Justice for Mrs. Bennet?
Ahead of her new adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, Dolly Alderton has given a sympathetic account of Mrs. Bennet. You know, the usual thing about how she has to get her daughters married otherwise they face disaster. I think this is overstated. But it is essential to any interpretation that relies on the idea that Lizzy Bennet risks “genteel poverty”. Here’s Alderton’s quote.
‘It’s all she’s thinking about,’ Alderton continued, referring to Mrs Bennet. ‘It’s a preoccupation that any time a single man comes into her orbit she’s thinking this might be safety for all of my daughters, this might be salvation not just for one of them but for all of us.
‘So the fact that this is so in her mind all the time felt that it had to be her line. It was most natural for her to take it because it’s all she thinks about.’
Now, this is TV, so they can do whatever they like. Heck, if you think the novel is about the risk of genteel poverty, why not give Mrs. Bennet the famous opening line?
But, this is also an interpretation of the novel. It is an attempt to take a common view today and make it part of the original book. Alderton says: “I really felt I’d like justice for Mrs. Bennet.” What does the novel have to say about all of this? Has Mrs. Bennet lacked justice? Does Alderton have a point?
Today I am reposting what I wrote about this a couple of years ago. I think Jane Austen is very clear that Mrs. Bennet is almost the anti-hero of the book. She fails to educate her daughters, indulges and encourages their immorality, and jeopardizes Jane’s marriage. The narrator calls her stupid and negligent. She is wrong about almost everything. To make her the moral center or to give her justice goes against the words of the book.
Here’s what I wrote in 2025…
Blaming Mr. Bennet?
It is common now to see Mr. Bennet blamed for his behaviour towards the Bennet girls, almost as much as Mrs. Bennet. His faults may be more subtle, but they are no less important, it is thought.
But how much can we blame Mr. Bennet? And what does he do wrong, exactly?
The Mischief of Neglect
When Lizzy gets Jane’s two letters telling her that Wickham has run away with Lydia, she regrets the easy treatment that her parents have given Lydia, which encouraged her as a flirt.
The mischief of neglect and mistaken indulgence towards such a girl—oh! how acutely did she now feel it!
Mischief was a much stronger word for Austen than for us. Johnson defined it as “Harm; hurt; whatever is ill and injuriously done.” The OED cites Scott in 1817: “It was hardly possible two such damned rascals should colleague together without mischief to honest people.”
We know who is responsible for the mischief of “mistaken indulgence”:—Mrs. Bennet, whose faults are well catalogued. But Mr. Bennet is here given equal blame for the “mischief of neglect”. Lizzy warned him what would happen before Lydia went to Brighton.
If you, my dear father, will not take the trouble of checking her exuberant spirits, and of teaching her that her present pursuits are not to be the business of her life, she will soon be beyond the reach of amendment. Her character will be fixed; and she will, at sixteen, be the most determined flirt that ever made herself and her family ridiculous.
In reply, Mr. Bennet said, “Let her go, then. Colonel Forster is a sensible man, and will keep her out of any real mischief; and she is luckily too poor to be an object of prey to anybody.” It is too rarely noted that Colonel Forster ought to have been far more responsible for Lydia, and that Mr. Bennet had no reason to doubt his character. However, we continue.
His negligence continues when the search for Lydia is undertaken.
The whole party were in hopes of a letter from Mr. Bennet the next morning, but the post came in without bringing a single line from him. His family knew him to be, on all common occasions, a most negligent and dilatory correspondent; but at such a time they had hoped for exertion. They were forced to conclude, that he had no pleasing intelligence to send; but even of that they would have been glad to be certain. Mr. Gardiner had waited only for the letters before he set off.
Just as the word mischief is repeated, negligence is repeated. This is Mr. Bennet’s abetting sin. And he knows it. When Lizzy sympathises with him, he says,
“Say nothing of that. Who should suffer but myself? It has been my own doing, and I ought to feel it.”
She tells him not to be hard on himself.
“No, Lizzy, let me once in my life feel how much I have been to blame. I am not afraid of being overpowered by the impression. It will pass away soon enough.”
And he acknowledges that she had been right to warn him.
“Lizzy, I bear you no ill-will for being justified in your advice to me last May, which, considering the event, shows some greatness of mind.”
Austen goes easy on Mr. Bennet
This is small beer compared to the unremitting scrutiny and scorn to which the narrative submits Mrs. Bennet. She is judged harshly from the first chapter, whereas Mr. Bennet is judged tolerantly.
Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married: its solace was visiting and news.
When Lydia is found, and engaged, Mrs. Bennet becomes so cheerful that her spirits are “oppressively high”. This sort of perpetual scorn is never meted out to Mr. Bennet; he is dealt with using a gentler irony.
This essential difference is apparent throughout the novel. Think of the scene where Lady Catherine asks Lizzy about her education.
“Your mother should have taken you to town every spring for the benefit of masters.”
“My mother would have no objection, but my father hates London.”
“Has your governess left you?”
“We never had any governess.”
“No governess! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home without a governess! I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must have been quite a slave to your education.”
Elizabeth could hardly help smiling, as she assured her that had not been the case.
“Then who taught you? who attended to you? Without a governess, you must have been neglected.”
“Compared with some families, I believe we were; but such of us as wished to learn never wanted the means. We were always encouraged to read, and had all the masters that were necessary. Those who chose to be idle certainly might.”
“Ay, no doubt: but that is what a governess will prevent; and if I had known your mother, I should have advised her most strenuously to engage one.”
This is the crucial point. Charlotte Bronte earned £20 a year as a governess. Even allowing for more than that, the Bennets could have afforded one. (They are well able to keep a cook, as Mrs. Bennet snaps to Mr. Collins.) Mrs. Bennet could, indeed, have done more. It was her responsibility to engage a governess.
Mr. Bennet’s negligence at least has the virtue of giving his daughters the run of the library. Remember Mr. Darcy says women should not just be accomplished, but “must yet add something more substantial in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.” Mr. Bennet cares about that; Mrs. Bennet does not. Mrs. Bennet’s indulgence has no corresponding virtue. The final difference between Lizzy and Lydia is one of temperament. “We were always encouraged to read, and had all the masters that were necessary.” Lydia was indulged away from the benefits of negligence. Lizzy was not. In a system of virtue ethics, the development of temperament through education is crucial. It is this that Lizzy has and which Lydia (and Mrs. Bennet) lack.
In a family of five girls, we must expect the interplay of nature and nurture to result in such differences. Austen calls Mr. Bennet a philosopher ironically, but not entirely ironically. He is a good father to some of his girls; she is not an especially good mother to any of them. It is reinforced to us at the end that none of her meddling resulted in her girls getting married. Indeed, quite the opposite. She is very busy; he is not. But perhaps she has a more negative effect on the girls’ prospects.
Austen is especially mild on Mr. Bennet’s primary failing: his financial imprudence.
Mr. Bennet had very often wished, before this period of his life, that, instead of spending his whole income, he had laid by an annual sum, for the better provision of his children, and of his wife, if she survived him. He now wished it more than ever. Had he done his duty in that respect, Lydia need not have been indebted to her uncle for whatever of honour or credit could now be purchased for her. The satisfaction of prevailing on one of the most worthless young men in Great Britain to be her husband might then have rested in its proper place.
Note that Mr. Bennet is regretting that he could not pay Wickham off himself. He is not regretting what happened, as such. It is Lydia’s satisfaction of prevailing on Wickham that is named, not Mr. Bennet’s negligence. The marriage might have been prevented. But saving more money would not have changed Lydia’s character. And remember, the mischief was a double one. Austen continues:
When first Mr. Bennet had married, economy was held to be perfectly useless; for, of course, they were to have a son. This son was to join in cutting off the entail, as soon as he should be of age, and the widow and younger children would by that means be provided for. Five daughters successively entered the world, but yet the son was to come; and Mrs. Bennet, for many years after Lydia’s birth, had been certain that he would. This event had at last been despaired of, but it was then too late to be saving. Mrs. Bennet had no turn for economy; and her husband’s love of independence had alone prevented their exceeding their income.
Note the twinned responsibility: “economy was held to be perfectly useless”; Mrs. Bennet expected a son; between them, they broke even. His neglect has become their neglect. Austen qualifies his failing. Mrs. Bennet’s faults are never qualified in this manner.
What has gone wrong has gone wrong between the Bennets. This is not the result of his moral failure so much as the inevitable consequence of the marriage of such temperaments. When Mr. Bennet agrees to give Lydia one hundred pounds a year, he says “he would scarcely be ten pounds a year the loser, by the hundred that was to be paid them; for, what with her board and pocket allowance, and the continual presents in money which passed to her through her mother’s hands, Lydia’s expenses had been very little within that sum.” It is not entirely in his control how much money is spent, or where it is “passed” to.
Temperament governs.
Temperament governs so many of the decisions in this novel. We see this in the fact that Lydia is exactly like her mother. When the news of the elopement arrives, Mrs. Bennet says, “I am sure there was some great neglect or other on their side, for she is not the kind of girl to do such a thing, if she had been well looked after.” How naive! How blind! What could Mr. Bennet do in the face of this? It is twice repeated that Mrs. Bennet wanted to take all the family to Brighton, including this extraordinary exchange after Lydia is married.
“They must all go to Brighton. That is the place to get husbands. What a pity it is, mamma, we did not all go!”
“Very true; and if I had my will we should.”
It is no joke that the only thing Mrs. Bennet cares about is getting her daughters married. How they are married, and to whom, is of much less consequence to her (morally, not financially). She would have traded Lizzy to Mr. Collins in a moment. When Lydia invites them to Newcastle where she claims she will get partners for her sisters(!), Mrs. Bennet approves. Lydia, of all people, as matchmaker! This is the morning after the marriage when Wickham’s debts have been paid, his commission purchased, as well as her thousand pounds, to resolve the scandal—plus Lydia’s income from Mr. Bennet.1 When Lizzy asks Mrs. Bennet about their uncle paying the money (which, as far as they know, he cannot afford), Mrs. Bennet replies2,
who should do it but her own uncle? If he had not had a family of his own, I and my children must have had all his money, you know; and it is the first time we have ever had anything from him except a few presents. Well! I am so happy. In a short time, I shall have a daughter married.
If he had not had a family of his own! This is not just indulgence. Mrs. Bennet and Lydia share a flighty temperament, impervious to the social or moral reality. When Lydia and Wickham come home, Mr. Bennet is austere, Lizzy disgusted, and Jane shocked. Mrs. Bennet goes into raptures. And Lydia? “Lydia was Lydia still.”
Mismatched temperaments struggle to affect each other. (Hence Mr. Bennet’s line that we exist to laugh at our neighbours and give them pleasure in our turn.) Mr. Bennet is trapped. Yes, it is a trap of his own making: he married her: but Jane Austen doesn’t dwell on this point as she might. That absence is telling.
Matching tempers
The whole novel is concerned with this nature-nurture debate. Mr. Collins says Lydia’s behaviour “is the more to be lamented” because the “licentiousness of behaviour” was the result of “a faulty degree of indulgence”. Who disagrees? Not Darcy. Not Lizzy. Not Mr. Bennet.
But then Mr. Collins says,
though, at the same time, for the consolation of yourself and Mrs. Bennet, I am inclined to think that her own disposition must be naturally bad, or she could not be guilty of such an enormity, at so early an age.
This is never contradicted, unlike so much else that Mr. Collins says. Indeed, it is everywhere accepted. This is the fault of Lydia’s personality as much as anything else. Temperament and virtue are closely aligned. When Jane and Bingley are engaged Mr. Bennet says,
“You are a good girl,” he replied, “and I have great pleasure in thinking you will be so happily settled. I have not a doubt of your doing very well together. Your tempers are by no means unlike. You are each of you so complying, that nothing will ever be resolved on; so easy, that every servant will cheat you; and so generous, that you will always exceed your income.”
Like Lizzy, Mr. Bennet is a reader of character. And he can rely on his own experience to know this. The matching of tempers is a great theme of the novel: Jane has “Without exception, the sweetest temper” Mrs. Bennet has ever known and Bingley has a temper of “easiness, openness, and ductility.” When Lizzy realises she should marry Darcy it is because “he was exactly the man who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her.”
His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both: by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved; and from his judgment, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance.
This is exactly what Mr. and Mrs. Bennet do not have. It is a subtle, pointed comment, when Mr. Bennet says Jane and Bingley are well matched, but are too gentle and will overspend their income. Mrs. Bennet calls this absurd as they have five thousand a year. But he knows whereof he speaks. It was all the Bennets could do to break even, a state of affairs in which Mrs. Bennet remains firmly uninterested.
Lydia and Wickham “were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue”; that too is a question of temper.
Austen is an observer of assortative mating. Her characters end up with the partner who suits them socially, morally, intellectually, and temperamentally. This sorting is the great moral action of her work. Lizzy, like Anne Elliot, Fanny Price and Emma Woodhouse, marries into something better, not just in terms of income or property, but in terms of being well-matched to her husband’s personality and virtue. In the Bennet marriage, it is hard to know how matters could have turned out differently without a corresponding increase of some other mischief or misery.
Their temperaments determined it thus.
In the original version, I mistakenly said Wickham was given ten thousand pounds, which is what Mr. Bennet says he ought to have demanded.
I added the phrase “as far as they know” to make this point clearer.
Excellent, Henry! I think the big problem is that too many people only know Mrs. Bennett through the movie adaptations, and have never read the book.
You make some very good points. I think the social media trend to sympathize with Mrs. Bennet's dread of poverty and anxiety over her family's future has some merit, but like so many social media trends, it goes way overboard.