Are we all Mary Bennet? In Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice, the plain bookworm is overshadowed by her four sisters — but now her moment seems to have come at last.
X
Next
Epic love story of the odd one out
Are we all Mary Bennet? In Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, the plain bookworm is overshadowed by her four sisters - but now her moment seems to have come at last.
X
PreviousNext
In Pride and Prejudice Lizzie Bennet is playing the piano. As soon as she finishes, her place is eagerly taken by her sister Mary, who plays badly.
According to Jane Austen, because Mary is not good-looking, she tries hard at things like playing the piano.
As novelist and critic Paula Byrne notes in The New York Times, Mary is vain, but not very good at anything she tries.
Nowadays, people are kinder to Mary. Several books feature her as the main character. One of these, Janice Hadlow's The Other Bennet Sister, is to be made into a 10-part BBC drama.
Byrne asks the question: "Could it be that we're obsessed with her because she is all of us?" Like Mary, we are always trying to make other people think well of us, but trip up on our own shortcomings.
Byrne adds that we should see Mary as a realist. She knows that, without money or good looks, her prospects as a woman in 19th Century England are very limited.
Are we all Mary Bennet?
Yes! Lizzie is the self-confident character we aspire to be, but Mary is the one most like us.
No! Plenty of people are awkward and anxious, but Mary is also vain and conceitedToo vain or proud. in a way that nice people try not to be.
Epic love story of the odd one out
Perceptive: In Jane Austen's original text, the middle Bennet sister Mary is described as humourless and pedantic, but she is also the only one who likes to read, and the only one who scoffs openly at the superficial rites her social standing demands. Glossary
Conceited - Too vain or proud.