Tumblr crosspost (2 July 2019)
Sep. 16th, 2019 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineAn anon at Tumblr asked:
What's your opinion on the Bennett's marriage?
I said:
In the book, it’s horrible, and I don’t understand attempts to romanticize it.
I think Austen is honestly quite clear on this point. Mr Bennet’s treatment of his wife and younger daughters is the repugnant response to his own youthful error in marrying a woman because her spirited good looks gave the impression of good humour. Mrs Bennet, for her part, is not merely unintelligent but bad-tempered and rather nasty (I talked about my poor opinion of her here; I don’t go in for the apologetics for her at all).
We hear that Elizabeth had never been blind to how inappropriate Mr Bennet’s treatment of Mrs Bennet is, and I think part of the purpose of their spectacularly bad marriage is to provide a background for her own concerns about respect and equality in marriage. That background element is lost in making their marriage actually a good, loving one.
Personally, I also think it factors into her over-reliance on manners as a guide to character—her parents’ failures of decorum are the outward manifestations of their failures as spouses, parents, and human beings. The same is not true, or wholly true, of everyone, but she doesn’t really get that until her epiphany.
Oh, and I also think that it makes Elizabeth’s eagerness to leave Longbourn behind her at the end of the book more sympathetic if she’s grown out of a genuinely unpleasant family situation, so there’s that, too.
What's your opinion on the Bennett's marriage?
I said:
In the book, it’s horrible, and I don’t understand attempts to romanticize it.
I think Austen is honestly quite clear on this point. Mr Bennet’s treatment of his wife and younger daughters is the repugnant response to his own youthful error in marrying a woman because her spirited good looks gave the impression of good humour. Mrs Bennet, for her part, is not merely unintelligent but bad-tempered and rather nasty (I talked about my poor opinion of her here; I don’t go in for the apologetics for her at all).
We hear that Elizabeth had never been blind to how inappropriate Mr Bennet’s treatment of Mrs Bennet is, and I think part of the purpose of their spectacularly bad marriage is to provide a background for her own concerns about respect and equality in marriage. That background element is lost in making their marriage actually a good, loving one.
Personally, I also think it factors into her over-reliance on manners as a guide to character—her parents’ failures of decorum are the outward manifestations of their failures as spouses, parents, and human beings. The same is not true, or wholly true, of everyone, but she doesn’t really get that until her epiphany.
Oh, and I also think that it makes Elizabeth’s eagerness to leave Longbourn behind her at the end of the book more sympathetic if she’s grown out of a genuinely unpleasant family situation, so there’s that, too.