributes to "nature" and "education." This seems to imply that Mrs Bennet isn't inferior to her brother by any fault of her own; she merely lacks the gifts of nature and education to make her the mother Elizabeth wishes she was. That is quite pitiable, in my opinion; there is something fatalistic there in Austen's depiction, that suggests the impossibility of remedy.
I think in all, it is hard not to see Mr Bennet as responsible for the misfortune of the family. Lydia, for example, resembles Mrs Bennet in behaviour more than any other sister, and we know that a large part of why Lydia is the way she is stems from her mother's overindulgence. However, Mrs Bennet is only raising Lydia in the light she herself knows; as mentioned before by Austen's comparison between Mrs Bennet and her brother, Mrs Bennet is not naturally sensible, nor is she educated. However, Mr Bennet is both of these things, and he therefore ought to have taken care that Mrs Bennet did not go on to raise her daughters into versions of herself--especially since we know that he himself is quite aware of his wife's shortcomings. Mrs Bennet by Austen's description cannot overcome her own failings (and in my view, is much to be pitied for that, since her goals are quite sensible) but Mr Bennet could, if he wished, counteract these failings for the sake of his daughters. He chooses not to, and goes so far as to exacerbate the flaws of his wife, which a more serious man would have endeavoured to temper.
Altogether, though I cannot say I have much in common with Mrs Bennet, I think she is much to be pitied. Also--yours was an excellent video, and I think you treated her character much more fairly than most people do. I'm very proud to be subscribing! All the best :)
Alison is also a bird lover she is a lovely lady my friend met her at the rspb rainham marshes and said that she was extremely friendly.
A fantastic actress too.
That’s a nice anecdote ❤️
I think the bigger issue isn’t that the Bennets ‘only’ have 2k a year which was actually quite a good income at the time. It’s that Mrs Bennet is from the middle class, meaning that she a) hasn’t been drilled in upper class social norms from infancy and therefore she’s going to get it wrong and b) she brings no advantageous social connections.
Yes indeed and Lady Catherine is only too aware of this when she challenges Elizabeth.
The Doings of Hamish and Dougal is sublimely funny! Love her in that.
I think Mrs Bennet never pointed Mr Collins to Mary as she thought Mary would be there to look after her and Mr Bennet after the others are married.
It’s a guilty pleasure of mine. Some people drift off to sleep at night listening to audio books or ASRM stuff. Me? I drift off chuckling to the doings. You’ll have had your tea? 🤣
There's a wonderful modern version of Pride and Prejudice called Jane Austen in Boca, where the main characters are elderly retirees and the Jane character, instead of having a scheming mother, is a widow with a scheming daughter-in-law.
I do hope you will complete analyses of the other characters you mentioned!
More videos are certainly on the agenda. I’ll try and see if I can release them more frequently too!
I’m really enjoying your series on characters in Pride and Prejudice. Your insights are really interesting.
You’re so right about Mrs. Bennet. Once I got over my annoyance at her, I realized that she was the only one in the family taking a serious situation seriously. Her own behavior makes it harder to solve the problem, however.
This is a tangent, but when I realized that, one thing that really surprised me was that Elizabeth did not seem to take the situation seriously. She’s certainly intelligent enough to realize what she and her mother and sisters will face after Mr. Bennet dies, but she doesn’t seem to worry about it. Maybe that’s because she realizes that she can’t do much about it anyway, so there’s no point in worrying. Do you have any other explanations?
Perhaps I misunderstood you, but I thought you indicated that the Bennett‘s income of 2000 pounds put them on the lower rung of the gentry ladder, but from what I’ve read, the average gentry family income was about 700 pounds. If that’s the case, while the Bennets were nowhere near the level of the Darcys or even the Bingleys, neither were they on the lower rungs of the gentry.
@@kkitao217 yeah I’d read that 2000 a year was on the lower ring of the gentry ladder. It’s interesting that 700 a year secured someone into that class too!
And yes, as much as I have sympathy for Mrs. Bennet I’m quite sure that her irrational behaviour does her no favours!
I had read that Alison Stedman showed up for the audition in full costume and used the, now all too familiar, voice of Mrs. Bennett that she would go on to use in the series as she read the script. They were bowled over immediately and she got the part.
Food for thought. Mr Bennett lost interest in his daughters after the first two I think and was increasingly distant from mrs. Had he shown more interest in them maybe they would be less vapid ..
The genius of austen is that she conveys the absurdity of Mrs B as well as the reality of the familys social standing.
Your remarks about the proprietary of helping inlaws made me think of Austens own situation. Brother Edward could easily have given more support and made his sisters and mothers life easier. Ive always considered him tight-fisted (and i still wonder whether there is an element of him in John Dashwood). But other than the provision of the cottage, the cost of providing the Austen womens allowance was spread between the brothers despite the wide difference in circumstances.
Yes that’s an interesting comparison and Edward Knight was super well off. Perhaps as I mentioned, propriety meant it just wasn’t the done thing. It’s easy to make the comparisons with modern day standards too I guess.
I agree that Edward Knight could have provided more support for his mother, Cassandra, and Jane Austen. However, he was a widower himself (at some point) and had a large brood of his own to also consider. Maybe that's another reason he didn't contribute more to their support. Having a roof over your head is wonderful. But they did have to live on a shoestring otherwise!
What a mismatched couple the Bennets are. The father has the intelligence to recognize the position that his family is in but feels that he can't do anything about it. His lack of respect for his wife makes him mocking and sarcastic instead of supporting her. You see it when the ladies come home from the ball and Mrs Bennett is talking about Mr Bingley dancing with Jane twice. Instead of being interested he just rolls his eyes at her. He is aware that regardless of the value of his older daughters, they are likely to be passed over for women of fortune and there is nothing that he can do about it.
I wonder if Mrs Bennet saw a potential marriage between Elizabeth and Mr Collins as more viable than one between Mary and Mr Collins for a couple of reasons: 1. she sees that Mr Collins is fixated on beauty, and while Mary might be a better match on paper due to interests, she is not as pretty as Elizabeth; 2. marrying off Elizabeth to Mr Collins might have been her strategy for securing the future for her most "problematic" daughter. I imagine she saw Elizabeth's cleverness as something that might scare off other suitors, and while I am confident she loved her, I believe she fundamentally misunderstood her.
Her relief at having Jane marry might not be (solely) due to the possibility of Mr Bingley's financial support. I imagine she saw Jane's marriage to someone with other wealthy connections as a source of other men for the potential marriage pool. Like you said, her chief "job" after not producing a son was to make sure she married off as many daughters as she possibly could before her social status and financial resources changed for the worse. If nothing else, I imagine she counted on Mr Bingley and Jane hosting one or more of her daughters for a season in Town to shop for husbands.
Thank you for this brilliant analysis
Glad you enjoyed it! Thank you for watching 🙏
@ now I can binge watch the rest of these videos ! I love P&P 1995 ☺️
I think the anxiety of Mrs. Bennet would have also increased because of their location. They were just in the gentry but I don't believe went to Town etc. so they had to rely on the eligible men in the area which must have been few and far between. Plus none of the girls had been properly educated so they wouldn't have made good governesses even. So all of them would have been living in a tiny apartment getting poorer and poorer as the years went on. And her husband didn't seem to care, he was the one in control of the money and saving dowries for them all and didn't; preferring to bury his head in the sand.
When I first read the book/watched the mini-series I had the same common reaction to Mrs. B. But if you start to dig deeper you have far more sympathy for her and the stress she must have been under.
As an aside: Has anyone ever wondered about the circumstances that had Netherfield Park up for rent?
I have often wondered about who owned Netherfield Park (any eligible bachelors connected to that estate?) and how it came to be "let at last." I wonder if it belonged to some family like the Elliots of Kellynch Hall, who hadn't managed their money very well.
It wasn't uncommon for those originally well off and living in a manor house/landed estate to end up with financial problems and go abroad while renting out their house. It was cheaper for them abroad, they wouldn't wholly lose their family estate like they would if they sold it, and they'd get paid rent too.
Mrs. Bennett says Netherfield is let ‘at last’. That could be her dramatic way of speaking, but if she isn’t wildly exaggerating it sounds like the owner was trying to rent it out for a while unsuccessfully, or that they have been absent for a while and finally decided to put it up for lease.
Thanks for the interesting glimpse of society in this era, and the insights into this character’s behavior. For what it’s worth, I think Alison Steadman did a brilliant job in this role, as it must be difficult to believably portray a person who tends to come across as this unlikable and silly. I enjoy your videos- and the 1995 version is my favorite, as well! Happy new year…..
7:22 I thought Mrs Bennet didn't steer Mr Collins towards Mary because it was thought, in those days, daughters should marry according to age with the oldest marrying first. Jane is oldest but Mr. Bingley is hovering on the horizon so Elizabeth is next.
That is most probably the case. It is strange that whilst in the garden scene, the camera pans around to show all the “available” daughters as if to suggest Mr. Collins could choice any one of them.
I think Mrs Bennet was aware that Mary, as plain as she is, has no chance to attract even Mr Collins. He is, after all, considering the Bennet girl he should marry in order of their attractiveness. Jane is the prettiest, but almost spoken for, Lizzie is the second prettiest.
A literary scholar had a similar video on the same topic quite some time ago and brought up the same points. Wish I could remember who it was.
I enjoyed both videos. Thank you.
We see what actually happens to a family of daughters whose patriarch dies before the rich hero comes along in JA's other great novel, Sense and Sensibility. Luckily, Mrs Dashwood has a very generous cousin with an empty cottage, but she and the three Dashwood daughters live there in some discomfort compared with their former lifestyle, and also have to endure the sneering of people who were formerly their social equals - Fanny Dashwood and the Ferrars family for instance.
Especially as the Bennett girls like the Dashwoods have not dowery, no matter how beautiful, they really have no chance to marry well
Great episode, as usual. Thank you and Happy New Year, T.S.
Thank you and Happy New Year to you too!
I think your point that just one advantageous marriage is not enough is very accurate. Jane was delighted when she thought that she had secured her family's future, but there is also Mr. Bingley's unmarried sister Caroline to consider. When her prospects of marrying Mr. Darcy were dashed by Elizabeth, she was back in the marriage race. If she didn't marry, she would be her brother's responsibility along with his new wife Jane and whatever children they may have. Mrs. Bennet was very worried and rightly so!
Ah yes, Caroline. Absolutely another consideration.
@@TudorSmithA consideration with a dowry though. She is new money but she has money, so her prospects are better. Similar to her sister grabbing Mr. Hurst. Actually, her prospects were improved by Darcy marrying Elizabeth, as he wasn’t going to marry Caroline anyhow. Now she can stop wasting her time.
Caroline had 20,000 pounds, so finding a husband was never gonna be too hard for her once she set her sights at more reasonable targets than the nephew of an Earl. Even if she never married, her expenses would be paid for by the interest on her fortune.
Thanks again Tudor very interesting and thought provoking. Watched P&P 95 over Xmas as there is nowt on the TV as usual. My goodness its so beautifully made and like yourself i have avoided Gavin & Stacey like the plague! Have you heard the rumor that Netflix may be doing P&P this year....ye gods no!! Happy new year to you.
Happy Nee Year Andy. Netflix - on no indeed. It’ll likely be insupportable 🤣
I have always thought that about the poor woman, too. As much as Lizzie loved her father, I have considered him pretty self-centered about the inheritance. After all, when the problem would come to a head, he'd be dead! And he must have found something attractive about Mrs. Bennet to marry her since she does not seem to have come from money or social standing herself. Perhaps she was in the same situation her daughters find themselves in and understands the fine line walked. Thanks for your videos; I enjoy them very much!
@angieallen4884 I think in the book Mr. Bennet tells Lizzie he fell for a pretty face and a lively spirit. (Someone in the comments please correct me if I'm wrong)
When I look at Mrs Bennet, she DOES have really strong reasons for feeling the way she feels...it's her lack of moderation that makes her "difficult". Jane Austin was a truly brilliant author. While several of her characters are silly or obnoxious, they all have some depth and aren't just "paper dolls".
I still can't stand Lydia.
🤣 Maybe Jane Austen’s writing style allowed us all to choose our favourite characters based perhaps on our own personalities or maybe of someone we know. And similarly we can dislike characters for the same reasons.
@@TudorSmith I think Austin intended us to be like her father and prefer Lizzie to her sisters...I think it goes like this: both parents love Jane and have from her birth. She's very pretty and has a graceful nature and bearing...what's not to love? Lizzie is her father's favorite and they have a little team. Lydia is her mother's favorite...they both enjoy conspiring and getting their own way and they prop each other up in terms of their egos and desires. Poor Mary and Kitty. Both parents hang each of them out to dry, most obviously their father, but how many times does Mrs Bennet just give Kitty's stuff to Lydia? (a lot)
Mary is REQUIRED to play and sing at all kinds of events, and the one where she finally might shine turns into a total disaster for her. It's a relief that her father tells her to step aside, but such humiliation!
When Mr Bennet tells Kitty that she's never going anywhere or getting to see anybody who might be slightly fun company since Lydia has blown it for her I feel so sorry for her.
I do hope they had happier futures than it seemed that they would at the end of the story...because not being destitute is a wonderful thing, but being "old maids" who depend on the kindness of their sister's husbands doesn't sound like a fabulous lifestyle.
The awful truth of women's status and ability (or not) to support themselves makes this such a stealth feminist story...and let us all hope that none of our fortunes are "entailed away".
lol...as sympathetic as I am to Mrs Bennet's position, I HOPE that after her more senior daughters were so advantageously married she stopped treating them all like superfluous puppies...and MAYBE gave Lizzie a little credit/apology for being smart enough to marry way way way up from Mr Collins.
Thought-provoking; thank you.
I love Mrs Bennett and that actress in the role. I agree with your read and hadn't thought of it. She has to provide the love and leadership of a mother and father since Mr Bennett didn't get involved till after the Lydia scandal woke him up.
It’s easy in modern times to forget the lack of agency women had in the past. Mrs Bennett comes off as silly because of exactly what you’re talking about- marriage was the only option women had. I will have more charitable thoughts towards her next time. Very thought provoking analysis!
Mrs. Bennett wasn’t the only one that was aware that the girls needed husbands. Mr. Bennett had always planned to go visit Mr. Bingley. He was going to facilitate his girls meeting the eligible bachelor. He just wasn’t ever obnoxious about it. He was droll.
I think one missed opportunity in every production I've seen is to reflect Mrs. Bennet as a very beautiful woman. She is always portrayed as rather homely. But Mr. Bennet once mentions that she might be even better looking than all her daughters, and I don't think he was being sarcastic there. Mrs. Bennet had to have some powerful attractiveness to catch him, and we see it could not have been her gentility or wit.
Yes there certainly were hints at her beauty.
I think she has been played by beautiful women, but they dress her rather comically and her behavior obscures her beauty. For example if you look at this actress without the screechy voice and dowdy outfits, she's quite pretty.
@@robtooley4002 I agree, the actress is very pretty in some of the pictures they showed.
Maybe I don't know historical fashion enough. It would work if she were styling herself in looks that were man-catching twenty years ago when she first wore them, but looked comically out of date for whatever year her daughters are coming out. Kind of like a Peg Bundy situation.
Many people peak young. Not everyone is lucky enough to age gracefully. A better looking older woman probably wouldn't have had the looks he'd be attracted to when she was younger.
Very thoughtful vlog about a much misunderstood character. Jane Austen's own life reflects the issues single women of her age faced and it could be said Mrs Bennett reflects some of the attitudes of her own mother
Mr. Collins wanted to marry the oldest prettiest daughter. It was one thing that she wasn't available but pushing him toward the third and plainest could have alienated him all together.
But as Mrs Bennett so succinctly said that will throw the girls in the path of other rich men😂
You have given me a new appreciation for the poor woman. 😂 Silly creature though she is, she did try to help her daughters. She just didn't have the sense to do so effectively.
:) Another excellent commentary. Thanks for taking the time to make them for us.
Thank you 🙏
I agree with you in general, and I think Mr. Bennet has a great deal to answer for. He made an imprudent marriage based on physical attraction. He has foolishly assumed that there will be a son to inherit, and he has put no money by to provide for his wife and daughters in case of his demise. He is far more intelligent than his wife, but he puts that intelligence to no practical use. He simply withdraws and snipes, and when action is required (the search for Lydia), he fails. His sarcasm is funny but unhelpful, except when he supports Lizzie's refusal of Mr. Collins. However, Mrs. B. is indeed oblivious---and obnoxious. She is hopelessly vulgar (e.g. in her loud public blithering about finding her daughters rich husbands) and does nothing to control Lydia. (I think she sees Lydia as a younger version of herself, given her comments about having fancied a red coat herself when she was younger.) Despite Wickham's appalling behaviour and the likelihood that such a cad will be a disastrous husband, she seems to approve of him. To me, that doesn't show love for her daughter. Of course, maybe she is just too stupid to understand his character. So, is she a woman more sinned against than sinning? I'd say it's fifty-fifty.
I agree.
Mrs Bennett has also been charged with being, in effect, the sole parent of her daughters, as Mr Bennett has removed himself from that responsibility. She has obviously never been equipped with the ability to do this in the way society demands, possibly due to her own family's more lowly origins? In contrast to expected practices, Mrs Bennett's daughters are all allowed 'out' at the same time, and were never taught to be 'accomplished' ladies by a governess. In failing to raise her daughters this way, she has made their situation more precarious. There are several conversations amongst the Bingleys and Lady de Bourgh about the importance of women having such accomplishments in order to move in society. I think Austen is saying that where girls are naturally solid and intelligent like Jane and Elizabeth, such things are not a barrier, but the neglect of a proper ladies education in the other girls has left them to drift whichever direction the wind blows. Mrs Bennett's character shoulders most of the blame for this pitiable situation.
But would Mrs. Bennet understand this, when she comes from the trade class? Mr. Bennet, being a member of the gentry, should have a better understanding of the kind of education his daughters would need. Lady Catherine is wrong about a lot of things, but she was absolutely right that the five Bennet daughters should have been taught by a governess (this would have given them the proper skills to move within the gentry or to become governesses themselves if needed), and they should not all have been out at the same time.
Mr. Bennett had the higher social standing of the two, he was certainly aware that proper education would be in the best interest of his daughters. I daresay he is more to blame than his wife for his daughters' circumstances. He had options: make sure a governess is hired (especially knowing - by the time his eldest daughter was in need of a governess - that his wife cannot provide the necessary education), save money for more substantial dowries... he simply neglected to do anything at all.
@@enive2003 yes, and he would rather laugh at or mock his younger daughters than help them hrow into respectable women.
I've always felt sorry for Mrs Bennett. She is not an intelligent woman, and she knows she's alone in marrying off her daughters. She gets little or no help from her husband, who doesn't seem to care at all for her and their children's future security.
I love Alison Steadman's and Benjamin Whitrow's portrayals of Mrs. and Mr. Bennet, respectively. They are both complex characters when we really view them in their times and are willing to look below the surface. Mr. Bennet admits that he realizes he should have planned better. And he comes across as self-absorbed, reading in his library and trying to stay away from the frenetic chaos his wife provides in the household. Not to psychoanalyze him, but I wonder if some of his behavior could be explained by his own depression that things didn't turn out differently (i.e., his fathering a son). Perhaps his own upbringing allowed him to be rather idle and not very good at planning for the future. If Mr. and Mrs. Bennet had had a son, can you imagine how spoiled he would have been! Yikes! Perhaps Mr. Bennet had been in just such a situation and had been a spoiled child himself. To his credit, he doesn't want his daughters to wind up in an unhappy, unequal marriage as he has.
5 daughters all unmarried and the estate entailed away....no wonder.
Her problem is very real, but she goes about solving it in a very silly, ridiculous and offensive way. Thanks for this video! It's actually quite thought provoking.
Yes sadly the character brings so much silliness despite her plight!
Thank you for another wonderful video. I feel like I have met many Mrs. Bennett-like characters in my life. While she is annoying, she is also striving in a world stacked against her. It is hard not to have some admiration for her determination as well as eye rolls at her 'nerves'.
There’s definitely a little of both regarding Mrs. Bennet. We can appreciate her position and motives but at the same time, the way she goes about things can grate on the nerves 🤣
To understand the precariousness of Mrs. Bennet's situation (and that of her daughters), one need look no further than "Sense and Sensibility". When Mr. Dashwood dies, Mrs Dashwood and her daughters are left with practically nothing. And in those death, death could come suddenly.
Alison Stedman played the overwrought Mrs. Bennett perfectly! 👏👏👏 Mrs. B. was likely a woman in the 'change-of-life', what with all the 'fussings and flutterings' she was experiencing. She did gave her younger daughters more slack than was proper for those days. But then she herself so much as admitted that she had had her bit of fun in her youth. 😉
I have been curious about the tensions in Mrs Bennett's character stemming from her *not* being from the class of "gentlemen". She married "up" but always had to prove herself -- which she could not do because she was not bred for it (or apparently capable of learning it).
It can be a little hard to learn that sort of thing if you've been carefully taught not to do any thinking for yourself.
More pride and prejudice thank you
I read an well reaearched analysis several years ago on the wealth of the Bennets, Darcy, and Bingley relative to the population of England at that time. Their 2,000 pounds per year placed the Bennets in the top 2% of income. (That makes their trashy depiction in the dreadful 2005 version all the more galling.)
Yes, plenty enough income for Mr Bennet to have saved decent dowries for his daughters.
Even if he’d started when Lydia was 10, they could have tightened their belts just a little & managed.
Mrs Bennet is underestimated and easily disregarded, but I do think Mr Bennet is more responsible for how his wife and daughters are and behave, than he himself and many people like to admit. In that time and age he would have had to take up a more active role in his family's life and in his daughters. That said, not Mrs Bennet's intentions, but rather the "how" is, admittedly, quite grating at times...
I'd be interested in a video about Lydia's life as Mrs Wickham, and Mr Wickham's future after the events of Pride and Prejudice, if you're amenable to make such a video!
Hello from Montreal, Canada. What a nice gift for the new year to have another of your analysis! Thank you. Wishing you a happy new year. French is my first language. Therefore, please excuse spelling or syntax mistakes.
You said something very interesting about the fact that Mrs Bennett wasn't aware of Marie's feelings for Mr. Collins. You said that a relationship between Marie and Mr Collins would not have worked. Can you elaborate on the subject? I think the contrary. He is an idiot but he is very sensitive to beauty and to appearances. Therefore, Marie could not be a good choice based on these external criterion. Mrs Bennett talked about Jane's beauty many times. He needed a wife that will leave his status as it was or elevate it. He would not been admired if married to Marie but would have been if married to Jane or Lizzie.
It is interesting that the three young daughters are seen as idiots and are not very attractive. It is a little bit cliché but I wonder if it is not one reason the father was not that nice to his youngest daughters. Thank you very much.
Happy New Year all!🎉
Your points about their predicament are all very true. I also think the 1995 BBC production exaggerated how awful Mrs. Bennett was (and downplayed Mr. Bennett's flaws).
Despite this, I still think you are giving her too much credit. She certainly was obsessed with security, her own as well as her daughters', but I think it's questionable how much love for her daughters was in that. She was fond of Lydia, presumably because Lydia was similar in character to herself. But you can't really love someone you don't even see, and her pushing Mr. Collins toward Lizzie proves that she didn't see Lizzie at all. Her view of people was so instrumental that she couldn't see something as absolutely obvious as that a marriage between Mr. Collins and Lizzie would be torture to both of them. Her values were more narcissistic, like the parent who expects their children to bring social status to them, without ever considering the wants and needs of the children as separate selves. I find her less annoying and more affectionate in the book, but no less silly and selfish.
"Selfish" might be a little unfair, due to the truth of what you say about their predicament and her lone dedication to solving it. But I still don't see much genuine interest in her daughters (or anyone else) as people, so I'm going to stand by it.
I agree; I saw a lot of my own mother in Mrs Bennet's attempt to marry off her children and how she treated them in her downtime, and my mum would absolutely marry me off to someone I loathed if it meant her own social standing and security was assured. When my sister married at 20 years old after knowing the guy for less than a year, mum only made a small fuss against it since he was a minor celebrity where she's from and she thought she could capitalise on that.
I don't think it downplayed Mr Bennet's flaws, I think they're just so damn fun to watch that people blinded themselves to them. Mr Bennet could have written to Bingley and admonished him for making Jane fall in love with him and then disappear, but instead he chose to make a joke out of her disappointment. He could have made it clear right away that he had no intention of allowing anyone to go to Brighton, but instead he chose to make a joke out of it, teasing and baiting his wife and youngest daughter about the potential trip. Then when his silly, boy-crazy 15-year old daughter got invited to go there with only a very silly, very young officer's wife as a chaperone, he allowed it, risking the entire family's reputation because he'd have had to put up with some whining otherwise. If he was a real person, he'd be a terrible husband and father, but because we're watching a funny tv show, many just focus on how funny he is.
Tudor I'm always so excited when you post a new video. Can't wait to see what you do next. Thanks so much!
@@susanbinzer3395 aw thanks. Hopefully whatever comes next will be entertaining 😀
I actually deeply empathize with Mrs B. Im an outgoing type A anxious type, married to a casual, introverted lassaiz faire bloke, whose cest le vie attitude can sometimes be infuriating. I completely agree that Mr B actively provoked her. Thankfully I think I have 100x better tact than Mrs B lol.
Points well taken. Much easier to disparage such a character through the modern lens, and the dangers she feared and toiled against were real. However I do still think she has some essential flaws beyond just being less sharp-witted than her husband. She has preferences among her daughters, favoring irresponsibility and superficiality and scorning sense and propriety. She is quite narcissistic in her reactions to her daughters' ups and downs. Everything is about how it reflects on her and nothing is about the girls' happiness. Her daughters are objects to dispose of. Lydia is married off to the worst person any of them has ever met, and she rejoices. Is Wickham going to find upstandingness in marriage? He'll blow all their (Darcy's) money, seek out "wenches," make Lydia miserable out of bitterness. With any luck, he'll board a ship one drunken night and try his fortunes in America, and Lydia can move in with Jane to the torment of Bingley's sister.
There is an unofficial sequel called 'Pemberly', where Lydia is widowed by murder, and Lizzie and Darcy try to find out why as it happened when the Wickhams were on their way to Pemberly to visit.
Not to mention that with the Bennets' income, she could have by now saved up enough money that Mr Bennet's death wouldn't mean starving in the hedgerows, but she instead has been spending money on luxuries for over two decades, so I genuinely don't understand why people think she's such a swell mom for trying to get her daughters married off.
Alison Steadman is a sensationally good actress and I think she knew exactly what she was doing with this portrayal. What we can't get away from is Mrs. Bennet's stupidity, which time and again works to her daughters' disadvantage. When we first meet her she's fretting and fuming because Mr. Bennet won't call on the newly arrived Mr. Bingley but, knowing the correct etiquette, Mr. Bennet has already done so. When Jane has been ill and has stayed at Bingley's home, she visits and takes such umbrage at any suggestion that their country company should be considered limited that her reaction makes Lizzie flinch. Over and over, she is in fact her daughters' worst hurdle when it comes to making a good match, to such an extent that I long to slap her. She doesn't care whether her daughters are married to idiots or rogues, just so long as they are married, and no matter how important it is, in that society and at that time, that they should be, Mr. Bennet is far more concerned that they should actually be happy. He has been saddled with a pretty idiot and knows how awful unhappy marriage is. It's no surprise that when Jane Austen adds a footnote about the situation after Lizzie and Darcy are married, we find Mr. Bennet visits them - he must get tired of his own library sometimes and seek refuge from his wife elsewhere.
That’s well observed 👍
You summed up my thoughts exactly .. There's such disparity between Mr and Mrs Bennet, both intellectually and temperamentally, that I often wondered how well, in such a restrictive society, he was able to get to know her before they married, since, if he knew what she was like, I wouldn't think he would've proposed.
That's interesting, and very true. Mr. Bennett is wrong not to be putting effort into finding good marriages for his daughters, but on the other hand he doesn't want to see them unhappily married. Mrs. Bennett is actively trying to help them marry, but she doesn't care whether they'd be happy or miserable. Also, Mrs. Bennett's chaotic personality and terrible lack of social grace and tact are a serious hazard to her daughters' chances.
I don't understand why she was so delighted about Lydia's marriage to Wickham, because he'll be lucky to even be able to support the two of them. Their finances and social standing are precarious, and sooner or later Lydia will wake up to Reality and realize that she's miserable. The only advantage to the Bennet family is that they avoided the worst of the scandal and no longer have to support Lydia themselves, but if she ends up widowed in the future, what would her situation be?
@@rowanaforrest9792 Just a thought about why Mrs. Bennet is so pleased about Lydia and Wickham's marriage (although it doesn't make up for the fact that she doesn't seem to register how bad the whole elopement looks from a "respectability"/local gossip point of view); Lydia is fairly obviously her favourite - sociable, energetic, not especially serious or intellectual, frittering away her allowance on things like bonnets - and I wonder whether that's because Lydia is the child who most closely resembles her mother's character as a young woman? After meeting Wickham, Mrs. Bennet does say (with a bit of nostalgia) that she also liked a red-coated soldier when she was a girl, and admits that (in her heart) she's still got a soft spot for a man in uniform. So could there be an element of Mrs. Bennet being pleased that her daughter has managed to marry a soldier, almost like Lydia living out Mrs. Bennet's teenage fantasies from years ago? (Incidentally, I'm not sure whether - if Wickham had been killed in the Napoleonic Wars - the army would have given Lydia a widow's pension, but after Wickham and Lydia get married, both Mr. Gardiner and Mrs. Bennet refer to Wickham accepting a commission in the "Regulars", so the regular Army, rather than the local militia, who - I think - were more like a local volunteer force, to be assembled and disbanded as needed. If Wickham did go into the regular army, maybe that would have put him in a better position to expect a pension, or some provision for a widow/children.) I definitely agree that they would have had a precarious life; I think troops moved wherever they were needed, so they could easily have moved from place to place as long as Wickham was alive and/or fit to serve in the army.
@@annebowman5954 He probably attended an assembly, was infatuated with her beauty and lively manners, and proposed way too quickly, not getting to know her until they were already married. Literally any other woman in the area(except her sister who is equally silly) would have been a better match for him.
Mrs Bennett had a very good motivation to marry off all of her daughters, but her methods were questionable at best. People died in their times from trifle cold, so it was not so good idea to sent Jane on horseback to Netherfield.
At other times Mrs Bennett was focused only on the fact of marriage.
She not really care if husband would make Lizzie miserable for the rest of her life (Mr Collins) or even can provide for Lydia (Mr Wickham). Many of Mrs Bennett beloved officers were too poor to support a wife. But she seems totally oblivious to all of that. Her only redemption is the fact that Mrs Bennett did all of that because she is a little bit naive and simple, not cruel.
Tudor, if the daughters had had boy children before the death of Mr Bennett, would the grandsons have been able to inherit the Longbourne Estate instead of Mr Collins?
I'm not sure. The entail specified a male heir...possibly the first male heir, so even after marriage and the birth of a son, then wouldn't that make the son 2nd in line to inherit?
@@TudorSmith thank you for your response.
Must have been very gauling for all.
I do sympathise with Mrs Bennett
Yes. The house goes to the person they choose when they inherit. In the story Emma, the father chose his daughter. Mr and mr and mrs Bennett chose their future son, but since there is none, the entail goes to the nearest male relative.
yes,,even one boy would change the rule. the book says how long after the birth of Lydia, Mrs Bennet was hoping for the boy
No. Entailing to "heirs male" means it must be male all the way down. aka French Salic law. (it all depends on the will of the original deceased) This means Mr Bennet and Mr Collins are male descent cousins despite having different last names (which can happen when a man adopts another name to be made heir to an estate, see Frank Churchill, son of Mr Weston, in Emma for example).
@mrscarlier: Mr & Mrs Bennet didn't choose their future son, otherwise they can then choose their daughters. More likely that, just like Sense & Sensibility, it's Mr Bennet's father who entailed the Longbourne estate to "heirs male" in his will, which can be broken if and only if the third generation heir consents to it (this is even mentioned in the book as "this son will join in to BREAK the entail"). Since the third generation heir ends up being Mr Collins who would obviously not impoverish himself for a distant cousins, that's why Mrs Bennet had to panic about marrying off her daughters before they have no chance to go about in society on their father's dime.
All of Austen's books are reflections of her own life.
I find myself sympathizing with many of Jane Austin’s characters that are seemingly not the heroines. Mrs Bennett and Mary Bennett are two examples. I am learning enough about their era to understand they are in a difficult situation, but I also see them as bullied or emotionally abused by Mr. Bennett. I also have sympathy for Lucy Steel in Sense and Sensibility. She is in the same boat as the Bennett daughters; I.e. in need of an advantageous marriage. So it is understandable that she is warning off Eleanor and brown nosing with her future in-laws. Mrs. Clay in Persuasion is also desperate. No wonder she eats up the Elliott attention. Seeing them, not as merely lower class, but as humans, gives you sympathy for them.
Even understanding Lucy Steele's need to find security in a wealthy marriage,, I can't sympathize with her because she is so ruthless and cruel, particularly to Eleanor. She not only jabs a big knife into her wile looking her in the eyes and pretending to be sweet and nice, she then twists the knife. And her enthusiasm as she gossiped to Robert Ferars about Marianne's writing those letters to Willoughby. Her basic motive is understandable, but her methods are sly and cold-blooded. I think she and Robert Ferars are a happy match, but that's not a compliment to either of them.
Not sure why you think anybody misunderstands Mrs Bennet. It's perfectly clear that Mrs Bennet is doing what she needs to do in the family's circumstances. The reason why she is funny is because she is overtly doing what all the other families are doing covertly. They all need to get their daughters married to the best economic prospect that is available. All this is obvious from the book. Maybe people who really on film and tv adaptations don't really understand what's going on in Jane Austen's work because they don't read it.
* rely
Mr. Darcy's initial disapproval of Bingley being married to Jane is also explained now.Bingley might have been responsible for the whole Bennet Family as well as his sister Coraline should she also fail to find a husband.
Presumably the entail could not skip a generation and the Bennet property pass to a grandson? With three daughters married by the end of the book one may very well produce one before Mr Bennet died. If the first was a little Wickham, would it have passed to him?? The 1995 P&P is by far my favourite, though I do have a soft spot for the 1980 version, Mrs Bennet wasn't nearly so annoying! Thank you Tudor, and a happy New Year to you.
I’m with you Tudor on most of your comments. And it was terrible that women couldn’t inherit the family property. But Mrs B is SO annoying. And uncouth, especially at the dance when she’s talking about money and Darcy overhears her. So embarrassing to the daughters. What I don’t understand is why she didn’t put more energy into making the 3 younger daughters more marriageable.
I think she had subconsciously given up on having a son and it shows in the upbringing of her three younger girls. Jane and Elizabeth show that they had been parented and well - but the youngest Bennets have almost been ignored in their upbringing. Lydia stands out because she is most like her mother, and therefore, got more attention.
I think she does what she’s able to do with the tools she has. She IS herself a bit of a Lydia. She isn’t sophisticated or clever like Elizabeth or sweet and charming like Jane. She can’t bring to bear those skills for the task she has. She’s more socially aware than Lydia by dent of years but ultimately enthusiastic throwing herself and tasks (and people) is more her instinct and she doesn’t quite understand that that is the opposite of what’s needed to catch a Bingley or Darcy. Imagine if Lydia had managed to be plucked by a Bingley type and thrust into Caroline Bingleys world- she would also always be out of place as Mrs Bennet is. She’d likely never lose her vulgarity or gauche manners. She couldn’t make up for her lack of reading or wit. If such a gentleman was attracted by her looks and youthful energy - seems to have been what Mr B was - then it makes sense she is both earnest but annoying
I think she didn't put more energy into the younger three because Jane and Lizzie were the prettiest of the bunch - and as mentioned in another scene, as the eldest they would be expected to marry first.
If the elder daughters married well, their husbands would help support the younger girls.
I think because it was customary that the younger girls couldn't marry until the older ones had. So she probably wanted Jane and Elizabeth to marry and then would move on to the others.
I have been waiting for you to create this video! Can’t wait to hear your thoughts.
Hope you like it!
While the 1995 production is by far my favorite adaptation, and while I fully sympathize with Mrs. Bennet's fears, I have three complaints. First, Austen's character's social behaviors are mortifying. Second, she is a terrible mother who fails to guide her younger daughters to more acceptable behavior. If she is so concerned about their prospects, why doesn't she raise them to behave properly? And, third, I have an intensely negative visceral response, and so hate Alison's piercing vocal choices, that I have to fast forward through her scenes.
Happy new year! I agree with you that poor Mrs Bennett is misunderstood. She is up against a husband who is almost neglectful and socioeconomic concerns. One of her major failings is her apparent favouritism and indulgence of Lydia. Her preference of a handsome officer for a flighty youngest daughter, resulting in marriage, yes, but probably not the best Lydia might have found her way into it she'd been taken better care of and guided to be responsible.
Actually in BBC series the level of concern of Mrs Bennet is portrayed quite patently from the very first episode, where despite the comedic and chaotic behaviour of Mrs Bennet Mr Bennet does exaclty what she sais: writes to the wealthy neighbours. Also noone argues with her, when she sends Jane on horseback to the dinner at Bingley's: idea is cruel and ridiculous, but noone is stopping this, because all the adults in the family understand her motivation. Another thing is that Mrs Bennet probably knew that Mary is better suited for Mr Collins, but he preferred Lizzy and for her it was not that important, which daughter (given that this daughter is available) he would take. Btw this was the _only_ time where mr. Bennet overruled her idea. All other ideas were tolerated, again, because her motivation was clear and supported by the adults in the family.
Great video and I agree partially, but I think she either overlooks or misjudges some pretty key things about her daughters' characters and their suitability for certain men. Darcy is misjudged by virtually the whole of the society they live in, and it's only Elizabeth who comes to see him for what he really is, so she can't help that. Wickham is also misjudged generally, but that's got a great deal to do with his own lies and how previous bad events concerning him have been kept secret until Lydia's elopement with him. I think she misjudges Elizabeth's character in some respects, especially when it comes to Mr Collins' proposal to her and the fact that she seems to favour Lydia, indulging her flirtatious and flighty nature and I think Mrs Bennet misjudges just how determined Lydia seems to be to have fun by any means, ignorant of any reputational damage she might do herself and/or the rest of her family. Indeed, Mr Collins comes across as being rather silly and his consideration in terms of who to marry from the Bennet sisters appears to be based only on age - he looks at Jane until Mrs Bennet informs him of Mr Bingley's interest in her, and then looks no further than Elizabeth, and as Elizabeth is the more intelligent of the Bennet sisters and prefers sensible, practical men, she is clearly unsuitable for Mr Collins, as she points out in her refusal of his proposal. Indeed, Mary would have been a much better match for Mr Collins, but he took no interest in her and after Elizabeth's rejection, he went to Charlotte Lucas instead.
I think that Mr Collins choice of the Bennet girls is not by age, but by looks. Jane is the prettiest, so she is his first choice, until he finds out that she is unavailable. Elizabeth - second in looks as in birth - is his second choice. Mr Collins’s professions of wanting to help out his cousins by marrying one of them are patently false, as he is only prepared to marry one of them if she is good looking. At least that was the plan until he was rejected by Elizabeth. If Mary had Charlotte’s cunning, she could have got Mr Collins, in spite of being plain, but in my opinion she’s better off without him.
I feel Mr Bennet gets off lightly in the tv version. Jane Austen is less kind to him. Instead of tempering their faults by marrying, Mr and Mrs Bennet irritate each other into becoming caricatures of themselves. I mean that she seeks attention and so he hides and round and round they go.
I’m currently rereading the book (for an audio book) so I’m hoping to pick up a lot more that I’ve obviously missed (and maybe the TV and film productions have missed too).
I think his charisma and funny lines blind people to how bad he is at being the head of the family, but the tv version doesn't try to hide that. As a person, he fails miserable, but as a fictional character he's amazing, stealing every scene he's in with his zingers.
It's always good to sometimes look at things from 'the other perspective', but let's make no mistake that Jane Austen probably did not mean for the reader to empathize with mrs Bennet all too much. After all, in another book of Austen, Sense & Sensibility, the main characters Elenor & Marianne are victims of the exact fate which seems so mortifying to mrs Bennet, because they are forced to move out of their ancestral home and live in relative poverty and partly dependent on the goodwill of others. And they bear it with grace and fortitude rather than nervousness and silliness.
I don't think there is too much lost in translation here with regards to 'Oh but if you only understood the situation of women back then' -> mrs Bennet is so focused on marriage because she is a superficial, unintelligent, self-centered woman who has never really been instilled with proper values. All she understands, wants to understand really, is this: when a woman is able to achieve 'a good marriage' then everyone congratulates her and her family. I don't think she has any interest beyond that to be honest. And even her definition of 'a good marriage' is only based on the utmost superficial things such as money and maybe status - and even those superficial values become less important to her when she is able to boast of Lydia being married at 'only sixteen', even though she lost all of her reputation, the chance of real happiness or financial stability in the process.
I can feel bad for the situation the Bennet family is in, but I personally cannot really make any allowance for mrs Bennets silliness because of it. She causes more harm than good with her behaviour and not only does she not understand it, I don't think she even cares that much, because any attempt by Jane, Elizabeth or even mr Gardiner to rein in that behaviour is ignored or protested against.
I think you said the Bennet's situation was similar to Jane Austen's own family. But didn't Jane Austen actually have brothers and they (the brothers) were married well?
Yes a brother who had been adopted by a wealthy relative and he did provide a house for Jane's mother, Jane and her sister, without which they would probably have been in extreme poverty.
As I understand it, when Jane's father died in 1805 (Jane was 30 years old), Jane's widowed mother plus Jane and Cassandra, the two unmarried Austen daughters, were left on a low income. They no longer had the income from Rev Austen's job, or from the school that he used to run. Plus they no longer had the social status of "rector's family" (as a new rector would have been appointed when Rev Austen died) They were in the lower social position and income level of Mrs and Miss Bates in "Emma". So the Bennet situation was very close to home for Jane Austen, except that there were brothers.
But, having one or more brothers was no guarantee of financial security for a widow and unmarried daughters. Brothers were not obliged to support their mother or sisters, and some resisted any pressure to do so. In Sense and Sensibility, this exact scenario plays out when the patriarch Mr Dashwood dies. His widow and 3 unmarried daughters are forced out of their grand home to go and live in a remote cottage which is all they can afford. The Dashwood daughters' wealthy halfbrother was expected to support them, but his selfish wife had talked him out of giving the husbandless Dashwood women more than a pittance as their annual income.
The 3 husbandless Austen women were indeed lucky that Edward, one of Jane's brothers, had inherited wealth. If Edward had not had a warm relationship with his mother and sisters, or money to spare, or if his wife had opposed it, his support might not have been forthcoming. Luckily for them, he bought them a small but decent house to live in, in Chawton, plus he gave them a modest annual income.
At the end of P and P, Mrs Bennet and her 2 unmarried daughters Mary and Kitty will still have to leave their mansion when Mr Bennet dies; but they are unlikely to "starve in the hedgerows" afterwards as Mrs B fears. With Bingley and Darcy being so wealthy, it's likely that between the two of them, these husbands can provide a decent income for Mrs Bennet and Kitty and Mary (if they are still unmarried). That is, so as long as Jane and Elizabeth are alive. But if Jane or Elizabeth died early, say in childbirth (very common, I think Jane lost 4 sisters-in-law to childbirth) and Darcy or Bingley then remarried (also very common) Mrs B's position could once more be precarious. It is in her own personal best interest to get Mary and Kitty married off too, so that she has a pool of sons-in-laws to appeal to for financial support.
Yes. At last a view of Mrs Bennett's perspective. Mr Bennett is in hiding through most of the book, though Lizzie was armed with his wit and intelligence to make her way through her world. He still hides in his study most of the time. He did make the effort to visit Mr Bingley pretty smartly on his arrival to the district and invite him to dinner. I do wonder why she is quite so pleased with Lydia's early marriage, even though it's the first of 5. Her husband will surely be a burden on the family, though the potential disgrace if it had not happened might have been worse.
It being new year's day, and having watched several (perhaps ten) of your posts over the past half year, I subscribed. While I think the videos I've watched have all been about Pride and Prejudice, this discussion has me considering the financial situations in Sense and Sensibility... And if someone else has already spoken on a topic you thought about doing, please don't let that stop you. I'm sure a discussion can occur there too.
Thanks for subscribing. Most topics are usually subjective aren’t they, and that being the case, I’m sure I can put my spin on something even if it’s been said before 😀
I mean, she's still very much is overbearing and comical! But we all know why, and still tend to dismiss it all too often ;P
So it behooves us to remember WHY she's that way and why does what she's doing. It grates even her own family, and certainly our modern sensibilities, but she has very valid reasons for it all!
I believe the book indicates that Kitty benefitted from her relationship with her two older married sisters and improved her character and social graces. Mary benefited as the last daughter at home and was no longer suffering from constant comparison to her other sisters. Once Lydia, Jane and Lizzy were married and out of the house, there would not have been as much financial pressure on Mr Bennett. Kitty would likely meet some nice young man through Jane or Lizzy and even Mary might meet some nice young curate someday. Kitty and Mary could often go visit their sisters and stay for several weeks. Mr Bennett would have peace and quiet and Mrs Bennett would have Mrs Long and Mrs Phillips to talk to. Or
Like in Sense and Sensibility, Mr and Mrs Bennett could move into some cottage on the Pemberley estate in their old age and live quite comfortably on quite a small amount that Lizzy could provide, if Mr Bennett’s dignity could allow it. All’s well that ends well. The thing is, we come to care about these characters and want them to be happy.
There is absolutely no reason for Mr Bennet to move anywhere at any age. As long as he is alive, he is the owner of the estate that provides him with the 2000/year income. The issue was the fate of his wife and unmarried daughters in case of his death. Unfortunately for Mary, she really doesn't have anything to attract even a "nice young curate" to marry her - no beauty, no dowry. In the best case, a middle-aged widower clergyman with several children who needs a wife to care for the children might marry her. She will most likely remain a spinster, living with her parents while they are alive and after that with one or other of her sisters.
Happy new year to all of you!
I'm sure you are right that even the very sweet and kind Bingleys would not be supporting the widowed Mrs. Bennet and a passel of unwed daughters anywhere close to the gentry level of 2,000/year. Jane Austen wrote," Mr. Bingley and Jane remained at Netherfield only a twelvemonth. So near a vicinity to her mother and Meryton relations was not desirable even to his easy temper or her affectionate heart." At the end of the novel, he Bingleys move within 30 miles of Pemberley, and I always assumed Mrs. Bennet, Mary, and Kitty end up as Jane Austen, her mother and her sister did after their father's death, making themselves useful to rich relations and staying too long, and renting ever meaner quarters as their own funds and the sympathetic support from their relations ran out.
No wonder Bingley and Jane moved farther away! Even a very patient person's patience isn't unlimited. Also, I'm sure Jane and Lizzie (and their husbands) preferred to live within a more convenient distance of each other since they were all such close friends. In my mind, Kitty probably improved a lot once she had the opportunity to spend a lot of time away from her mother and Mary by visiting the Bingleys or the Darcys along with her father. She was pretty enough, and spending a lot of time in better company would have been the good influence that she needed to improve. She may not have married high, but she'd have done all right.
Ah, but after we learn that Jane and Bingley have moved closer to Pemberley, and that Mr. Bennet often visits Lizzy and Darcy, we learn that Kitty spends most of her time with her two elder sisters (up North), and Mary spends her time with her mother Mrs. Bennet-- and they both improve from this change! Kitty gets the focus of Lizzy and Jane, and Mary (finally) gets the sole focus of their mother, which makes them all happy.
Years ago, I read somewhere (and I cannot remember where I read this, sorry) that Jane Austen was asked at some point what happened to Mary and Kitty after the end of the novel, and her response was that Mary married an attorney in Mereton and Kitty married a clergyman. I remember thinking to myself that I would have expected it to be the other way around, given Mary's fondness for reading Fordyce's sermons. Again, I read this somewhere years ago, so don't know how accurate my memory about that truly is.
Jane Austin apparently told her family her imaginings of further adventures of her characters. Supposedly, she imagined that Kitty married a clergyman near Darcy's estate, and Mary married her (small town lawyer) Uncle Phillips's law clerk. So they both married somewhat down, but certainly into respectable situations.
Mrs Bennet’s concern for the future of her family must have been a great worry for her and for that she has my sympathy. However, did she really have to be so loud and vulgar? The 1995 version is the best version as far as I’m concerned.
Come on Tudor,more of your wonderful postings please.
Love your comments everyone and a happy and healthy 2025 to you all.
I really enjoy your amazing commentary and am curious about the next project
Thanks very much. Hopefully my next offering won’t be too long 👍
Poor Mrs. Bennet! I'd be interested in your thoughts on the entail. I've often wondered if Mr. Collins died before Mr. Bennet (perhaps run over by Lady Catherine's carriage, lol!) and if Mr. Collins had no male heirs, and assuming that Mr. Bennet and Mr. Collins were the last male heirs of their line, wouldn't the entail pass to Mr. Bennet's first male grandchild by Jane or Elizabeth? Worth a ponder!
That's what i was thinking. Also, what if Mr.Collins died without issue. could it have gone to one of the girls sons. If like their mother they had no sons . what would happen then.
There are so many aspects of life from those bygone eras that we perhaps measure against the standards of our modern day but it was the norm back then so until social reform took place, I suppose society accepted it?
I have had a thought about Lady Anne, the sickly girl and first cousin to Darcy . If she died childless, would there be a possibility that a son of Elizabeth and Darcy would inherit Rosllyn (?) name. Oh the irony.
I imagine there would have been a (protracted?) search for another male heir before the Bennet daughters or their sons would even be considered. And their sons would almost certainly be considered before themselves.
@@TudorSmith thank you.
I have always been a fan of Alison, seen majority of work, so talented!
Perhaps Mrs Bennet doesn't try to match Mr Collins with Mary because she doesn't think much of Mary as she's not beautiful.
Yes that’s highly likely.
@@TudorSmith Except the opposite would occur.
Mrs. Bennet, knowing Mary wasn't pretty, would take extra pains to make her look more attractive in other ways, by concentrating more on Mary's personality and abilities...such as her being studious and a wonderful reader, which could only help Mr. Collins (or anyone else for that matter) in his work.
As desperate as Mrs. Bennet was to get her daughters married, the fact that she didn't push any of her other daughters onto Mr. Collins is an apparent and contrived plot device Austen used to continue the direction of the story. It's as simple as that.
I think even if she tried to encourage Mr Collins to Mary he wouldn't be interested because she isn't beautiful. He want a beautiful wife because it reflects well on him
I always figured it was because daughters were more likely to be married off in order.
Neither is Mr. C.
And when taveling, you are always welcome to visit and be guided in
Belgium!
I very much like your Pride and Prejudice videos and enjoy reading the comments they inspire. Thanks for your look into Alison Steadman's career - she is a lovely actress. That was an interesting analysis of the precarious financial position the Bennet women would be in if Mr Bennet died, but I think you are far too kind to Mrs Bennet. I see no sign of genuine motherly love in her and if she were not so ridiculous she would be quite sinister in her willingness to pimp her daughters out to secure her own future. Only a blithering idiot would be happy that Lydia had fallen into Wickham's clutches. For all his faults as a father Mr Bennet at least understands his child well enough to know that she could never be happy with Collins and even questions the very advantageous proposal from Darcy because he is not sure she respects him.