Mr and Mrs Bennet — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Mr and Mrs Bennet
Characters
What you need to know
How Austen presents Mr and Mrs Bennet, and how the character develops across the text: a mismatched marriage: her nerves and matchmaking, his detached irony, and their failings as parents.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice', 'She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper', 'The business of her life was to get her daughters married', 'You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves', 'Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do', 'Her father, captivated by youth and beauty', 'Respect, esteem, and confidence had vanished for ever', 'I am not afraid of being overpowered by the impression. It will pass away soon enough', 'it gives such an elegance to misfortune', 'You are each of you so complying, that nothing will ever be resolved on'.
Mr Bennet's irony as both entertaining and a failure of duty, and Mrs Bennet's nerves and matchmaking as comedy with a serious cause.
Context: a marriage made for looks rather than sense, and why Mrs Bennet's fear of the entail is less foolish than she makes it sound.
Edexcel's novel question has two parts, and neither marks context: part (a) on the printed extract marks language, form and structure (AO2); part (b) on the novel elsewhere, from memory, marks the argument and its references (AO1), not language analysis. Use context only where it explains a reading, and say which part each worked paragraph and exam tip is for.
