(by guest blogger Victoria
Grossack)
As Father’s Day comes around, celebrated
on the third Sunday in June in most, although certainly not all, countries
around the world, Jane Austen devotees can contemplate the rich array of
fathers portrayed in the author’s works.
By all accounts, Jane Austen had a
wonderful relationship with her own father.
He believed in her abilities and encouraged her to read anything and
everything in his library. Despite the
excellence of her own father, Jane Austen, by exercising her powers of
observation and her lively imagination, created a completely different set of
fathers and father figures in her six novels.
The
Fathers of the Heroines
Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Mr.
Bennet has five daughters. He loves them,
especially the heroine, Elizabeth, but not so unconditionally that he is
unaware of their shortcomings. He is
witty and insightful but also indolent.
As a father he has been deficient, as he did not save money to buy them
husbands, worthless or deserving. He had
not reigned in the excesses of his wife or his younger daughters. Mr. Bennet,
perhaps because he is older and therefore wiser, shows more insight into people
than do many of the people around him.
He is not taken in by Mr. Wickham, for example; whereas Elizabeth’s mistrust
of that officer only occurs after she learns more information.
