Do you consider Mr and Mrs Bennet to be good parents?

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Pride and Prejudice coursework

5. Do you consider Mr and Mrs Bennet to be good parents? 

I do not consider Mr or Mrs Bennet to be good parents. Jane Austen does not present them in a favourable light and I think anyone who reads this novel would get the impression that they are not good parents.

        A responsibility of fathers in society in Austen’s day was to provide financially for his children so they have secure futures. However, Mr Bennet does not do this. He pays little thought to the girls’ futures and seems to be a man who does not really consider anything seriously. We know this because Austen tells us, after Lydia had run away and Mr Bennet believes himself in the debt of Mr Gardiner, that Mr Bennet had often wished that he had saved an annual sum for the “better provision of his children, and of his wife” and that now he “wished it more than ever.” This shows us he is unthoughtful and makes foolish decisions, which later on he regrets.

Mr Bennet does not take anything seriously or talks to Mrs Bennet with respect or seriousness. This means the girls do not grow up in a very happy or secure home. The parents’ marriage has not gone well and Mr Bennet only married Mrs Bennet on account of her “youth and good humour”. We learn of his lack of respect for her as he tells her, after hearing her complain about her nerves, that he respects her nerves and says, ‘They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least’. He enjoys teasing his wife and pretends that he hasn’t visited Bingley – just to see the shock on his wife’s face when he tells them. He is actually very cruel to Mrs Bennet, as she does not understand his sarcastic wit. This lack of understanding is reflected in Lydia, who has grown up to believe that jokes, even cruel ones, are the way to behave, thanks to her father’s behaviour and influence. In her letter telling of her elopement as she wrote to Mrs Forster, she sys that she will laugh and ‘what a good joke it will be’.

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A mother in Austen’s day should be responsible for helping her daughters find husbands. This seems to be Mrs Bennet’s strong point but she seems to let this objective take over. Rather than considering their present state, she is always thinking about the future and is prepared to embarrass her girls in order to give them a chance to marry well. For example, on page 27, Mrs Bennet makes Jane ride on a horse in the hope that it might rain so she would become ill and ‘stay all night’ in Bingley’s house. Austen writes that Mrs Bennet was ...

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