Pride-and-Prejudice

household. In the idealistic world of the romantic comedy, Mrs. Bennet’s
ambition to see her daughters nicely settled appears a simple matter of crude
one-upmanship with Lady Lucas. Thus, when Mr. Bennet teases his wife
rather unkindly over her preoccupation with finding eligible suitors, the
reader is amused. We forget, though, that Mr. Bennet’s own first question
about the newly arrived Mr. Bingley concerns his marital status, which
suggests either that Mr. Bennet is baiting his wife or that his apparent
indifference on the matter is feigned. Mr. Bennet, of course, should be
concerned about the marriage question. As the narrator informs us later, he
regrets having spent all his disposable income, instead of reserving a portion
of it to protect his daughters’ financial future. It hardly excuses him that he
had assumed he would have a son whose coming-of-age would nullify the
“entail”—that is, the legal document that places restrictions on who may
inherit his estate. (In the absence of male heirs, women could typically inherit
an estate but not if an entail existed barring them from doing so.) As
endearing a character as Mr. Bennet is, he has not behaved responsibly as a
father, a fact that becomes all the more apparent when Lydia, who has had
very little in the way of sensible parental guidance, elopes with Wickham,
thereby, as Lady Catherine observes, jeopardizing the marriage prospects of
her four sisters in a world that still cares about the taint of family reputation:
“Not Lydia only, but all were concerned in it” (p. 272).
Mrs. Bennet does not seem such a buffoon when we consider that her
daughters really will be in dire straits should they not marry. The entail of the
Bennet estate to Mr. Collins guarantees not only that the house and grounds
will no longer be available to the Bennet women but that their yearly income
will be considerably reduced. In fact, without one sister well established in
marriage before the death of Mr. Bennet, it would be difficult for any of the
five to maintain the condition of a gentlewoman at all. Having one sister
comfortably married, however, could create a measure of financial security
for the others and might help, through the social connections established, to
ensure a succession of respectable marriages in the family. The possibility
that, in lieu of marriage, these young women might become governesses and
thereby preserve a tenuous connection to the gentry is simply not a viable
option in this novel, where working for a living, even in relatively genteel
circumstances, is a fate worse than marriage to Mr. Collins. If we put aside
the romantic ideal of the novel and look at the material reality, Mrs. Bennet’s
frustration with Elizabeth for declining Mr. Collins’s proposal is entirely
reasonable: Had Elizabeth accepted her distant cousin’s hand, she could have
preserved her father’s estate for herself and for her unmarried sisters.