Mrs. Hurst (hurt, burst)

Mrs. Hurst is the married sister of Caroline Bingley (Bingleys, Charles Bingley, Bingley), wife to a gentleman of respectable fashion but limited fortune. Educated at one of the finest private seminaries in London, she carries the assured manners of someone raised among people of rank and consequence. She and her sister Charles Bingley (Bingleys, Bingley) share a comfortable income of twenty thousand pounds and move through society with the confidence that wealth and good breeding are meant to bestow. When Charles Bingley (Bingleys, Bingley) takes the lease of Netherfield Park, Mrs. Hurst settles into his house as if it were her own, finding it a suitable base for her social life. Like her sister, she is not deficient in good humour when pleased, nor in the power of being agreeable when she chooses to be; however, she is marked by a proud and conceited disposition, particularly in her judgments of those she deems beneath her station. Though less conspicuously scheming than Charles Bingley (Bingleys, Bingley) in her pursuit of Charles Bingley (Bingleys, Bingley)'s advantageous marriage, Mrs. Hurst shares the family's concern that he establish himself as a man of property and align himself with persons of rank. She appears at assemblies and dinners throughout Hertfordshire, pronouncing verdicts on the local gentry with the assured tone of one accustomed to moving in circles of consequence.