Seeing our own weakness exemplified in someone else, including and perhaps especially in artistic representation, can be a great opportunity for us—if we recognize ourselves, and also see the weakness for what it is.
Recently as we were reading Pride and Prejudice out loud my young son commented, “I love Mr. Bennet!” This was, of course, after Mr. Bennet had wittily put Mrs. Bennet in her place. At the time I smiled to myself.
But now, I am realizing once again Jane Austen’s remarkable portrayal of human life and how it challenges me in root ways.
It is easy to dislike Mrs. Bennet. She is a striking portrait of a small-minded wife and mother. As such, it is easy to ‘sympathize’ with Mr. Bennet and to lap us his droll mockery of his wife.
Yet as the story unfolds his apparent failures as husband, father, and man of the household come more and more to light. So I the reader—especially I the husband, father, and man of the household—might begin to take a more critical look and also wonder what I have in common with him.
We have from the start windows onto Mr. Bennet as a father, such as when at the first dance assembly we read of his younger daughters that “Catherine and Lydia had been fortunate to be never without partners, which was all that they had learnt to care for at a ball.” The unfolding of the plot will amply raise the issue of Mr. Bennet’s formation of his daughters. Perhaps a less considered issue is the connection between Mrs. Bennet’s character flaws and Mr. Bennet as a husband.
When I read in the opening chapter that Mrs. Bennet was “a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper” and “discontented,” I don’t think I ever asked myself why she is of uncertain temper and discontented.
We are of course immediately in deep waters here, and I must make myself clear. I take for granted that every adult should take first responsibility for his or her own actions, and further that much is brought to marriage from one’s life and choices prior to it. That said, I think the nature of marriage calls for a scrutiny of how each spouse is aiding the other on the path to greater self-knowledge and virtuous character development.
I go further. Given that in saying “I do” a woman has uniquely given herself to the care of her husband, he has a unique responsibility to ask himself whether he is providing the support, the context, and indeed the lead in crafting their life together. As such, I the reader of Pride and Prejudice can and should be prompted at least to ask the question: how has Mr. Bennet failed his wife, and how does he continue to do so, as evidenced in part by his standing on the outside criticizing her.
I certainly do not imply that he has simply ‘made’ her be this way, nor that he could somehow ‘fix’ her. But I do assert—and here is something I want to take to heart—that he could take a very different approach to her. He can ask first how his actions and failures aggravate her weaknesses and undermine her standing in the family. That in any case would be a first step toward realizing that sarcasm, criticism, and the withholding of any real compassion for his wife—even if seemingly merited—are worse faults than what he thinks he is responding to in her.
Life, and marriage, are astoundingly challenging. My eleven-year-old son understandably chuckles at Mr. Bennet’s witty handling of his wife. I ask myself what it will take for him, and me, to see beyond; to see and to love as Mr. Bennet has failed to do.
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Terrific essay, this coming from someone who’s been married for 35 years.
I have always felt sorry for Mrs. Bennet. Here she has all these daughters with only one real hope in life – to marry well, and a very narrowly proscribed social norm for getting that done. Should these daughters not marry well, what is to become of them? They are disinherited from the family estate. Mr. Bennet seems astonishingly unconcerned about what is to become of these girls, or for helping to correct their obvious character flaws. His wife is understandably panicked about the whole thing, and he is living a carefree life about it. In some ways his study and reading materials are his version of the modern man-child’s “man cave” and and video games. Go in the room, shut the door, and let someone else deal with the problems. Then criticize them for how they do it, to boot.
How funny. I picked up on many of the same things in my last reading of Pride and Prejudice. Like your son, I had previously just enjoyed Mr. Bennet’s wit, but this time I was less impressed. Laughing at his wife and younger daughters may be a somewhat understandable coping mechanism for him, but he seems to lack the sense of responsibility for their well-being that one would hope to see in the head of a household.
This is the gift of great literature – as we mature and change, it always has new things to say to us!
Wonderful insight, Katherine C. I recently read an article quoting Austen scholar Mary Evans… “If Mrs. Bennett is slightly crazy (as Mr. Bennett implies), then perhaps she is so because she perceives more clearly than her husband the possible fate of her five daughters if they do not marry.” …
I too found Mr. Bennett more charming and witty in my younger days. I now find I have deeper empathy for dear Mrs. Bennett than I once did.
T Schilling Nailed it in his comments. Far to many men in our society do this exact same thing and then wonder why our families, our churches, our society and especially our government is in the shape it is in. Maybe I should re-read Pride and Prejudice and some other Jane Austin books now that I am an elderly adult. Men love to blame the “women’s liberation” movement on the ills of our society. I believe that the ”women’s liberation” movement came about because men did exactly what T Schilling stated — “the go into their man cave, play their video games and let the little woman handle everything, including supporting the family!!”
I read Pride and Prejudice in high school and naturally was cheering for Mr. Bennett. Decades and several kids later, I watched the play and saw him in completely different light!
T Schilling and MA nailed it! Men sneering at their wives’ concerns and bellyaching over “constant nagging” is proverbial, a laughable pre-internet meme. It was always thought “charming” that men can’t understand “what women want.” This is not charming, nor humorous. This is a classical failure in marriages. This *is* the root of original feminism.
Woman is not a lesser human to be led because men are bigger, stronger and have greater understanding.
Woman is “the glory of man,” the zenith of creation, worth his life.
She is a whole human being in her own right.
Woman as mothers have always had a deeper understanding of the needs of the humans in their care, and it’s taken men 2000 years of Christianity to grasp that it isn’t a loss of self or masculinity or ego to recognize and value his wife’s gifts and insight and measure his own imperfections in providing for those needs.
St. Joseph headed the Holy Family…but remember that the Blessed Mother was the embodiment of Wisdom, human perfection. She even had the speaking role in her marriage. It was her humility that enabled St. Joseph to succeed. Man’s leadership role is actually God asking him to “step up” in the family, perhaps, because ever since the Fall, he has let God, and woman (though she was guilty in her own right), down.
The right response to radical feminism is not restoring “submission” but restoring trust, communication and understanding between the sexes lost at the Fall. As Christ showed.
It’s brilliant of you to call Mr. Bennet to task, Mr. Cuddeback. Thank you. Perhaps Mrs. Bennet wouldn’t have been so irritating or narrow in her nature if she had had a *partner* who understood and supported her in her anxieties, and she may even have learned to enjoy his interests thereby.