Kitty Bennet Quotes

I must so far differ from you as to think our two youngest daughters uncommonly foolish.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 7. Disagreeing with his wife, Mr. Bennet describes his youngest daughters Kitty and Lydia as "uncommonly foolish" after branding them "two of the silliest girls in the country" moments before. He appears to think that they are spending too much time around the soldiers from the militia regiment recently arrived in the neighborhood. But the irony is that he never insists that they stop. Mr. Bennet enjoys criticizing and teasing his daughters, but never actually tries to correct their behavior. This is also foreshadowing that his youngest daughters’ foolishness will get one of them – Lydia – involved in trouble and scandal later.

The prospect of the Netherfield ball was extremely agreeable to every female of the family…Jane pictured to herself a happy evening in the society of her two friends, and the attentions of their brother; and Elizabeth thought with pleasure of dancing a great deal with Mr. Wickham…The happiness anticipated by Catherine and Lydia depended less on any single event, or any particular person, for though they each, like Elizabeth, meant to dance half the evening with Mr. Wickham, he was by no means the only partner who could satisfy them, and a ball was at any rate, a ball.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 17. Dancing was a very important part of the courtship ritual during Jane Austen’s time. So the Netherfield ball is a hugely important event in the social calander and an opportunity for single men and women to mingle and get to know one another. The Bennet sisters look forward to a night of pure joy and happiness, with Jane hoping to attract the attentions of Charles Bingley, and Elizabeth dancing the evening away with George Wickham. Though things don’t quite turn out as planned – especially for Elizabeth, as we shall soon hear.

The situation of your mother’s family, though objectionable, was nothing in comparison of that total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly, betrayed by herself, by your three younger sisters, and occasionally even by your father.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 35. Mr. Darcy, in a letter to Elizabeth, criticizes the behavior of the Bennet family at the Netherfield ball. It is not the position of the family that bothers him, he makes clear, but he is shocked by their bad manners. He accuses Elizabeth’s mother and her three younger sisters of a “total want of propriety.” In mentioning Mr. Bennet as one of the lesser offenders, Darcy is obviously blaming him for not keeping his daughters and their silliness in check on the night.

They were hopeless of remedy. Her father, contented with laughing at them, would never exert himself to restrain the wild giddiness of his youngest daughters; and her mother, with manners so far from right herself, was entirely insensible of the evil. Elizabeth had frequently united with Jane in an endeavour to check the imprudence of Catherine and Lydia; but while they were supported by their mother’s indulgence, what chance could there be of improvement? Catherine, weak-spirited, irritable, and completely under Lydia’s guidance, had been always affronted by their advice; and Lydia, self-willed and careless, would scarcely give them a hearing. They were ignorant, idle, and vain. While there was an officer in Meryton, they would flirt with him; and while Meryton was within a walk of Longbourn, they would be going there forever.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 37. Elizabeth reflects on the flaws of her family after reading Darcy’s letter. From her father’s judgmental sarcasm, to the flirtations of her wild youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia, to the unwillingness of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet to control their behavior – the family is beyond remedy, Elizabeth says.

You go to Brighton. I would not trust you so near it as East Bourne for fifty pounds! No, Kitty, I have at last learnt to be cautious, and you will feel the effects of it. No officer is ever to enter my house again, nor even to pass through the village. Balls will be absolutely prohibited, unless you stand up with one of your sisters. And you are never to stir out of doors till you can prove that you have spent ten minutes of every day in a rational manner.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 48. Mr. Bennet has learned the lessons of bad parenting – but a little too late. Here he responds to Kitty, when she says that if she should ever go to Brighton she would behave better than Lydia. Mr. Bennet decrees that from now on: no officer in the house, no balls, no going out for his daughters until they prove they can behave themselves at home. Too late to save Lydia from scandal, however.
Close