I don’t think it would have been “genteel poverty”, just pretty plain old poverty. If Mr. Darcy hadn’t come along, Elizabeth would likely have married someone else - I always thought the point of Pride and Prejudice was at least in part how lucky Elizabeth was to fall in love with a rich man who happened to fall in love with her. It was unusual, and therefore the subject of a novel. Jane Austen had pretty radical ideas!
Mary and Mr. Collins would have been as “happy” as Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins - which is to say, it wasn’t a consideration. You didn’t get married to be “happy” and Charlotte was cool with that. She got a respectable establishment and the hope of children. Mary was as much of a fool as her mother was, though, only in a different way. She wouldn’t have been able to manage Mr. Collins as well as Charlotte could, but the resulting “unhappiness” would lead to what? Just unhappiness. She wouldn’t get a divorce, or go back home to live with Ma and Pa. She would have become a bigger pain in the neck than she already was.
It’s weird to look at the Bennett family with modern ideas of what family life should be. At least to me.
I always thought Charlotte made a good point when she says that Mr. Collins, for all his faults, is a good man and not vicious. He is vain, petty and silly but he will care for her and not compromise her or their children’s security.
Oh, yeah. For his own sake Mr. Collin is glad to suck up to anyone with money. And Charlotte knows that he’ll inherit an entailed estate, so he wouldn’t be able to frivol away the money even if he wanted to (which I don’t think he would). provided she bears a son, Charlotte knows she could live comfortably for the rest of her life.
That’s very true. Compared with Darcey or even Bingley, Collins is a schlub. But he’s not a drinker, not dishonest, not likely to beat up his wife or lose all their money gambling. Charlotte could do much worse. I could see it being an ultimately affectionate, if not intimate, marriage.
And I might add that Collins is likely to be happier with Charlotte than with Elizabeth as a wife, partly because Charlotte will want to make him happy, while Elizabeth with her romantic ideals will keep the pair of them in a state of moderate unhappiness.
It would have been genteel poverty, because Elizabeth would have been forced to keep up the outward appearance of middle-class respectability without the financial means to do it. That’s what “genteel poverty” means.
I agree, we aren’t talking genteel poverty on 50 pounds a year - and I think that the Bennett girls - should their mother outlive their father - be lucky to see ANY of the money that is supposed to pass to them at their mother’s death.
Mr. Gardiner would be taking in the Bennetts. He appears to the the only relation that they have that would be in a position to do so. He seems to be financially stable, but not wealthy enough to support three women (Mrs. Bennett, Lydia, and Kitty) who likely have ‘no turn for economy’ - though I think its would be a minor cost to support Jane, Elizabeth and Mary.
Really? I thought he was a jerk. Since he has a favourable opinion of the heroine of the novel the reader’s inclination might be to see him in a favourable light, but the way he constantly belittles his wife and younger daughters is very obnoxious. I didn’t care for him much at all.
Regarding Mary and Mr. Collins, I agree with what other people have said - Charlotte swooped in first; Mary is the least pretty of the bunch. In addition, Mr. Collins might think it slightly humiliating to be obviously going down the list of sisters. He never proposed to Jane. As far as people know, his first choice was Elizabeth who turned him down. Maybe it would be embarassing to move down to the next sister in the bunch and try them one by one. In any case, he doesn’t get any financial gain by marrying one of the Bennett sisters, right? The property will go to him anyway after Mr. Bennett dies. So Mary has neither money nor looks to recommend her. Charlotte would presumably have something to bring to the table.
Thank you, Giles. It’s good to know that real men do read Pride and Prejudice.
In the yet another recent remake of P&P, with Keira Knightley as Lizzie, they show a much milder take on the Bennet family, with Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blythin (sp?) as Mr. and Mrs. still being somewhat in love, and the sisters all truly loving one another. I found myself wondering what version of the book they had read. It might have made for a sweeter, gentler movie, but it wasn’t the book Jane Austen wrote!
In this version, Mr. Bennet comforts Mary after reprimanding her at the ball, and Mr. Collins is more insecure and nervous than he is gloriously pompous. It’s still a good story - how can it help it? And anything with the lovely Keira, the wonderful Donald, and sheep has something going for it.
But Mr. Collins still didn’t marry Mary, he married Charlotte, dammit! I’m with Dangerosa on this. Eventually, if I keep reading or watching, it’s going to turn out right, just as little Newt isn’t going to slip out of her jacket into the water filled tunnel in Aliens.
I am thinking that, even if Mary married Mr Collins instead of Charlotte, the events of the novel could have most likely taken a similar route. Let’s suppose Mr Collins is charmed by the most bookish of the Bennett sisters, and makes her his wife. It is possible that after a while Mary would write to Jane and Elizabeth asking for advice on how to handle him. They would have gone together to Kent to cheer her up and advise her, and there you go, Mr Darcy meets Elizabeth again, declares, gets rebuffed and decides to improve. He might even lean on Mr Collins to become a better husband, which I think he could well be, given an illustrious example, ahem ahem. Then Lydia runs off with Wickham anyway (this could not be influenced by Mary marrying Mr Collins) and then things could go more or less as in the original timeline.
Alternative: Mary marries Mr Collins, goes off with him, does reasonably well, Elizabeth never goes to Rosings to meet Mr Darcy, which was damn unlikely anyway. Mr Darcy is already interested anyway (he renewed their acquaintance in Kent in the novel), so he chases her back to Hertfordshire. He declares in Longbourne instead, but still gets rejected. He decides he wants to improve, encourages Mr Bingley to get back with Jane, etc etc, and so on.
What I want to say is that much of what the main characters would do is pretty much determined more or less independently of the fate of the minor ones. Mr Darcy is in love with Elizabeth (or at least quite interested in her), and went out of his way to meet her. Lydia is keen to follow the soldiers, and will have her way, and therefore meet Whickham. From there, things go on rails until everyone gets a similar ending to the original novel. Except for Charlotte, who in any case I suppose can be provided for by her father, who was a successful merchant, later ennobled.
I thought he was a bitter and lonely man. When I first read the novel (and I am a man, btw) I also didn’t care for him, and thought him way too detached. But then I thought how bitter he must have felt when he realized that the girl he fell in love with was actually a superficial and vain woman. This indisposed him towards her, and that’s why he continuously taunts her - he despises her. I see a certain moderate affection, and more possibly the comfort that comes with being used to someone’s presence, but he despises his wife.
That would not make for a happy marriage. Jane the eldest daughter I like to think they raised together; Jane has a good natured disposition that does not look like it comes from her mother. Mr Bennett paid then more attention to Elizabeth, as it was not the boy he was hoping for; so he raises her as more of an intellectual girl.
He tries the same for poor Mary, but is absorbed by his older daughters, and maybe compares her unfavourably with them. After a while, he becomes more distant from her. I don’t think I ever read in the novel about Mr Bennett talking with affection to Mary.
When he had two more daughters, Mr Bennett must have given up, leaving them open to the influence of his wife, who spoiled them and paid no attention to Mary as well, not sympathizing with her tastes.
All in all, a pretty rotten situation for most of the Bennetts. Jane and Elizabeth are better off because they have each other, and their father, and their friends (Charlotte is described as very close) and are probably the more balanced members of the family.
Man, do I go on! Do feel free to skip my post if you’re not into overanalyzing novels. And yet, what a genius Jane Austen was, to create a novel with such a textured environment. Much better than anything written today, from that respect!
Agreed. His motive for wanting to marry one of the sisters in the first place is charity – as far as he’s concerned, he’s doing the Bennets a HUGE favor by marrying one of their daughters so that the property can stay in the family. Given his psychological makeup, I don’t think he’s the sort of person who would even think of turning to the next daughter after Lizzy not only turns him down, but refuses to treat him as the savior he thinks he is. He stalks off in a fit of pique, and Charlotte snags him.
BTW, I have a vague recollection that Austen said in one of her letters that both Mary and Kitty eventually married (and gave some particulars about their respective husbands), but I can’t find a cite for this offhand.
Austen is full of such marriages. My own favorite is Charlotte and Mr. Palmer - who made the near identical match (though Mrs. Palmer seems better natured than Mrs. Bennett). Edward Ferrars almost makes the same mistake in marrying Lucy Steele - and then his brother goes ahead and does it - poor fool who marries Lucy Steele. Willoughby ends up marrying Miss Grey, for money, not for love - and both of them seem to know it wen they marry - but SHE wants a handsome dashing husband, and HE needs a fortune. Sir John and Lady Middleton are not a good match, both surround themselves with company or children to avoid their spouse. Jane Fairfax marries the handsome and dashing Frank Churchill - but by the time it happens we all feel a little sorry for Jane Fairfax.
Austen takes great pleasure in showing the humor of a mismatched couple - the well matched ones (Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, Mr and Mrs. Weston) are given far less interesting material.
Yes, Kitty spends most of her time between her two elder sisters and becomes much improved. She marries a clergyman (on one of their estates, perhaps?)
Mary is left home with her mother, and is forced to mix more in the world. She “becomes a star” in the society of their little village, and eventually marries one of her uncle’s clerks.
Charlotte, not Mary, has to marry Mr. Collins because Elizabeth wouldn’t be shocked otherwise. Charlotte was intelligent, she was Elizabeth’s friend, she was like Elizabeth in a lot of ways. We, and Elizabeth, wouldn’t be compelled to contemplate our conviction that we deserve to and somehow will manage to marry for love if Mary had married Collins–from Lizzie’s vantage point, with her winning personality Mary would be marrying up to Collins and Elizabeth frankly wouldn’t much care if Mary was in love or happy.
And Elizabeth’s post-nuptial visit to Mary and Mr. Collins? Good luck with that. Lizzie’s head would probably explode.
Well, I was speaking in the sense that Mr. Bennett doesn’t drink to excess, gamble, run up huge bills, and bed any girl he can get (which includes forcing the maids). Wickham is not going to stop doing any of those things just because he’s married, and if he gets bored enough he’s quite likely to leave Lydia behind somewhere.
Mr. Bennett isn’t a particularly good husband or father; it seems to me that his reaction to his disappointment in his wife was to become something of a hermit and retreat from the household as much as possible. He doesn’t approve of the way his wife acts or how she raises the children, but neither does he do anything about it besides making occasional sarcastic remarks. All in all, if you’re trapped in a loveless marriage with no way out, it’s not the worst thing you could do. It’s not the best either, but at least he doesn’t actively misbehave, which an awful lot of men in his position would have done.
True enough, and I have a sneaking affection for Mr B (no doubt from the Colin Firth version–I really liked the portrayal of Mr B in that one), but he is no father figure. He did all right with Jane and Lizzie, but he essentially abdicated his authority soon after, IMO. He retreated to his books, and finding no common spark of interest from Mary, Kitty or Lydia, did not extend himself to them. Is it any wonder they chose how they chose? Or perhaps he comforts himself with the notion that IF he had involved himself with their upbringing, they would not have turned out the way they did?
Mr and Mrs B are like so many older couples I know. Essentially sharing space and finances, but no real connection. I know several women as silly as Mrs B, and several men as snarky as Mr B, one reason Austen’s novel does not age–the characters are still around us (although Mr Darcys are thin on the ground!).
My. B probably wasn’t much different from most men of his time. Darcy is supposed to be the exception, not the rule. I would guess that most men left the child-rearing and household running to the women. And most mothers would leave the raising of the young kids to nurses. Men would hunt and shot and run the financial aspects of their estates. Women would pay calls and sew and run the house and servants. The adults would dine together but would probably be segregated for most of their day-to-day lives. In out modern day I bet we spend more time with our co-workers than they spent with their spouses. And don’t we all have co-workers who we just tolerate? That’s probably like a lot of married folks back then.
Yes, I’m sure Mr. Bennett could have been worse, and maybe many men in his situation would have been indifferent to their children. But then again, look at John Knightley (Emma’s brother-in-law) in Emma! He seemed very interested in his children.
I’m sorry, Mr. Bennett may not suffer from some of the common faults of his time, but his behaviour to his wife and children was shameful. The fact that he thought his wife silly should have been even more reason to take more interest in the education of his children. I think Mary Bennett gets a bad rap in the book, at least she tried to improve her mind and her talents, even though her self-education could have produced more results if Mary had been more intelligent. Elizabeth Bennett is clever and witty, but, I don’t recall her making any great efforts to become a scholar or a good musician or a painter. I seem to remember Mr. Knightley complaining about the same fault in Emma - intelligent but intellectually lazy. Perhaps this characteristic of Jane Austen’s heroines gives us some insight into Jane Austen’s character?
Well said! This is a more significant point to explain the marriage between Charlotte and Mr. Collins then the fact that it’s necessary for the plot to have Elizabeth go visit her friend and run into Darcy again. The second series of encounters with Mr. Darcy could have been arranged in any number of ways.
To answer the OP, I am sure it would have been in Mrs. Bennett’s character to encourage Mr. Collins’ pursuit of any of her other daughters, but she was probably too flustered by Elizabeth’s refusal to gain her wits in time to prevent Mr. Collin’s engagement to Charlotte.