Mrs. Bennet

One thing I wanted to, one question I wanted to bring up, is Catherine Morland a very un-Austin-esque heroine? Or I should say protagonist, because, I mean, the first sentence, it's, no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine.

I mean, it's almost like Austen is setting herself a challenge by centering her book on someone who is on the face of things like very ordinary in every way, um, intellectually ordinary and has, doesn't have, I guess, sort of the, I don't know, isn't as intellectually exciting as, uh, Elizabeth Bennett or, uh, or, uh, Eleanor Dashwood in, in Sense and Sensibility.

Um, anyway, that's,

yeah, she's kind of like the anti-Elizabeth or the anti-Eleanor, um, Well, in one

way, but in another way, she's almost a prototype because Elizabeth Bennett also doesn't suffer fools gladly.

No, I would say

that too.

These things that

And there are a few scenes outside of there, you know, when they're socializing um in outside hours etc but if i had lots of different people in lots of different places around because of course in the modern era everybody's more distributed and far apart.

So you've gone off to university, they're down in London working, but Mrs. Bennet up in Hertfordshire still.

And it's not very likely that all five of them would still have been living, or six of them would still be living together.

So it would have been quite difficult to tie them into the plot as well and make them relevant.

What is this silly side point? This needs to go.

And it went.

So when I look at the relationships, like Mrs. Bennett and Mr. Bennett, very, very different, but also a very fascinating look at how do we translate some of the traits from that period into like a modern setting? I mean, there's been a lot of discussion about Mr.

Bennett as a father about how he is failing his family.

OK, so this book was written over 200 years ago in Regency era England.

So it concerns protagonist Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters.

They are all unmarried and they are in the gentry class.

So they do own their own home in their own land or their father does anyway.

But because it is five women and this is Regency era, England women's rights were a lot different than they are today.

There was no real inheritance line for women.

So the land would have gone to Mr Collins, a cousin of the Bennetts.

So the stakes are kind of high for like a romance novel because they're not only as a romance, it's kind of their entire futures and entire security depend on them finding like a suitor.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

That's not a truth universally acknowledged, but it's universally acknowledged that way by Mrs. Bennett, whom we meet a nanosecond later after this statement resonates with us as a reader.

And we realize that's her worldview and that her worldview has bled through that omniscient narration.

And we almost accepted as a given fact that, okay, well, this new young man must be getting married to one of her daughters because that is the truth universally acknowledged.

And Carly, it's so funny that you say that she is like the Keira Knightley.

She kind of is like the Keira Knightley of the 2010s, which makes sense because they both play Lizzie Bennet.

Yeah, that is so true.

I love that.

Yeah.

All right.

So we are we start out our story with Lily James's voice coming through as Elizabeth Bennett with the iconic Austin.

Well, a spin on the iconic Austin text.

Other Austen characters like...

Mrs. Bennett, you know, she's got this ridiculous and obnoxious side to her, but also bears the enormous stress of securing her daughter's futures pretty much on her own.

And that makes her a far more layered and sympathetic character, even when she's being silly.

Willoughby, on the other hand, is far more cut and dry, I think.

We also see that Eleanor and their mother are delighted that they care for one another, first and foremost.

Like, I've never thought that there was a question of that when it came to sense and sensibility.

Like, Mrs. Bennett is a far better example of that particular argument if you're going to go with that.

And then I can't remember if it's in this interview or another one.

Yeah.

I remember for Pride and Prejudice and it, and they were saying that Mrs. Bennet was a gold digger.

[laughs]

Which I suppose isn't wrong, but clearly-