Mrs. Bennet (Bennets, bonnet)

Elizabeth Bennet (Bennets, bonnet, Lizzy) is the well-meaning but foolish mother of the Elizabeth Bennet (Bennets, bonnet, Lizzy) daughters, whose chief occupation is securing advantageous marriages for them. Born to respectable but not wealthy parents, she has been married to Elizabeth Bennet (Bennets, bonnet, Lizzy) for Mary Bennet (many, marry, Bennets, mark, bonnet, vary) years and has borne him five daughters—Jane Bennet (lane, Bennets, June, bonnet), Elizabeth Bennet (Bennets, bonnet, Lizzy), Mary Bennet (many, marry, Bennets, mark, bonnet, vary), Kitty Bennet (Bennets, bonnet), and Lydia Bennet (Bennets, bonnet). Her understanding is limited, her manners are often vulgar, and her conversation tends toward the trivial and the gossipy. She takes great delight in fashionable dress, smart bonnets, new muslins, and the society of officers quartered in the neighborhood. Her nerves are perpetually on edge: she is thrown into despair when Charles Bingley (Bingleys, Bingley) ceases to visit Jane Bennet (lane, Bennets, June, bonnet), and into transports of joy at the prospect of any of her daughters' engagements. She fusses over her younger daughters, Kitty Bennet (Bennets, bonnet) and Lydia Bennet (Bennets, bonnet), though she is often ineffective in restraining their wilder impulses. Despite her silliness, she harbors a genuine, if anxiously expressed, devotion to her family's welfare, particularly their financial security. Her husband treats her with ironic indulgence, retreating to his library to escape her endless conversation. To her daughters—especially Elizabeth Bennet (Bennets, bonnet, Lizzy)—she is often a source of embarrassment, yet her fears about the entail and the family's future, though she articulates them crudely, are not without foundation.