Pride and Prejudice

Mrs. Bennet excitedly informs her husband that Mr. Bingley, a “single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year” (6) has rented Netherfield Park, a nearby estate. According to Mrs. Bennet, this is “a fine thing” (6) for their five daughters. When Mr. Bennet asks why, Mrs. Bennet, exasperated, suggests Bingley may fall in love with one of them. Though she adamantly encourages her husband to visit Bingley, Mr. Bennet is in no hurry, telling her she and the girls may visit Bingley without him; he even suggests the girls go alone, for as Mrs. Bennet is “as handsome as any of them” (6),Bingley may fall in love with her, instead. Mrs. Bennet insists that a woman with “five grown up daughters” does not have the luxury of “thinking of her own beauty” (6).

Mrs. Bennet’s desire for her husband to visit Bingley is made greater by the fact that their neighbors, Sir William and Lady Lucas, are going. Mr. Bennet is unmoved, insisting he will “send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls” (6); he adds that he personally prefers their daughter Elizabeth, for Elizabeth “has something more of quickness than her sisters” (7), who “are silly and ignorant like other girls” (7).