Mary Bennet Quotes

"What say you, Mary? for you are a young lady of deep reflection, I know, and read great books and make extracts."
Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 2. Mr. Bennet teases his daughter Mary, who is introduced here and is one of the vehicles for her father’s irony and sarcasm. The unfortunate Mary makes her debut in the novel to her father’s mocking humor. Mary is of course not a woman of deep reflection and is tongue-tied, having nothing to say in response.

"Pride," observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, "is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us."

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 5. The girls are discussing Mr. Darcy and what they perceive to be his pride. Mary Bennet, who likes to philosophize and moralize, distinguishes between pride and vanity. She explains that pride is more about our opinion of ourselves and vanity how we would have others think of us. Both are major themes in the novel, and are evident in the characters of Elizabeth, Mr. Collins, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, as well as Mr. Darcy. Mary is showing off here, and so ironically displays the pride and vanity that she is preaching about in others.

Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she had reached.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 6. The narrator describes Mary, the plainest of the Bennet sisters, as she plays the piano at Netherfield. Austen is unsparing in her depiction of Mary: no genius, no taste, vain and conceited. It’s no surprise that Mary’s musical performance in showing off by playing a long concerto is a lot less popular than Elizabeth’s, even though she plays twice as well.

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.

Far be it from me, my dear sister, to depreciate such pleasures! They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for me – I should infinitely prefer a book.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 39. Mary Bennet says this to fun-loving sister Lydia, who has been "enumerating the various pleasures of the morning" and is intent on going to Brighton to flirt with the campful of soldiers that will be there for the summer. Mary agrees that such pleasures are to most females’ liking, but she prefers to read.

Loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one false step involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 47. The teenage tearaway of the Bennet family Lydia has run off with George Wickham. Her sister Mary draws what she believes is an important moral lesson from Lydia’s elopment. She speaks of the frailty of a woman’s reputation, warning her other sisters that once a woman loses her virtue it cannot be recovered. Here she is echoing how highly prized a woman’s virtue and moral reputation were at the time, if she aspired to have a decent life for herself and maintain the respect of society.
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