Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice

I have been making a concerted effort to not always read self help books. So lately, I have taken a break – finally reading Twilight and re-reading an old favorite of mine –The Grapes of Wrath. Even though it is suppose to be a break, my “awakening” has made me super sensitive to the way even fictional characters behave. I dare to say that this is the first time I’ve really understood the emotions and intricacies of relationships beyond what is explicitly written.

I recently picked up a Kindle, adding a whole new dimension to my obsessiveness – as now I can highlight what I find notable and download it to my computer for further analysis and quoting.

I have quite the file on Pride and Prejudice.

Admittedly I found the book boring at first, but I was determined to get through it. It is a classic after all! The first chapters consisted of balls, landing a husband, and gossip. Oh it really was painful for a while! But then as I read I discovered the Bennets are not much different from people I know in real life.

I don’t want to spoil too much if you haven’t read it. The story focuses on the second eldest, Elizabeth Bennet, a girl who prides her judgment of other people’s character. She is frank, honest, and values virtuousness. She believes one should marry for love. She values her family and views their quirks as annoying, but not necessarily harmful. She has every appearance of being a sensible girl.

Elizabeth is closest to her older sister, Jane, who also possesses many sensible qualities. I found her to be less candid than Elizabeth and softer spoken and compliant. Being the oldest at 22, there is pressure from her mother to marry soon and marry well.

Mrs. Bennet is the 18th century definition of a narcissistic mother. Her behavior towards her husband, her daughters and others rubbed me the wrong way throughout the whole book. She is concerned about appearance, her status in the community, having more fortune and more to brag about than her neighbors. She nags, cries and gets angry at her husband so he will do her dirty work. She is not concerned with relationships at an emotional level, but only how knowing that other person will reflect on her. She is extremely agitated at the fact when her husband dies, their estate will be entailed to his cousin and she will be forced out. Therefore, she is obsessed with getting one of her five daughters to marry the cousin so she can still live in her grand house.

Mr. Bennet is a man who values peace and quiet. He does not want any trouble and will antagonize his wife when she makes her requests of him. Although he may passively resist at first, he will usually end up doing what ever is demanded of him. When it comes to standing on his own to take action, he is resistant. When his daughter Lydia gets into trouble, Elizabeth and Jane find him wondering off into the woods instead of dealing with the matter directly.

The Bennets have three other daughters. Mary is not very social and prefers to study. She is the forgotten child. Lydia is their wild child, and a creation of being her mother’s golden child. She is charming and manipulates to get what she wants. She believes herself to be superior to all her sisters, acts very irresponsibly, and doesn’t concern herself with on how her choices reflect on herself or her family. Kitty is impressionable and idolizes Lydia.

Elizabeth was the most relatable character to me. She starts out seeming to understand the world and people, but her scope is very small. Interactions with newcomers to their town offer a new world of understanding beyond what she has known. Every perceived notion she has about people’s character, including her own, is tested. She is forced to concede her family dynamic is not ideal. Her connection to her family puts her in a difficult situation as she finds herself juggling her duty as a daughter and discovering her own path to happiness.

Here are some quotes I found of interest. If you haven’t read the book – some of these are spoilers!

Mrs. Bennet on getting Lizzy to marry her cousin to save their home:

"Lizzy shall be brought to reason. I will speak to her about it directly. She is a very headstrong, foolish girl, and does not know her own interest but I will MAKE her know it."

This is an example of jumping to conclusions and blame shifting. Mrs. Bennet just found out that Lizzy friend, Miss Charlotte Lucas, is going to marry their cousin, Mr. Collins. She is furious since this means she will now lose her house upon her husband’s death:

Mrs. Bennet was in fact too much overpowered to say a great deal while Sir William remained; but no sooner had he left them than her feelings found a rapid vent. In the first place, she persisted in disbelieving the whole of the matter; secondly, she was very sure that Mr. Collins had been taken in; thirdly, she trusted that they would never be happy together; and fourthly, that the match might be broken off. Two inferences, however, were plainly deduced from the whole: one, that Elizabeth was the real cause of the mischief; and the other that she herself had been barbarously misused by them all; and on these two points she principally dwelt during the rest of the day. Nothing could console and nothing could appease her. Nor did that day wear out her resentment. A week elapsed before she could see Elizabeth without scolding her, a month passed away before she could speak to Sir William or Lady Lucas without being rude, and many months were gone before she could at all forgive their daughter.

Here’s a situation many of us could relate to – a NM tirade:

“Her daughters listened in silence to this effusion, sensible that any attempt to reason with her or soothe her would only increase the irritation. She talked on, therefore, without interruption from any of them…”

And later, after Lydia brought disgrace on the family:

“Mrs. Bennet, to whose apartment they all repaired, after a few minutes' conversation together, received them exactly as might be expected; with tears and lamentations of regret, invectives against the villainous conduct of Wickham, and complaints of her own sufferings and ill-usage; blaming everybody but the person to whose ill-judging indulgence the errors of her daughter must principally be owing…

…they all left her to vent all her feelings on the housekeeper, who attended in the absence of her daughters. Though her brother and sister were persuaded that there was no real occasion for such a seclusion from the family, they did not attempt to oppose it, for they knew that she had not prudence enough to hold her tongue before the servants, while they waited at table, and judged it better that ONE only of the household, and the one whom they could most trust should comprehend all her fears and solicitude on the subject.”

Jane had fallen in love with Mr. Bingley, but he suddenly left and she is heart broken. Mrs. Bennet does not seek to comfort her daughter’s pain, but to pick at the open wound:

But as no such delicacy restrained her mother, an hour seldom passed in which she did not talk of Bingley, express her impatience for his arrival, or even require Jane to confess that if he did not come back she would think herself very ill used. It needed all Jane's steady mildness to bear these attacks with tolerable tranquility.

"Oh, that my dear mother had more command over herself! She can have no idea of the pain she gives me by her continual reflections on him. But I will not repine. It cannot last long. He will be forgot, and we shall all be as we were before."

"I begin to be sorry that he comes at all," said Jane to her sister. "It would be nothing; I could see him with perfect indifference, but I can hardly bear to hear it thus perpetually talked of. My mother means well; but she does not know, no one can know, how much I suffer from what she says. Happy shall I be, when his stay at Netherfield is over!"

A thought by Elizabeth when introducing Mr. Darcy to her aunt and uncle:

“It was consoling that he should know she had some relations for whom there was no need to blush.”

Mrs. Bennet lamenting on how her unheard judgment about Lydia was correct and now they were doomed:

“but I was overruled, as I always am. Poor dear child! And now here's Mr. Bennet gone away, and I know he will fight Wickham, wherever he meets him and then he will be killed, and what is to become of us all? The Collinses will turn us out before he is cold in his grave, and if you are not kind to us, brother, I do not know what we shall do."

Mrs. Bennet’s sense of entitlement when Lydia’s disgrace has been reversed when she thinks her brother paid off Wickham:

"Well," cried her mother, "it is all very right; 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.”

Elizabeth standing up to Lady Catherine's orders to not marry Mr. Darcy:

"I have said no such thing. I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to YOU, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me…

Neither duty, nor honour, nor gratitude," replied Elizabeth, "have any possible claim on me, in the present instance. No principle of either would be violated by my marriage with Mr. Darcy. And with regard to the resentment of his family, or the indignation of the world, if the former WERE excited by his marrying me, it would not give me one moment's concern--and the world in general would have too much sense to join in the scorn."

After the proposal – Elizabeth was concerned with shielding Mr.Darcy from her mother’s verbal attacks:

During their walk, it was resolved that Mr. Bennet's consent should be asked in the course of the evening. Elizabeth reserved to herself the application for her mother's. She could not determine how her mother would take it; sometimes doubting whether all his wealth and grandeur would be enough to overcome her abhorrence of the man. But whether she were violently set against the match, or violently delighted with it, it was certain that her manner would be equally ill adapted to do credit to her sense; and she could no more bear that Mr. Darcy should hear the first raptures of her joy, than the first vehemence of her disapprobation.

…yet, whenever she DID speak, she must be vulgar. Nor was her respect for him, though it made her more quiet, at all likely to make her more elegant. Elizabeth did all she could to shield him from the frequent notice of either, and was ever anxious to keep him to herself, and to those of her family with whom he might converse without mortification;

More entitlement, this time from Lydia in a letter to her now wealthy sister Lizzy:

"MY DEAR LIZZY,"I wish you joy. If you love Mr. Darcy half as well as I do my dear Wickham, you must be very happy. It is a great comfort to have you so rich, and when you have nothing else to do, I hope you will think of us. I am sure Wickham would like a place at court very much, and I do not think we shall have quite money enough to live upon without some help. Any place would do, of about three or four hundred a year; but however, do not speak to Mr. Darcy about it, if you had rather not." Yours, etc."

As it happened that Elizabeth had MUCH rather not, she endeavored in her answer to put an end to every entreaty and expectation of the kind. Such relief, however, as it was in her power to afford, by the practice of what might be called economy in her own private expenses, she frequently sent them. It had always been evident to her that such an income as theirs, under the direction of two persons so extravagant in their wants, and heedless of the future, must be very insufficient to their support; and whenever they changed their quarters, either Jane or herself were sure of being applied to for some little assistance towards discharging their bills. Their manner of living, even when the restoration of peace dismissed them to a home, was unsettled in the extreme. They were always moving from place to place in quest of a cheap situation, and always spending more than they ought”

What other fiction books have you read have the narcissistic family dynamic tied into it?