on the Mrs Bennet apologetics

[anghraine]

I am sure I've ranted about this at some point in the past, but some very well-intentioned responses to something almost completely unrelated set me off, and I went for full-blown meta.

tl;dr - Mr Bennet being awful in his own way doesn't make Mrs Bennet any better

The respective failings of Mr and Mrs Bennet are coming up pretty regularly in the reblogs of my post about Austen’s predators, and I figured I’d just make a separate post, since 1) it’s not what that one’s about and 2) I don’t really want to go after anyone in particular.

So. Mr Bennet comes off a lot better than Mrs Bennet, by way of appreciating Elizabeth, amusing the audience, and not being incredibly grating and oblivious. At least, on the face of things. But ultimately P&P highlights his enormous personal failings–laziness, selfishness, a strong strain of malice, irresponsibility.

A lot of people take this as a validation of Mrs Bennet’s oppositional fixations: she’s obsessed where he’s indifferent, embarrassingly pushy where he’s dangerously apathetic, shrilly insistent on their daughters marrying where he shrugs it off. And by a lot of people, I mean … like, everyone for the last fifty years.

However, Mr Bennet’s lack of responsibility doesn’t make Mrs Bennet perceptive (she’s not), reasonable (no!), generous (she’s described as mean-spirited and constantly shown to be so), remotely selfless (?????), or even pragmatic (really, she’s not). 

She’s right that their very good income–the same as Colonel Brandon’s in S&S–will dry up after Mr Bennet dies. She’s right that the Collinses will take ownership of Longbourn and that the best scenario for everyone would be her daughters having married by then. And … that’s about it.

There’s an idea that Mrs Bennet is the one concerned about financial reality and Mr Bennet is careless about money and the reason they don’t really have it. None of these things are true. Mrs Bennet is the big spender in the family and Mr Bennet the comparatively prudent one keeping them out of debt:

Mrs Bennet had no turn for economy, and her husband’s love of independence had alone prevented their exceeding their income. 

The reason that Mr Bennet can’t pay Wickham to marry Lydia is… not that he can’t pay Wickham to marry Lydia. Even Darcy is surprised at Wickham not marrying Lydia because Mr Bennet, while not “very rich,” would actually be able to help him out. It’s because Mr Bennet can’t find Wickham and Lydia. Mr Bennet’s great failure was in sending Lydia on her merry way without taking any measures for her protection, so consequently he has no way to track her down. 

The money to pay the bribes only becomes relevant after Mr Bennet goes back to Longbourn. And once that does enter the picture, Mr Bennet has every intention of repaying Mr Gardiner:

He was seriously concerned that a cause of so little advantage to any one should be forwarded at the sole expence of his brother-in-law, and he was determined, if possible, to find out the extent of his assistance, and to discharge the obligation as soon as he could. 

His letter was soon dispatched; for though dilatory in undertaking business, he was quick in its execution. He begged to know farther particulars of what he was indebted to his brother

It will save me a world of trouble and economy. Had it been your uncle’s doing, I must and would have paid him 

i.e., it’d have been a pain to come up with the money and he’d have had to be very careful about his expenses to cover it, but it could have been done, and morally he considered it necessary.

Everything that Mrs Bennet thinks and does throughout that entire situation is absurdly disconnected from reality. And through most of the novel in general, including her obsession with her daughters marrying.

Mr Bennet absolutely should have set aside real savings and kept Mrs Bennet from blowing through their income, as he himself says. He’s both lazy and criminally detached from his own family’s welfare. However, Mrs Bennet’s insistence that she’s just thinking of their welfare is not something to be taken at face value–she constantly says this and is constantly shown to be a hilariously blatant hypocrite, as with:

People who suffer as I do from nervous complaints can have no great inclination for talking. Nobody can tell what I suffer!–But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.

She’s not concerned enough about the future (or present) to make the slightest personal sacrifice. She puts it all on the girls–and while pleased at Jane and Elizabeth’s spectacular marriages, she doesn’t honestly care that much who they marry, as long as it’s someone. Lydia’s marriage is the fulfillment of her dreams despite being a net loss and perpetual financial drain on the family. Her joy at Elizabeth’s engagement is overwhelmingly focused on status symbols, not preservation from the future: the pin-money, jewels, carriages, Darcy’s physical attractiveness, a house in town, (possible) special license… (“Jane’s is nothing to it–nothing at all”).

On top of that, there is not the slightest danger of them being destitute. 

For one, Charlotte isn’t Fanny Dashwood. Though Mr Collins is under her thumb in much the same way, she’s fond of the Bennets and is extremely unlikely to allow them to be kicked out of their home. Mrs Bennet and the girls likely wouldn’t enjoy living as dependents when they used to be the first family around, but they’re not going to be thrown out.

For another, Mrs Bennet’s brother is very well-off. He’s a respectable, successful merchant in London, not a country attorney like their father and brother-in-law. He has to alter his schedule around his business concerns, but he can afford to take his wife and niece on a long, meandering vacation from London into the Midlands that hits all the major tourist stops. Mr Bennet has no difficulty believing that Mr Gardiner could have shelled out ten thousand pounds. Mrs Bennet herself doesn’t think they owe any particular obligation for everything Mr Gardiner did because he married and had children, when otherwise “I and my children must have had all his money.”

In the unlikely worst case scenario where they absolutely couldn’t bear living at Longbourn, there is no way Mrs Bennet’s family would abandon her and the girls. The Gardiners already have Jane and Elizabeth often living with them in London (not just the occasions we see in the novel; it’s mentioned in Ch 25). 

None!!!! of them were ever going to be homeless or starving. They were going to have a sharply reduced income that was probably still better than 92% of the country and plenty of support from their families. Yes, Jane and Elizabeth’s marriages get them independence and keep them from putting a strain on the money settled on Mrs Bennet for her lifetime. But had Bingley and Darcy had different personalities than they do, it wouldn’t be independence at all but a total horrorshow. And Mrs Bennet pays virtually no attention to the characters of prospective sons-in-law. She’s happy enough even when it makes the financial situation worse! She just wants them married–she wants to relive her youth and she wants bragging rights, and everything she does makes her daughters’ lives worse. 

Those “realistic concerns” that people talk about range from based in reality but wildly exaggerated to completely self-serving. That doesn’t make her a lone voice in the wilderness. It makes her a different kind of terrible parent than Mr Bennet, but still terrible.

bonus: tags!

#back on my uninspiring 'yes it's exactly what it looks like' soapbox #if this completely inane irrational selfish and absurdly alarmist person is the only one seriously concerned about a thing #it is maybe not a serious concern??? #(i'm definitely surprised that the gardiners' pretty obvious wealth gets so ignored though) #(tbh the scene where she talks about how she would have had it ALLLL #and he never gave them anything except a bunch of presents and long expensive vacations for her daughter and having her children live with them and thousands of pounds in bribes- #like it's really one of her most unpleasant and there is some stiff competition) #(like when she tries to get bingley to say that charlotte is ugly) #(i just. i am not here for this) (her response to elizabeth's engagement is pretty damn ugly too as far as i'm concerned #~we're saved!~ would honestly be so much more pleasant) #mr bennet can be a shitty father and husband without mrs bennet being significantly better 2k16 #(sidenote: in the quasi epilogue about the various family members coming to pemberley we never hear about mrs bennet going #it says that she /visits/ jane and /talks/ about elizabeth)

 

Comments

[sixbeforelunch]

I am going to bookmark this and link it every time I see someone say that Mrs. Bennet is a good example of a woman's perfectly reasonable concerns not being taken seriously because she's a woman. I just...that is a real thing, and I'm sure that fictional examples can be found, but Mrs. Bennet is not it. Ugh.

[beatrice_otter]

Many of her complaints have a core of perfectly reasonable stuff to them. They're just surrounded by so much garbage (and so little practical thought or actions about how to respond) that the signal to noise ratio as a whole is fairly low.

You know what Austen lady has perfectly reasonable complaints that aren't taken seriously, partly because she's a woman? Anne Elliot's sister Mary Musgrove. She's portrayed as a whining attention-seeker. But I noticed the last time I read it that a lot of her complaints are actually reasonable when you don't just assume she's a whining attention-seeker. Such as her complaint, when her son has a bad fall, that she's the one expected to stay home and nurse him just because she's the mother, while her husband can go off to a dinner party with no censure. As for her health--because she's got no "obvious" physical symptoms, and it fluctuates, the general assumption within the novel and many readers is that she's just a hypochondriac and/or faking it for maximum effect. But there are a lot of disorders that a) they didn't have any clue about back then, b) don't have obvious physical signs like fever or chills or coughing, c) can be very debilitating, and d) are more likely to be found in women. Fibromyalgia, for example.

She's not a very pleasant person. She's very self-centered and absurdly status-conscious (although less so than Sir Walter or Miss Elliot). But that doesn't mean she's wrong or a hypochondriac.

[anghraine]

Heh, thanks! And yeah, it really isn't her, and it's frustrating how the slight nuance of "the entailment puts some pressure on them" gets wildly exaggerated. I'm still completely bemused how you get from... there's some pressure from the entailment to ONLY MRS BENNET SEES THE TRUTH and Mr Bennet (almost certainly in his forties) is on his deathbed and she definitely doesn't have a brother who could come up with ten thousand pounds on the spot... /eyeroll

There are plenty of examples of women's perfectly reasonable concerns not being taken seriously because they're women all through Austen, but... yeah, not Mrs Bennet. She's not taken seriously because she's Mrs Bennet.

[beatrice_otter]

I think a lot of the problem is that our societal expectations of men and women, fathers and mothers, etc. are so different that people have trouble figuring out what all the implications and consequences of their behavior are. So they err on the side of too much censure or too little (for both the Bennett elders). Which, you know, happens anyway; but when you're not sure, really, what the realistic results of Longbourn being entailed away are or what any of the characters could do about it, it makes it a lot easier to miss cues as to what the realistic consequences are.

[anghraine]

That's true, though I feel that the indicators wrt Mr Gardiner being a highly successful merchant are very clear. And honestly, it's something I see a lot with characters who are opposite counterparts--if one is wrong, the kneejerk assumption that the other must be right, no matter how blatantly unreliable they are.

(I think this is also why people overlook/entirely miss Elizabeth's ambivalence about Darcy after the letter but before Pemberley. She jokes about it herself--a sort of seesaw effect where if one goes down the other must go up. Wickham being despicable makes Darcy a great person--only the point is that it doesn't actually work like that. Darcy being a good person is completely dependent on his own character, not being cosmically yoked to Wickham.)

[alias_sqbr]

But anghraine, Mr Bennet is wrong about some things, which means he is Wrong About Everything, and thus since she disagrees with him, Mrs Bennet is Right About Everything. It's just basic logic.

[anghraine]

Hahaha, that's exactly it! Arrrrgh.

[mosylu]

Thank you, this is exactly what I was hoping for! One of the reasons I used to read this every year was how different things surfaced with every reading, like fish appearing from the deep. Mrs. Bennet is dreadful and it actually took me a few readings as a teenager to realize that Mr. Bennet is pretty bad too, in his way, and that's a lot of what went into Elizabeth's refusal of both Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy.