The bond of sisterhood, more than any other relation, seems to have influenced Jane Austen in her art. With her own closest life-long friend in her sister Cassandra, the author who so rarely repeats herself in the circumscribed sphere in which she chose to work, again and again draws a pair of sisters, for the most part sharing every joy and sorrow.[14] In two or three cases—those of the Bennets, the Dashwoods, Mrs. John Knightley and Emma Woodhouse, we have the contrast between the milder and more serene elder, and the livelier, more impulsive younger sister, which caused their contemporaries to say that Jane and Elizabeth Bennet stood for Cassandra and Jane Austen. But the author’s nephew pronounced against this conjecture. It is said, indeed, that in gentleness of disposition and tenderness of heart Jane Austen bore more resemblance to Jane than to Elizabeth Bennet.
Mary Bennet, the third daughter in the household at Longbourn, and the plainest member of a handsome family, tries to supplement her deficient personal attractions by such mental acquirements and accomplishments as are within her reach. These are laboriously learnt for the purpose of display. In contrast to her sister Elizabeth, she has no natural shrewdness. She is a pedantic, sententious young goose, with her elaborate exhibition of worthless knowledge and formal speeches out of commonplace books. Mary Bennet contrives to render herself as ridiculous as her younger sisters, Kitty and Lydia, who are precocious, noisy girls of seventeen and fifteen. They are too unformed and callow to be treated separately at first, but we have one significant distinction between them. Lydia, big and bouncing for her age, already arrogating rights from being the tallest of the family, spoilt by her mother, invariably takes the lead. Kitty simply runs after her more headstrong junior. The most individual trait Kitty shows is the peevish impatience of contradiction which belongs to a weak character.
We may remark, by the way, that Jane Austen, while she cuttingly condemns pedantry and conceit, never dreams of offering a premium to sheer juvenility, empty-headedness, and frivolity, after the example of some of the strange preferences which are presented for the consideration and edification of nineteenth-century readers.
Miss Lydia and Miss Kitty Bennet spend the chief part of each day in walking to Meryton, a market town, where a militia regiment is stationed, which, unhappily for the growth in wisdom of the young ladies, is situated only a mile from the village of Longbourn, and Longbourn House, their home.
In Meryton dwells Mrs. Philips, Mrs. Bennett’s sister, the wife of a country attorney in a lower social grade than the Bennets. Good-natured, commonplace Mrs. Philips is gratified by her nieces’ company, and willing to indulge them with any amount of dawdling and gossiping in her house. When no better goal presents itself, the shop windows, with the latest bonnets and muslins, are always to be had. Above all, there is the chance of encountering some of the militia officers in their regimentals—those dazzling red coats, which filled the imaginations of girls like Lydia and Kitty Bennet, and which were not without their picturesque merits even in the more reflective eyes of the elder sisters. Well for girls that they have no regimentals, worn off parade, to turn their heads to-day. If they are still caught by the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, and enthralled by its blatant trumpeting, at least, the “red rags,” which are now for the most part kept sedulously out of sight, are no longer to blame.
Mr. Bennet calls on Mr. Bingley, as he has always meant to do, in spite of all his protests to the contrary, but the sisters first meet the hero at a Meryton assembly.
That was the era of assemblies—subscription balls, in rooms provided for card-playing and supping as well as dancing, under highly respectable auspices, given at regular intervals in all the country towns, and duly patronised by gentle and simple, clergy and laity.
If people stayed all the year round and year after year in their own quiet country neighbourhood, some recreation must be provided for them. The assemblies were at once simple and social. The stereotyped recreations of the last century were dancing and card-playing. If both were liable to grave abuse, we may still hope that many worthy people used them temperately and not unconscientiously.
A rousing report had gone beforehand through the ball-goers that the already popular Mr. Bingley was to crown his popularity by attending the assembly, and bringing with him twelve ladies and six gentlemen. The reality falls short of the rumour, but there is consolation to the belles of the place in the dwindling down of the dozen strange ladies into Mr. Bingley’s two sisters, one married and one unmarried, even though the six gentlemen also fade away into a couple, one of whom is Mr. Hurst, the husband of Mr. Bingley’s married sister. But for half the time the ball lasts the other gentleman makes up for every defalcation, and is a power in himself. He is not only a tall, handsome, distinguished-looking young man, he is also discovered to be allied to the peerage, and to possess a large estate in Derbyshire, with an unencumbered rent-roll of ten thousand a-year—and here gossips’ tongues do not wag too wildly.
But the exultation over such a guest is soon damped by his cold, reserved manners. The stranger dances once with Mrs. Hurst and once with Miss Bingley, speaks only to the members of his own party, and declines any introductions. And Meryton is spirited enough to resent the inference. If Mr. Darcy considers himself above his company, the company decline any further homage to his air and figure—even to his estate in Derbyshire.