The Other Bennet Sister

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Martin, Lydia (2006). Pride and Prejudice , Joe Wright (in French). Liège: CEFAL. ISBN 978-2-871-30247-6. I found that this book to be more descriptive and contain less dialogue than Austen’s own work and it also had a more introspective feel to it. This may have been due to the fact that it is told from Mary Bennet’s point of view – it suited her very well. Bennett, Paula (1980). Family Relationships in the Novels of Jane Austen (PDF) (PhD thesis). University Microfilms International. One by one, her sisters marry – Jane and Lizzy for love; Lydia for some semblance of respectability – but Mary, it seems, is destined to remain single and live out her life at Longbourn, at least until her father dies and the house is bequeathed to the reviled Mr Collins. At one point, Hornby’s Cassandra worries that Jane will offend their plain and sententious sister-in-law, Mary Austen, by calling the unlikably plain and sententious Bennet sister in Pride and Prejudice “Mary”. Janice Hadlow evidently also felt that Mary Bennet was given a rough deal by her author and in The Other Bennet Sister sets out to redress the balance, by retelling the events of Pride and Prejudice and their aftermath from Mary’s perspective.

Mary’s drastic growth is seen in the reflection of Romanticism of the day (emotion) and the challenges for women to be able to study seriously (logic). Mary constantly tries to challenge public and polite notion of what a woman should and should not do (where spectacles, study Greek, not accept the first proposal she is offered, willing to be an old maid if she cannot marry for love, etc.) and she becomes more confident in these actions as she grows to balance her logic with her emotions. A] spectacular debut. . . . Writing in prose with the crisp liveliness of Austen's own, Hadlow remains true to the characterizations in Pride and Prejudice without letting them limit her. . . . This will delight Janeites as well as lovers of nuanced female coming-of-age tales." Jones, Hazel (2009). Jane Austen and marriage. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-847-25218-0. Simultaneously a wonderfully warm homage to Jane Austen and a delightful new story in its own right, Janice Hadlow’s The Other Bennet Sister is, at its heart, a life-affirming tale of a young woman finding her place in the world. Witty and uplifting, it will make you feel – and cheer – for Mary as you never have before.

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Ultimately, Mary’s journey is like that taken by every Austen heroine. She learns that she can only expect joy when she has accepted who she really is. She must throw off the false expectations and wrong ideas that have combined to obscure her true nature and prevented her from what makes her happy. Only when she undergoes this evolution does she have a chance at finding fulfillment; only then does she have the clarity to recognize her partner when he presents himself—and only at that moment is she genuinely worthy of love. Myer, Valerie Grosvenor (1997). Jane Austen, Obstinate Heart: A Biography. Arcade Publishing. ISBN 978-1-559-70387-1. Mary was ten when she understood this would never happen. It was a warm afternoon. Mrs. Bennet was taking tea with her sister, Mrs. Phillips. Jane and Lizzy had vanished at the sound of their aunt’s arrival, leaving Mary alone, perched on the sofa, twisting the ends of her hair in her hands, wishing desperately to be somewhere else. Neither her mother nor her aunt paid her any attention. Their conversation rambled on, ranging from the likelihood of Lady Lucas’s cook leaving her—“and just before the bottling season too”—to the probability of the vicar’s wife being brought to bed this very week; but when Mrs. Phillips dropped her voice to a whisper and leant forward to impart a particularly choice piece of gossip, Mrs. Bennet was suddenly alert to her daughter’s presence. However, Mr Collins is not assured of inheriting Longbourn, as he could be displaced by a son born either to Mrs Bennet or to a subsequent wife of Mr Bennet were Mrs Bennet to die and he to remarry. He cannot however be displaced by a son born to any of Mr Bennet's daughters, as the estate is entailed 'in the male line' i.e. to a son's son, son's son's son, etc., of whoever set the entail in place. The familiar, beloved characters from the original stay strong and consistent. Mrs. Bennet suffers endlessly from her nerves and from daughters not taking her advice. Caroline Bingley is still a mean girl, and an expert at bitchy zingers just subtle enough to miss nearby men. I really enjoyed Charlotte giving Mary advice about marriage for plain women without a lot of money. We also get to see a bit more of the Gardiners.

To have seen her daughters married to men of merely respectable means would have soothed away many of Mrs. Bennet’s anxieties; but to imagine them united to husbands of ample income and substantial property was for her a joy undimmed by frequent contemplation. Nothing made her happier than to think of them in possession of elegant houses and rolling parkland, certain of never hearing the dreaded word entail again. She was aware, of course, that wealthy men in want of wives were not easy to find and harder still to catch, especially by girls without large dowries. But she was undaunted. Her daughters, she believed, possessed an advantage that would enable them to triumph over all difficulties: other girls might be rich, but her daughters were beautiful. This, she was sure, was the blessing that would deliver them into wealth. Their looks would attract men of the first eligibility, dazzling their eyes, winning their hearts, and persuading them to ignore the promptings of cold, mercenary common sense. It was for Mrs. Bennet an article of faith that, in the absence of ten thousand pounds in the hand, a pretty face was the single most valuable asset a young woman could possess.

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The Other Bennet Sister reads as an enjoyable kind of fanfic and if it feels a little pedestrian by comparison, the fact that the appeal of these characters endures in hands less deft than their original creator’s is testament to how vividly they were first drawn and the place they have established in readers’ affections. But she was a clever girl, and she soon understood what the sighs and frowns and dismissals meant. She could not help but notice that Mrs. Bennet never talked about her appearance with the pleasure with which she described her elder sisters.

Yes, it is a great disappointment to me, and excessively bad for my nerves. But I find that once I look at my other daughters, I soon feel better. Where has she got to with the sugar?”

He regards the world with an ironic detachment. When he is involved in a social event, such as the ball at Netherfield, he is a silent and amused witness of the blunders of his family. [11] Even the discovery of Darcy's role in Lydia's marriage only draws from him an exclamation of relief: "So much the better. It will save me a world of trouble and economy". [12] Though he does love his daughters (Elizabeth in particular), he often fails as a parent, preferring instead to withdraw from the never-ending marriage concerns of the women around him rather than offer help. In fact, he often enjoys laughing at the sillier members of his family.