#my one quibble with this post is that it writes off Mrs Bennet #and while I would absolutely Not Cope with her as a partner or parent #and her execution is awful #her priorities are... at least understandable #she wants to know her daughters are going to be provided for after their parents die #and yes it makes her seem silly and frivolous and ruins her relationship *with* her daughters #but 'self-absorbed idiot' feels like it misses the part of this picture she's there to illustrate #she's superficial but she's also the parent who's thinking practically about her children's future #I don't think she does it right but I can't say she's entirely wrong
see several people have said this and they are missing the ball. in a but the same way as people leaning so hard into defending charlotte for her pragmatic match they misunderstand lizzie's goals in life, actually.
mrs bennet is a self-absorbed idiot. the text makes this very clear and it affects the whole story and most of the major characters that this is so.
that doesn't excuse mr. bennet's parenting choices, but it's important that it's true. it's a fact.
her preoccupation with getting her daughters married isn't the problem, that's a sensible goal as far as it goes, with clear economic and social incentives.
the problem is that she puts her own emotions about everything first, at all times, to the exclusion of being considerate of anyone's feelings at all or realistic about the actual circumstances. this makes her a huge emotional and practical burden on her daughters, who must spend a lot of time and energy managing her moods and cannot look to her for any real support, and who in fact get repeatedly sabotaged in the marriage market by her poor judgment and manners.
she's got an anxiety disorder and makes it everybody's problem. she is loudly stupid and determined never to learn anything new. she is not aware enough of other people's needs to even be capable of actual kindness.
there are a lot of elements in mrs. bennet that are pretty clearly drawn from a pool of features of the generic 'most unpleasant without ever being actually abusive' middle-class mother that continue to resonate to this day.
she and mr. bennet have both comprehensively failed to make any actual effort or inconvenience themselves in any way, ever, for the sake of their daughters. they are both very bad parents.
that's what the character is there for. to be awful and unhelpful and embarrassing and in the way and demanding and never, ever any help to elizabeth. to be the absence of a positive role model, and the evidence of what it looks like to tie yourself to someone you cannot hold in esteem.
(actually very deft of austen to pull some of the gender out of the concept by making it be lizzie's father she identifies with and her mother the example case of a terrible choice of partner, so it's clear that the issue here is the human question of sharing your life with a person, rather than the more obvious gendered issue of putting yourself under the power of a man you can trust.)
she's not there to make the point that marriage is important; austen's readers knew that. the relentless trudge of the genteel young woman's need to make a fine match consumed their lives and the bulk of their literature.
we today need reminding that the pressure was real and practical and economic and not at the base of things frivolous at all, but emphasizing that risks overemphasizing it to the point we miss that that was the baseline reality austen was writing against. she didn't need to say it, only to tease it out and hold it to the light and say, what part of this pressure is real? what part of success will really make you happy, and what kinds of happiness will last and not curdle on your tongue?
mrs. bennet is specifically the societal message that marriage is so important you should snatch shamelessly at any one you can get that isn't outright awful; the pressure to chase a man and count on catching one to make your life work out.
and as real as the reasons for that are, austen is also putting forth the argument that you can't let that pressure drive you to make a choice you'll regret.
being stupid gets mrs. bennet off the hook to a certain extent; she doesn't quite get how having neglected to save up money all these years or arrange better educations was cutting their girls off at the knees, or how bad she's making them look. mr. bennet definitely understands better, he's just decided it's too much work to care.
i think he's more morally culpable because his decisions are more conscious. but mrs. bennet doesn't have any bragging rights.
mrs. bennet isn't being selfless in worrying about her daughters' marriages, either. remember that her chances of remarriage are approximately -0 and she has nothing in her own name; she is guaranteed if she lives long enough to find herself in the same state of dependency Elizabeth is risking. These are her own fortunes she's securing, or rather cartoonishly failing to secure.
when she wanted Elizabeth to accept Mr. Collins it was very much because that would mean she got to stay in her house as a widow, and continue acting as the mistress of the place until she died. as far as she was concerned, this would solve most of her problems.
Lizzie's happiness was not particularly on her radar, not in any realistic sense.
If mrs bennet knew for sure she wouldn't outlive her husband, or if Mr. Collins didn't get Longbourne until she was dead as well, I don't think she'd care about seeing the sisters married even half as much. She'd care more than Mr. Bennet, still, because she's interested in marriage and it's a status thing and she has some sense of responsibility toward them, I think, that meddling in their love lives would satisfy.
But if like her husband she could say 'welp, i'll be dead before that's a problem' her intense interest in the subject would not, I think, survive. Because she is a self-involved person with a limited mental capacity and a worse education, and these facts about her are actually kind of important to the plot.
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