Key Quote
“"I am heartily ashamed of myself, Lizzy. But don't despair — it will pass, and no doubt more quickly than it ought"”
Mr Bennet · Chapter 48 (After Lydia's Elopement)
Focus: “more quickly than it ought”
Mr Bennet's most self-aware moment — acknowledging his failure as a father while simultaneously predicting, with brutal honesty, that he will return to his habitual laziness. Confession and self-condemnation in one breath.
Technique 1 — SELF-AWARE BATHOS
The sentence structure enacts Mr Bennet's character arc in miniature: genuine remorse ('heartily ashamed') followed immediately by comic deflection ('more quickly than it ought'). The pivot word is 'But' — it marks the exact moment where self-knowledge collapses back into self-deprecation. He knows himself well enough to predict his own moral failure, yet this knowledge changes nothing.
The adverb 'heartily' initially suggests deep feeling — but 'heartily ashamed' is also a conventional phrase, a formulaic (following an established pattern) expression. Austen leaves deliberately ambiguous whether Mr Bennet's shame is genuinely felt or merely conventionally expressed. This ambiguity IS the character.
Key Words
RAD — REGRESS
This is paradoxically a moment of both insight and regression — Mr Bennet sees his flaw clearly but announces in advance that he will not correct it. Self-knowledge without self-improvement is the defining failure of his character. He regresses from moral accountability back to ironic detachment, making his confession simultaneously genuine and performative.
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Technique 2 — TRAGIC IRONY BENEATH COMEDY
The comedy of Mr Bennet's self-prediction ('it will pass') carries a tragic undertone: he is admitting that he is incapable of sustained moral seriousness. Lydia's near-ruin was caused by his neglect, and he knows he will neglect again. Austen creates a character who has the intelligence to be a great father and the self-knowledge to recognise his failure, yet lacks the will to change — a portrait of moral inertia (the tendency to remain in a state of moral laziness).
The address to 'Lizzy' is significant — he shares this confession only with the daughter who most resembles him in intelligence. But where Elizabeth's intelligence leads to growth, Mr Bennet's leads to resignation. The intimate address highlights what they share and where they diverge.
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Context (AO3)
LYDIA'S ELOPEMENT
Lydia's elopement with Wickham threatens the entire Bennet family with social ruin — an unmarried girl living with a man would make her sisters unmarriageable. Mr Bennet had been warned by Elizabeth to restrain Lydia's behaviour and refused. His shame here is the direct consequence of a specific, identifiable abdication (giving up) of responsibility.
FATHERHOOD IN AUSTEN
Austen presents a spectrum of fathers: Mr Bennet (intelligent but neglectful), Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion (vain and selfish), Mr Woodhouse in Emma (loving but infantile). Mr Bennet is perhaps the most complex because his failure is rooted in genuine intelligence turned to the wrong purposes — he could have been the best father and is instead merely the most entertaining one.
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WOW — AKRASIA (Aristotle)
Aristotle's concept of akrasia (weakness of will) describes a person who knows what is right but lacks the will to do it. Mr Bennet is Austen's most perfect akratic character: he sees clearly, judges accurately, and acts inadequately. Aristotle argues that akrasia is worse than simple ignorance — the person who doesn't know better has an excuse; the person who knows and fails does not. Mr Bennet's self-aware confession — 'it will pass, more quickly than it ought' — is a textbook description of akrasia: he narrates his own moral failure in real time, treating it as inevitable rather than choosing to resist it.
Key Words