Mr.
Bennet:
Mr. Bennet’s suffering consequences is he made the
life-changing mistake of marrying someone just because she was cute and flirty,
and all it got him was a "discontented" and ridiculous wife and five
daughters. Let's flash back to what Mr. and Mrs. Bennet's whole romance must
have been like. A beautiful, fun-loving girl from a middle-class family
(meaning that her dad was in trade) meets a funny guy on the lower end of the gentry’s
totem pole. They make cow-eyes at each other, and bam! Whirlwind courtship ends
in a nice wedding ceremony.
The novel's genius shows us just what that initial
attraction turns into after 22 years in a society in which divorce is basically
impossible. It turns out that picking our wife based just on appearance and
sexual chemistry isn't such a great idea. In fact, the repercussions are pretty
dire.
He doesn't start drinking or buying expensive
cars—the narrator tells us that "Mr. Bennet was not of a disposition to
seek comfort for the disappointment which his own imprudence had brought on, in
any of those pleasures which too often console the unfortunate for their folly
or their vice" (42.1), which is a fancy way of saying that he doesn't
become an alcoholic. Instead, he seeks comfort in being a sarcastic jerk: "To
his wife he was very little otherwise indebted, than as her ignorance and folly
had contributed to his amusement" (42.1). Basically, he gets his kicks
making fun of his silly wife.
On the surface it might look less harmful than
drinking and gambling, but it's just as destructive to his family. As Lizzy
realizes as last, there's a lot of "evil" in "so ill-judged a
direction of talents; talents, which, rightly used, might at least have
preserved the respectability of his daughters" (42.2). But Mr. Bennet was
really upset about his wife. He can’t control her. That’s why he makes jokes of
her to calm himself. And these things brought disrespect to him from his
daughters.
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