Talk:Bennet family

@Mare-Silverus: I see that you have noted the problem with the Bennet property being entailed to a person with a different surname. If the property was to be inherited exclusive in the male line, and if likewise surnames were inherited exclusively in the male line, then only another male Bennet should have been able to inherit the entailed property of Mr. Bennet; but the heir apparent had the surname Collins. You also suggest some possible explanation. However, this is not the only solution. Besides, there are certain points in your explanation which seem not to agree with Austen's comments and the plot in Pride and Prejudice.

Therefore, I would like to know whether you have read some explanation similar to the one you give here somewhere, or if you thought it out yourself. If you did read something after these lines in some Austen biography or something similar, then I think you should add a reference to that source. On the other hand, if this is all your own ideas, then I'm afraid that we probably have to delete it, or at least downgrade it to one possibility among others.

The suggested solution I've heard to the Bennet & Collins surname problem is that surnames also changed due to adoption - and that adoption was a fairly common practice in these days. Recall that Jane Austin's brother Edward was adopted by a family Knight at the age of 12 years, and changed his legal surname to Knight. In such cases, the adoptee could change his surname, but also retain his right to inheritance from his biological parents - including inheritance of entailed property.
On the other hand, the possibility that a son to any of the sisters Bennet would have precedence before Mr. Collins exists, since entailments could be very different in different cases, depending on the original stipulations when the property became entailed. It would however be rather unusual. In general, I think that "closest male relative" meant "closest male agnatic relative". This means that daughters' sons were not considered at all.
Did you read Austen's novel Persuasion? If so, you may remember that Sir Walter Elliot was in a situation similar to Mr. Bennet; his main possesion, Kellynch Hall, was entailed, and he only had (surviving) daughters. One of his daughters, Mary, was married, and had two sons. However, these were not counted as "male relatives" for the purpose of inheriting Kellynch Hall, since the inheritance would have been via the woman Mary. Instead, Sir Walter's heir apparent was his brother's son. The only thing that could change this was if Sir Walter remarried, and had a surviving son in his new marriage.
There did exist a way of 'breaking up' an entailed property, and resettle part of that property on some of the other relatives; see Fee tail#Resettlement. However, this was only possible if the present incumberant and his oldest son agreed. Exactly this had been Mr. and Mrs. Bennet's plan; but since they got no son, they could not do it. (See the third paragraph in wikisource:Pride and Prejudice/Chapter 50!) There is no hint anywhere that a son of one of the Bennet sisters in any way could keep the entailment in Mr. Bennet's branch of the family. (If Lizzy would have married Mr. Collins, and they would have had sons, then the eldest son would inherit Longbourne, but through Mr. Collins, not through Lizzy.) JoergenB (talk) 23:02, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I am not sure that there is a problem; on which we might cite " Inheritance strategies among the English landed elite, 1540-1880" by Lawrence Stone; Publications de l'École Française de Rome Année 1986 90 pp. 267-290. https://www.persee.fr/doc/efr_0000-0000_1986_act_90_1_2879

Stone makes the point that in the period in which the book is set - in the final decades of the 18th century - surname substitution was most common when younger sons married landed heiresses in their own right. See his fig 11. So if a younger Bennet (perhaps Mr Bennet's great uncle) married a Collins heiress with land; then it would be expected that his subsequent family would take the surname Collins not Bennet. It would seem likely for the purposes of the plot, that this Collins estate was subsequently diminished - through debts, mismanagement or profligacy - so that when William Collins inherited, he had little capital of his own though he could now benefit from his generous living as rector of Hunsford. Hence, it is much more likely than not, that Mr Collins is a Bennet in the direct male line; and that the statement in the article " A holder of an estate could then entail it for two generations succeeding him. Mr Bennet's grandfather entailed the estate first directly through the male descendants of his son then failing that through the male descendants of his own daughter. Mr William Collins is a descendant of Mr Bennet's great aunt." is suppositious and should be removed. When, towards the end of the Book, Mr Collins presents Charlotte's expected child as an 'olive branch'; I think he is indicating that - should he inherit Longbourn (which is still far from certain, Mr Bennet could well have a second marriage), he would change the family name back to Bennet to accord with the traditional association of this as the Bennet family seat. TomHennell (talk) 12:44, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Someone really likes (or perhaps dislikes) Lydia Bennet. I don't see how the recent re-added list of adjectives qualifies as encyclopedic writing. Overall, this article more closely resembles a personal essay. Some of it is sourced, but the referencing is inconsistent. Conclusions drawn by juxtaposing bits of information from the novel itself and general historical knowledge of the period would appear to me to constitute original research or synthesis. I see that Artemisialufkin has also tried to clean this up, so all I can do at this point is pile my dismay at the state of the article on top of theirs. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 05:08, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

It is indeed a mess. Looking back through the article history, most of the edits seem to have come from a string of different IP addresses. I can only conclude they are the work of a single person. Artemisia (talk) 14:57, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to ask the anonymous editor who keeps undoing everyone's edits to please log in and defend their changes. Much of this article is completely unverified and clearly reflects the personal opinions of this editor. It's impossible to fix the numerous problems with this article when faced with someone who seems hellbent on keeping the article the way it is. Artemisia (talk) 13:36, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Three years later, the article doesn't seem greatly improved; it's one long essay full of original research and opinions, nowhere near Wikipedia standard.

Article Evaluation for Class: Everything in the article is relevant to the article topic of the Bennet Family. The section covers Lydia and all her characteristics and behaviors. The only thing that was distracting was the length of the quotes. No information is out of date. Nothing needs to be urgently added. There weren't clear citations within the text. It was mentioned that after every paragraph, citations are good. More citations were expected considering the quotations involved. The in text linking works out well.

Generally the tone is neutral except for a slight bias in the sentence mentioning Lydia as "assuming her sisters would be jealous (...anyways)".[1] The "anyways" isn't necessary and takes some of the objectivity away even if it's slight.

                                                      Jazminsl (talk) 19:57, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

[Mary Bennet] is totally unable to think critically about her books, giving them more benefit than people. What on earth does this mean? Koro Neil (talk) 22:37, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

this article is one of the worst i've ever seen Thecitysolution (talk) 02:27, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

I've noticed there's an inconsistency in titles, in a few places when mentioning the names it switches between American English and British English. For example it'll use a period after Mr/Mrs while in other parts they remove it. With these changes the article would look more clean and professional. LuckyClover1111 (talk) 17:41, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation–supported course assignment, between 12 January 2026 and 30 April 2026. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): JLKZ22 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Dr.ozkul (talk) 15:53, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

Hello! I am a student in a Technical Editing class, and I will be editing this article as a course project. I see that there are several issues listed in the preview and throughout this discussion, but my primary goals for the article are as follows:

• Reorganization: There are a few paragraphs in the article that should have their own section or subsection, as well as some information that does not fit into its current section. One example of this is the paragraph which covers the entailment. Currently, that paragraph is under Mr. Bennet's section, but, as it relates to the entire family, I believe it should have its own section.
• WP:NPOV: As some on here have already noted, there are quite a few instances of personal opinions being stated or adjectives being generally overused.
• WP:NOESSAY: Parts of this article bring in outside sources not directly relevant to the original source, such as the paragraph on Thomas Gisborne's books. (I personally find that interesting, but I do not believe it has a place in this article).
• Rewriting lead: The lead to this article is currently very brief for an article of this size, so I plan to ensure that all sections discussed in the article are introduced in the lead in more detail.
• General copyediting

As I begin editing, I may change or expand this initial plan, but I will update on the Talk page as I go. If anyone has any comments or guidance on other things I can work on, please let me know. I also considered changing from British to American English, as that is mentioned in the preview box, but I understand that that would need to be a larger discussion. JLKZ22 (talk) 16:15, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

Editing Summary

Hello! I have just completed my edits on this article. For the most part, I followed my original plan, but some issues require more heavy editing/deleting than what I was comfortable doing before receiving any feedback, such as some of the more intense WP:NOESSAY and WP:NPOV issues. I did what I could with these sections without doing anything too drastic, but I focused most of my effort on copyediting and restructuring parts of the article. Here is a brief summary of specific changes made:

Reorganization: I moved the Estate section out of Mr Bennet's section and into its own main heading near the beginning of the article. The entailment affects the entire family, so it seemed appropriate to give it its own section rather than being embedded into Mr Bennet's. I also gave Mrs Bennet a section for her relationships with her daughters to mirror Mr Bennet's Relationships section.

WP:NPOV and WP:NOESSAY: As previously mentioned here, this article contains a lot of content that violates these two rules. Where possible without completely removing and rewriting entire paragraphs, I made small changes in the verbiage to fix the portions that were factual in their content but essay-like in their tone (changing out "Mr Bennet is ___" for "The book portrays Mr Bennet as ___," for example). Here are the sections in the article where noncompliance with WP:NOESSAY and WP:NPOV caused the most problems:

Mr Bennet's Characterisation section

Possible issues with both WP:NOESSAY and WP:NPOV. While I do not think that this section is entirely inaccurate, per se, the first paragraph is written in a way that sounds a little too much like an essay introduction. The rest of this section brings in outside sources and maintains the tone of an essay. In particular, I believe that the sentence "If he draws the sympathy of the reader..." should be reworded to prevent the essay tone, and the reference to pater familias should be removed--especially since the link to the page for the latter explains a specifically Roman concept. Overall, this section reads like an essay making claims about Mr Bennet more than it reads like an encyclopedic entry, and I think that it would be worthwhile to do a complete rewrite of this section.

Mrs Bennet's Relationships section

This paragraph has similar WP:NOESSAY issues to Mr Bennet's "Characterisation" section, although it is not quite as pronounced. I think it would be most effective to rewrite this section to mention how she relates more to Lydia, does not understand Elizabeth, values Jane for her beauty, views Kitty as an extension of Lydia, and ignores Mary, without explicitly mentioning favoritism. I agree that she does have favorites, but presenting her daughters in terms of favorite and least favorite contributes to the essay tone, as it makes the quote sound more like evidence for an argument about how much she dislikes Elizabeth.

Mrs Bennet Characterisation section

The second-to-last paragraph ("Mrs Bennet sends Jane...to have her daughter 'well married'") has some NOESSAY issues and lacks clarity. It sounds like a paragraph giving evidence for a point, but the exact point is unclear. This should be revised to reflect clear facts about Mrs Bennet's character and to properly incorporate and cite the quotes included.

The last paragraph (Her notion of stylish...to buy for the bride's trousseau") is more clear with its point of what her values and behaviors are, but it continues the essay tone of the previous paragraph. The last sentence in particular sounds like an essay conclusion, and it would be beneficial to rewrite this paragraph and consider eliminating the quotes.

Mrs Bennet's "An egocentric hypochondriac" and "Guilty negligences" sections

Honestly, each of these sections read like their own essays. They are not necessarily bad essays, per se, but they are essentially essays, being rife with synthesized information from secondary sources and arguments about the text from sources other than the novel. Some of this could possibly fit into a "reception" section for the article on the book itself, but I do not believe that either of these sections have a place on the Bennet family page in any way.

Elizabeth Bennet

Although she does get her own article, I think her section on this page could be expanded slightly. Additionally, the last sentence about his pride and her prejudice sounds a little bit too much like an argument, as the question of "who was pride and who was prejudice?" is never explicitly stated in the novel, and some people disagree. I don't think that it would be world-ending at all if this section remained the way that it is, but it would be worthwhile to add a few more relevant details and revise the last sentence.

Lydia Bennet

For a character as objectively obnoxious as Lydia, overcoming the WP:NPOV issue will always be difficult. The main issue that remains for this section is the lack of citations/references. I think that a lot of what is said COULD be backed up by the book, but there are very few actual citations in her section.

General copyediting: Mostly routine things. The article did not have an excessive amount of egregious errors, but there were a few consistent issues with things like quotations, as well as several places where rewording a sentence or two made things more clear. There were also several places where a "citation needed" tag was added.

Ultimately, I decided not to rewrite the lead. It is a bit short, but, since it does offer the basic information contained in the article, I opted to leave it alone for now.

I hope that these edits make sense and contribute positively to the overall flow of the article, but please let me know if there are any major issues with the changes that I made.

JLKZ22 (talk) 11:15, 3 March 2026 (UTC)