So today we're going to be
talking about Mary Bennet. Yes, that middle sister in the Bennet
family from Pride and Prejudice. The one who plays the piano at Netherfield
and embarrasses the whole family. And would totally hit on Collins, if he
wasn't busy hitting on her other sisters. Yeah. Have you ever wondered, what is
Mary Bennet's purpose in the story? Today, we're going to be answering
those questions by looking at a literary device that Jane Austen
used to really help us understand the context and characters in her world. And we're going to see how Mary Bennet
is actually essential to the novel and a vital part of her family and
how we understand the entire story. Do you make classic
literature and history? Well, if so, then let me introduce myself. My name is Ellie Dashwood. And this is my channel where we talk
about Jane Austen, her characters and real life people from the 17 and 18 hundreds. And what life was actually like. If you'd like any of those
things, please subscribe. So today we're going to be talking a
lot about how we as humans perceive reality, which is within context. There are basic underlying psychological
factors that connect the way we see visually to the way we perceive
other people to how we understand characters in narratives in books. And of course, Jane Austen
masterfully used these psychological factors to understand her
characters even better in context. So the first literary
device is called foils. Which is related to this other
concept called doppelgangers. If you've studied literature at
all, you're probably familiar somewhat with these terms. A foil is a character that an author
puts in a story that is usually the opposite in some ways of one of the main
characters or a different character. Say you have a main character, let's take
in Pride and Prejudice, for example, Mr. Darcy. He has all of his characteristics. Well, then you have a character who
has the opposite characteristics of Mr. Darcy. Well, who's that? It's Mr. Wickham, right? Darcy is proud; Wickham is
friendly Darcy is honest and true; Wickham is deceitful and crafty. But by being opposite and putting them
right next to each other, they highlight even more their characteristics. So for example, Darcy looks
better because Wickham's awful. Wickham looks awful because
he's not like Darcy. And this is the same concept we
see visually with something called complementary colors, which is, of
course, if you put two colors that are opposite each other on the color
wheel, then they act to make each other pop and really stand out vibrantly. And an opposite character does
this for any character in a book. It really highlights different qualities. What's really interesting about
this concept is this is something we really do in real life. So I've seen people who've gone through
a divorce or a really bad breakup. And then now they're
in a new relationship. They tend to talk about their new
partner in terms of their old partner. Such as: "My new boyfriend
brought me flowers. And they're just so beautiful. And he's just so sweet. And that is something
my ex would never do. My ex would not even remember
our one-year anniversary. Can you believe that? But this new guy, he's so sweet
and he brought me flowers." Now, to highlight to the power the foil
has on making us appreciate qualities in someone: what if her ex-boyfriend
had also just bought her flowers? Then how would she react? "Oh yeah, my new boyfriend,
he bought me flowers. They were pretty. He's so sweet." Okay. Now, do you see how he went from
"he's so sweet" to "so sweet." And I think that's the thing is when
you have that foil to compare someone to their qualities become immensely
more impactful on you than otherwise. So again, that's just like those
complementary colors, really making each other's distinct
characteristics stand out. And it's also just like Wickham
making us really appreciate Mr. Darcy. This is even more true in
something called a doppelganger. A doppelganger, which I don't know if
I'm saying that correctly in it's German form, I think that's where it comes from. But one that shares a lot of common
traits with a character while also being the opposite in other traits. Which is again, an example
with Darcy and Wickham. They grew up together. They're from the same County. They're young men of the same age
that both been introduced into Elizabeth Bennet's company recently. They have all of these
shared characteristics. So those shared characteristics
highlight even more the difference between them when they are different. So for example, Mrs. Bennet is really different from Mr. Wickham. But we don't really compare Mrs. Bennet to Mr. Wickham because they don't have
enough characteristics in common to make us mentally compare them. But comparing Wickham to Darcy comes
extremely naturally because they have so much in common already. But then again, who do we compare Mrs. Bennet to? One person we compare Mrs. Bennet to is Mrs. Gardiner. If only Mrs. Gardiner was Elizabeth's mother,
wouldn't her life be so much easier? But then on the other hand,
we can also compare Mrs. Bennet to a Lady Catherine de
Bourgh, who is another matriarchal figure in a family in the book. And aren't, we all glad that
at least in Mrs Bennet isn't in some ways like Lady Catherine. And we really see this again in
the Wickham/Darcy relationship. I think their foil is a fascinating,
because it changes over time. It does a complete flip
in the middle of the book. So when we first meet Darcy, he's haughty. He's reserved. He doesn't interact with people. He's not out going at all. When we meet Wickham, he's the
opposite of all of those qualities. He's outgoing. He flirts with Elizabeth. He knows how to flatter
and hobnob with everybody. And those are all initially the qualities
that they highlight in each other. Darcy comes off to even greater
effect for being reserved, if you compare him next to Wickham. Now, half way through the
book, the entire thing flips. When Elizabeth gets that letter at
Rosings, where she discovers that Wickham is secretly a villain. Meanwhile, Darcy is not
that bad of a guy really. After that point, now Darcy comes
out as the better option of the two. And we continue to learn more and
more about his great character. While Wickham descends slower
into more and more villainy. Again, highlighting each other's
qualities in a different way. And really, if you look at pretty much
any book, it's going to be full of these sort of character relationships. And in Pride and Prejudice,
we also have Elizabeth Bennet and her foil, Charlotte Lucas. And I'm actually gonna make a
whole other video on that one. And the list goes on and on. Now a sure way to also identify a
foil usually is if there is a love triangle of some of some sorts. And of course it's also no mistake
that the Wickham -Darcy foil is at the heart of a love triangle
of sorts in Pride and Prejudice. We see the exact same thing in Sense
and Sensibility, where Willoughby and Colonel Brandon are foils of each other. And they're in a love
triangle with Marianne. So the next concept I really want
to talk about is related to it. And it's called simultaneous contrast. Which in graphic design and art,
that means that everything you see affects everything else you see. Sort of like if you're wearing, really,
a dark Navy shirt that looks black normally, but if you go and you stand in
front of something, that's truly black, suddenly you can now see that it's navy. Well, how do authors use this to
help us understand their characters. One way is if you have a character who
might be slightly morally questionable. But if you put characters who
were even worse than this guy in the same book, he'll come off
looking better compared to them. I think a great example of this is Mr. Thorton in Elizabeth
Gaskell's North and South. And I want to specifically talk about
the mini series here because it's different from the book in some aspects. In the miniseries, they put this scene
in the beginning of it, where we see Mr. Thorton beating up this poor guy. And everyone's like, "Mr. Thorton must not be that great of a guy. He beats up poor people." So how do you reverse this. Because he's supposed to be the hero
and main love interest of this show. How do you get people to like him? One of the answers is to put characters
even worse than him in the story, so that he by contrast will look better. Which is exactly what all the other
heartless money-grubbing mill owners that he goes out to dinner with do. They make him look better. Which again, just goes to show that we
understand characters in relation to the other characters of the same story. Versus, perhaps, our knowledge
of humanity in general. I want to talk about one more concept
of how we perceive things before we really get into why Mary Bennet is
so important and Pride and Prejudice. And this one is that as humans,
we like the middle option. If you've ever been shopping online
for maybe software, website hosting or even photography packages,
usually if the person's a smart business person, they'll give you
at least three options of different price points, different packages,
different options, whatever it is. And here's the true secret about that. They want you to pick the middle one. In fact, their business model is based
off you picking the middle option. They'd love if you bought
the most expensive thing, but they're not counting on that. And they also know that people generally
don't like the cheapest thing either. People are psychologically driven
to choose the middle ground. Which to, if you look at those pages,
usually around one of the middle ones is always like best value or most popular. That's an added psychological
drive for you to do the thing you already kind of wanted to do,
which was pick the middle one. And this goes back to the Goldielocks
and The Three Bears, where it was the one that wasn't too big and the one that
wasn't too small, that's just right. People tend to not like
extremes in things. They prefer to stay in the
balanced, safe zone of the middle. Now, what does this have to
do with Pride and Prejudice? Well, we're going to take all of
these factors and show how this proves Mary Bennet is essential to
how we understand Pride and Prejudice. In the Bennet family,
we have five daughters. And their paired very interestingly. We have the two youngest, of course,
Lydia and Kitty who are always running after officers and being rather silly. Then we have Jane and Elizabeth who
are grouped off too, as best friends. Who we'll talk about in a minute. And then there's Mary Bennet,
who is self righteous. She doesn't like to go about other
than to show her poor piano skills off. Basically, Mary Bennet
is a foil of her sisters. But the sisters that she is foiling
the most are her exact opposites, which are Kitty and Lydia Bennet. So on one side we have Mary Bennet
being the extreme of reserve and self-righteousness and strict morality. And then on the other side, we have
Lydia and Kitty, who they're going to run around, do what they want. They're incredibly indulgent. And they're holding down two extremes. Now, what did we just learn about people
wanting to pick the thing in the middle? Well, who is in between being
extremely self-indulgent and being incredibly self-righteous and strict? Jane and Elizabeth Bennet. They walked this line of being women
of virtue, and yet at the same time, not being overly self-righteous
and strict like Mary over here. And meanwhile, they're much more
conservative than Kitty and Lydia. On a spectrum of this family's
characteristics, Elizabeth and Jane are in the middle. Which leads us psychologically
to like them the most. They present that perfect
middle balanced option. Now what would the family look
like if Mary didn't exist? If for some reason Jane Austen
was like, "There's only four sisters in this family." Well, then instead of Mary holding down
one end of this extreme spectrum, suddenly if she drops off, you have Jane and
Elizabeth holding down one extreme and being the new opposite of Mary and Kitty. Which is a lot less
satisfying to us mentally. Because they're no longer
the balanced middle. They've become one extreme
of this polar opposite. Or if we take the opposite view and
we have Kitty and Lydia drop off. Then we would have Mary on one
end and we'd have Elizabeth /Jane on the other end. They would suddenly look a lot more
indulgent compared to Mary because there's no other end of the spectrum
showing that they are actually a good balanced couple of women. Now, for example, we see the sort of
same foil structure, I think with Mr. Darcy. Obviously on one side of the extreme,
we have Mr Wickham and then we have Mr. Darcy. Then I think we have Mr. Bingley. I think Bingley holds down the
other end of the spectrum for Mr. Darcy to be this nice
balance between two of them. Which interestingly, I think that
explains something in Mansfield Park. A lot of people don't like the main
heroine of Mansfield Park, Fanny Price. And in fact, a lot of people love the
sort of villainess of Miss Crawford. Now the big question is: why? Because Fanny and Mary Crawford
are definitely foils of each other. But if we take Fanny's cousins,
the Miss Bertrams into the picture, I feel like what we start to see is
this choosing the middle conundrum. Where Fanny holds down the place that
Mary Bennet does in Pride and Prejudice. She's the extreme conservative. I think Mary Crawford comes off
as being in the center because she knows it's the wisest course. And then we have Fanny's cousins,
the Miss Bertrams, holding down the more liberal side of things. Which puts again, Mary
Crawford in the center. Meanwhile, Mary Crawford is also,
I feel like in the center on the deep thinking, intelligence
level of all of these women too. So basically Mary Crawford is
living in the space that Elizabeth Bennet lives in, in Pride and
Prejudice, psychologically that is. Which makes sense because a lot
of people have compared her to Elizabeth Bennet over the years. So this I think is what really adds
to the problem of people liking Mary, better than they like Fanny. Cause Fanny is holding
down one end of an extreme. Now how could have Jane Austen
fixed this if she wanted to? She could have introduced a character
who pushed Fanny into the center. If there was a character who was more
rigid, who was extra strict, who was impossibly self-righteous, who could
have been even more conservative than Fanny on the spectrum, it would
have pushed her in to the center. Then you would of had four options,
but at least Fanny would have been one of the middle options to choose. Of course, Austen did not do that. She left Fanny at one extreme. Which I think is part of the reason,
a lot of people don't like Fanny. So to sum this all up, Why is Mary Bennet
so important in Pride and Prejudice? Well, she helps us understand
her whole family and especially her sisters within context. She holds down those super conservative
end of the spectrum so that Elizabeth and Jane can be in the center and our
brains about inherently like the more. And she highlights just how
crazy Kitty and Lydia are. And she highlights Elizabeth and
Jane's more balanced view of things. In fact, the whole way we would
see the characters in Pride and Prejudice would be altered if she had
simply been left out of the story. Also, she's there to embarrass her
family at the Netherfield ball. And I mean, that is an essential,
essential job right there. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this
random ramblings on literary devices in Jane Austen's works. And I hope you have an awesome
day cause you're awesome. Bye!!!! I need too? I need to record this record this. This is my white balance card.
