Good morning Harvey. Happy Easter. Hope you'll excuse the length of my reply. (-:
In reply (and trying hard not to repeat things too much), any comparison between Mr Bennet and his tenants is a bit pointless. Jane Austen made the Bennet family as a middle class, estate owning family following the trend amongst a neighbourhood of like souls. Effectively they ( the Bennets) were living well beyond their means. If this is not the case, then why cannot they save any money depite a yield of £2000 per year.? I've already made the point that Mr Bennet is shown nowhere in the text as spending anything excessively on himself (no doubt he did buy books now and then and also clothes when needed, that's anyone's norm) and that Mrs Bennet is clueless about the value of money.These points are quite clear from the text.:
Chapter VIII of Volume III (or Chapter 50) tells us that he wished he hadn't spent his whole income. This statement means the income was his as estate owner, but it was spent, not by him, but by his wife and family to maintain their happy little environ. In preventing that, much would depend on whether he wished a peaceful family atmosphere or an argumentative one. He certainly must have tried. This is clarified by: "
Mrs. Bennet had no turn for economy, and her husband's love of independence had alone prevented their exceeding their income. "
Also, as regards him making fun of Lydia and Kitty, there are really only a mild couple of examples of this occurring. What father hasn't called the actions of his daughters, silly" at some stage? I have three daughters, and I certainly have done so. With two as silly as the flirt sisters it would be very hard indeed not to see them that way. Effectively, his kindness and easy-going lifestyle eventually almost bit him in the butt. Mr's Bennet and the girls, meanwhile, carried on blythely spending and ball attending. .(-: Enter a couple of millionaires and a happy ending..(-:
I'll finish this post with a view that can't claim to be unique: It is this:
Jane Austen had a creditable sense of humour. She wrote her novels as comedic portrayals of a basically silly world mainly populated by even sillier people. Her own real-life era was populated with fine examples of nonsense and ill behaviour from the nobility downwards. Every one of her moralistic heroines is surrounded by a hero who steps forth, an odd sensible person or two and a decreasing scale of people of wrong values, warped views and in some cases, the completely bizzarre. We ( and in this I mean normal rational, even fair-minded people) were surely never meant to take most of it all seriously. To think otherwise, at least in my view, would be more than a little insulting to the good lady. Her books are but fore-runners of every pantomime or fairy story ever written. The Lady Catherine's, Lady Dalrymples, Mrs Ferrars etc are purposely made people of shallow intellect and mis-users of power for us to dislike. Each story has levels of descending morals in both male and female characters and is counteracted by a buffoon or two, Mr Collins and Mrs Bennet being prime examples.
Mr Bennet...Baron Hardup.(-:
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