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Featuring a extensive assortment of multi-colored personalities, Jane Austen’s Pleasure and Prejudice contains both equally emotionally deep, interesting personas as well as entertaining caricatures in the bumpkins who make up the country social picture of 18th-century England. Equally types of characters are present in the Bennet family, where two oldest daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, are certainly more smart and well-mannered than possibly their mom or their particular three younger sisters. In the midst of this dichotomy is all their father, Mr. Bennet. He’s, at first glance, a likeable fellow, whose clever jokes with the expense of his ridiculous wife and humorously dried attitude toward his family’s sometimes preposterous behavior primarily lead you to appreciate him intended for his brains and wit. But ultimately he is a disappointing, unattractive figure mainly because these attributes reveal his failings both as a daddy and hubby: his constant mockery of his partner begins to seem cruel and creates an unhealthy marital environment for his children to grow up in, while his preference to insult his younger daughters’ behavior instead of correcting that rings of tremendous carelessness. It is this complete disinterest in the affairs of his family that provides his most youthful children the boorish good manners he detests so much about them they are increased in a vacuum and are miserable of any competent child-rearing that could fix their complications.
Away of all of the character types in the book, nobody is a increased target for Mr. Bennet’s scorn and derision than his very own wife. As a young person, he made concentrate on of getting married to for “youth, beauty, as well as the appearance of good humor” instead of for perceptive or mental compatibility, and thus ended up being stuck with Mrs. Bennet, a woman with a “weak understanding and an illiberal mind” for who all of his “respect, respect, and self confidence had disappeared for ever” (228). For making this disappointed arrangement even more tolerable, this individual gleans a lot of his satisfaction from annoying and mocking his other half, with the narrator noting that “her lack of knowledge and folly contributed to his amusement” (228). He vexes her by causing her believe that he is ardently opposed to calling on Mr. Bingley, only to reveal he had already visited the gentleman and just wanted to notice her grumble about the family’s insufficient social connections (9), whilst earlier this individual slyly pokes fun for her fading beauty simply by sarcastically mentioning that Mister. Bingley might find her more desirable than any kind of their daughters (6). Although the reader is intended to find laughter in his putting down of his wife, a boorish girl whose continuous scheming to marry off her daughters is matched just by her complete lack of tact and social grace, there is also the underlying emotion that these sensible jokes will be cruel and inappropriate for any married person to play in the spouse. Elizabeth, in particular, problems to get back together her dad’s affectionate remedying of herself with this “continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum” that has him “exposing his wife towards the contempt of her own children, inches as she feels he would not realize the result such an miserable marital environment has on the upbringing in the girls (228). She wishes he would, with regard to his relatives, turn his energies away from ridiculing Mrs. Bennet, that he would turn into “fully mindful of the evils arising from so ill-judged a direction of talents, skillsets which rightly used, may at least preserve the respectability of his children, even if not capable of enlarging the mind of his wife” (229). In her opinion, it is not enough for him to merely crack jokes in order to make the very best of a scenario he evidently does not get pleasure from, he must likewise honor the responsibilities of the marriage contract by honoring and respecting his wife, the two for her reason as well as to offer all of their children a proper parental input from parents who love each other as much they do the remaining of their friends and family.
In a similar line of thinking, Mr. Bennet thinks almost no of Kitty and Lydia, the two most youthful girls, who also are actually most like their very own mother because they reveal her penchants for vapid conversation and immature obsessions with getting married to all of the males they come across. He honestly insults these people for their flightiness, telling these people that “you must be a pair of the silliest girls in the country, ” and then later ordering Kitty that she is never to be allowed outside of the house “till you can prove that you could have spent eight minutes of each day in a rational manner” (30, 284). However , while troubling since it to have a daddy openly mocking and denigrating his individual children, the actual Mr. Bennet’s relationship to his younger daughters much more upsetting is that his own negligent raising a child is responsible for all their obnoxious carry out. He basically does not care enough about his duties like a father to enforce any kind of rules or standards, instead, all he desires is to have a personal room in which he can get away his family obligations: it truly is mentioned that “in his library he had been always sure of amusement and harmony, and though well prepared, as he informed Elizabeth, to satisfy with folly and selfishness in every additional room inside your home, he was utilized to be free from right now there there” (70). That this individual actually is ready to allow his daughters to act with conceit and folly provided they don’t explicitly bother him is at the heart of Mr. Bennet’s parental failings. All he is willing to do is accept their poor behavior, telling his wife “if my children are silly I must hope to be constantly sensible of it, ” but he is certainly not willing to attempt to change them (30). Actually Elizabeth knows her father’s lackadaisical method to parenting, and so she confronts him to show her very own concerns with regards to Lydia and her forthcoming trip to Brighton in the hopes that he will listen closely, warning that:
In the event you, my dear father, will never take the difficulties of checking her joyful spirits she is going to soon be beyond the reach of amendment she’ll be, at sixteen, one of the most determined fidanzato that available herself and her family ridiculous (223).
Mr. Bennet’s own arguments pertaining to permitting the trip to move forward are incredibly self-interested and disparaging to his youngest: that “Lydia are never easy till she has subjected herself in a few public place or another, inches “we shall have no peacefulness at Longbourn if Lydia does not head to Brighton, inches and that being there “may teach her her own insignificance” (222-24). He would rather avoid dealing with a whiny and disappointed kid while secretly hoping that this trip will offer her the teachings about correct conduct that he chosen not to pass on himself than set his foot down on refusing his the majority of immature little girl permission to visit a isolated town teeming with opportunistic and one men. Eventually, it is this kind of reluctance to consider a stand and enforce discipline upon Lydia that is certainly responsible for her elopement with Mr. Wickham and the embarrassing, expensive (although paid for by simply Mr. Darcy), and drama-filled ordeal that the entire friends and family, including himself, must experience to get her backside. Apathy and lack of desire for raising his daughters the right way makes him an even a whole lot worse parent than Mrs. Bennet because, as opposed to his unskilled wife, he actually possesses the intellect and beliefs needed to advise his children but doesn’t even take the time to employ these people.
Even if it comes to his two eldest daughters, whom he admires and appreciates for their even more refined agencement and the perceptive stimulation they give, Mr. Bennet is still little of an active father and is also still selfishly focused on what they can perform for him instead of the other way round. Although this individual does love them (as this individual privately could admit regarding his additional daughters while well), this individual really only values the improvement they make to his own well-being, with the narrator observing that having been happy to you can keep them returned by Longbourn for the sake of the quality of the conversation at the dinner table, “which had dropped much of the animation, and most of it is sense” by way of a absence (59). Admittedly this individual does stand for Elizabeth when she’s faced with the unpalatable idea of marrying Mr. Collins, nevertheless he just interferes with the situation when it is straight presented to him simply by his better half in a method he can’t avoid. Which is extent where Mr. Bennet will go to get even his most dearest children: he only assists them when the situation is usually deposited in the lap and he has no choice but to get involved. When ever issues occur where he can be compelled to get involved, he can either ineffective or incredibly passive and acquiescent. Mister. Darcy’s pitch for marriage is acknowledged in part since “he [Darcy] is the kind of man, indeed, to whom I should never dare refuse anything at all, ” whilst his powerlessness once called into action is definitely emphasized simply by his vacation to London to search for Lydia. Presently there it is Messrs. Darcy and Gardiner whom are responsible for finding and paying off Wickham to be able to ensure a good marriage Mr. Bennet acquired nothing to do with this effort, having already went back to Longbourn in beat. It is a sad indictment of his uselessness as a father figure that the very best way in which Mr. Bennet may help his daughters particularly Anne and Elizabeth is to use his situation for example of for what reason they should steer clear of marrying intended for beauty instead of love. Since anything aside from a cautionary tale, he’s surprisingly independent and ineffective.
Even though his quick wit and humorous put-downs of the naturally more unlikeable characters will be initially designed to endear him to the visitor, further research of Mr. Bennet’s personality and activities only disclose him to become a tremendous inability, both as a husband and father. This individual makes it obvious that this individual has virtually no respect pertaining to his wife, and that he is usually even unwilling to sacrifice the only source of pleasure this individual gets by her organization his extended harassment of her so that his kids can have a healthier, more well intentioned marital environment to grow up in. This kind of a ability of disinterest is also within his marriage with his daughters, especially the youthful ones, who he prefers to insult for poor behavior rather than basically teaching them lessons that will improve their manners. Even the more mature ones, whom he holds in higher esteem, obtain very little direct support or instruction from him and are instead left with their own gadgets. This neglect, toward the two his other half and his children, is as very much responsible for their very own inappropriate habit as their personal failings because Mr. Bennet possesses the strength to help improve them but would not use it.
Works Cited:
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Penguin Classics Copy. New York: Penguin, 2009. Print.
