Featuring a wide assortment of colorful personalities, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice contains both interesting and emotionally deep characters, as well as hilarious caricatures of the boors who make up the rural social environment. scene from 18th century England. Both types of characters are present in the Bennet family, where the two eldest daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, are far more intelligent and well-mannered than their mother or their three younger sisters. In the middle of this dichotomy is their father, Mr. Bennet. He is, on the surface, a likeable man, whose clever jokes at the expense of his obnoxious wife and his humorous attitude toward his family's sometimes ridiculous behavior initially lead the reader to admire him for his intelligence and spirit. But ultimately he is a disappointing and unappealing character, as these traits reveal his flaws both as a father and as a husband: his constant taunting of his wife begins to seem cruel and creates a marital environment unhealthy environment in which his children grow up, while his preference to insult the behavior of his youngest daughters instead of correcting it is grossly negligent. It is this complete disinterest in his family's affairs that gives his younger children the rude ways he so despises towards them: they are raised in a vacuum and deprived of any competent parenting that might remedy their problems. . Say no to plagiarism. . Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Of all the characters in the book, no one is a greater target of Mr. Bennet's scorn and derision than his own wife. As a young man, he made the mistake of marrying for "youth, beauty, and the appearance of good humor" rather than intellectual or emotional compatibility, and ended up stuck with Mrs. Bennet , a woman with a “weak understanding and illiberal spirit” for whom all “her respect, esteem, and confidence had vanished forever” (228). To make this unhappy arrangement more tolerable, he derives much of his pleasure from annoying and mocking his wife, with the narrator noting that "her ignorance and folly contributed to his amusement" (228). He annoys her by making her believe that he is ardently opposed to the idea of ​​visiting Mr. Bingley, only to reveal to her that he had already visited the gentleman and that he simply wanted to hear him say complain about the family's lack of social ties (9); while earlier he slyly mocks her faded beauty by sarcastically mentioning that Mr. Bingley might find her more attractive than any of their daughters (6). Although the reader is supposed to find humor in his belittling of his wife, a boorish woman whose continual intrigues to marry off her daughters are matched only by her complete lack of tact and social grace, he There is also an underlying feeling that these practical jokes are cruel and inappropriate for a married person to play with their spouse. Elizabeth, in particular, struggles to reconcile her father's affectionate treatment of her with this "continued violation of marital obligations and decorum" which leads him to "expose his wife to the contempt of his own children", because she believes that he does not realize the effect. such an unhappy marital environment has consequences for girls' education (228). She wishes that he, for the sake of his family, would divert his energies from ridiculing Mrs. Bennet, that he would become “fully conscious of the evils arising from so misguided a direction of talents; talentswell used could at least preserve the respectability of his daughters, even if they were incapable of broadening his wife's mind” (229). According to her, it's not enough to joke around to make the most of a situation that she clearly doesn't like; he must also honor the responsibilities of the marriage contract by honoring and respecting his wife, both for her sake and for providing all their daughters with a good upbringing with parents who love themselves as much as they love the rest of their family. In a similar vein, Mr. Bennet thinks very little of Kitty and Lydia, the two youngest daughters, who also happen to be most like their mother in that they share her penchants for vapid conversation and her immature obsessions. to marry every man they meet. He openly insults them for their thoughtlessness, telling them that "you must be two of the stupidest girls in the country", then later ordering Kitty not to let her out of the house "until you can prove that you have spent ten minutes a day rationally” (30, 284). However, as disturbing as it is to see a father openly mock and denigrate his own children, what makes Mr. Bennet's relationship with his youngest daughters even more upsetting is that his own parental neglect is responsible for their abhorrent conduct . He simply doesn't care enough about his duties as a father to enforce any rules or standards; on the contrary, all he desires is to have a private room where he can escape his family obligations: it is mentioned that “in his library he had always been sure of leisure and tranquility; and though ready, as he told Elizabeth, to encounter madness and vanity in every other room of the house, he was accustomed to being free there” (70). That he is actually willing to allow his daughters to act with vanity and folly as long as they do not explicitly bother him is at the heart of Mr. Bennet's parental failures. All he's willing to do is acknowledge their bad behavior, telling his wife "if my kids are stupid, I have to hope I'm still sensitive to that", but he's not willing to try to change them (30). Even Elizabeth is aware of her father's lackadaisical approach to parenting, so she confronts him to express her own concerns about Lydia and her upcoming trip to Brighton in the hopes that he will listen, warning him that : If you, my dear father, do not take the trouble to control her exuberant spirit... she will soon be beyond the reach of amendment... she will be, at sixteen, the most determined coquette that has ever rendered ridiculous herself and her family (223).Mr. Bennet's own arguments for allowing the trip are incredibly self-serving and insulting to his youngest: "Lydia will never be easy until she exposes herself in one public place or another", "we won't have of peace at Longbourn if Lydia does not go to Brighton,” and being there “might teach her of her own insignificance” (222-24). He would rather avoid dealing with a whiny, disappointed child - while secretly hoping that this trip will teach him lessons in good behavior that he has neglected to pass on to her - rather than deny his most immature daughter permission to visit him. a faraway town full of single, opportunistic men. Ultimately, it is this reluctance to take a stand and impose discipline on Lydia that is responsible for her running away with Mr. Wickham and the embarrassing, expensive (although paid for by Mr. Darcy), and fraught ordeal. tragedies that the whole family, including himself, must endure to get her back. Apathy and lack of interest in raising one's daughters well.