One of the many things I enjoyed about the Lost in Austen TV series was Alex Kingston’s Mrs Bennet. The show approached Pride and Prejudice with all the studied reverence of a rabid baboon at a prayer meeting but, while it obviously ran roughshod over the storyline, its approach to the characters was more complicated. Of course, Caroline Bingley was bizarrely revealed to be a kind of predatory lesbian and Mr. Wickham was reinterpreted as a noble-hearted rogue, but there were some more subtle characterizations that are worthy of more serious attention.
Mrs Bennet - 'a real ball-breaker'
I particularly enjoyed Alex Kingston’s Mrs Bennet. She is a tougher, more consciously manipulative and formidable a character than we are used to seeing in screen adaptations. She is, as Amanda puts it, ‘a real ball-breaker.’ Kingston’s Mrs Bennet has her hysterical side, of course, but in her quiet moments shows also a ruthless streak that shocks even Hammersmith’s streetwise Miss Price.
There is a horrible scene in which Mrs Bennet is seemingly comforting Jane on her bed. The latter is inconsolable after Mr Bingley has slighted her at the Netherfield ball, when Mrs Bennet, cuddling her daughter and stroking her hair, whispers:
You are of more use to this family than all your sisters together. For you are elegant and kindly and obedient, and in the morning you shall come prettily to breakfast and sit beside Mr Collins that he may see this lovely long neck…
Unconditional motherly love?
She threatens Amanda with something wholly unagreeable, which shall come to her ‘like a thief in the night,’ and when she kicks Miss Price out of Netherfield, her delivery is so wonderfully spiteful:
The time has come Miss Price that we cannot in all conscience detain you with our hospitality. Upon your return to Longbourn you will collect what is yours and surrender what is not, and you will leave my house.
Even when suffering her famous attacks of nerves it seems like there is something contrived about her. To me, Kingston’s Mrs Bennet is at the opposite end of the spectrum to Alison Steadman’s 1995 interpretation. Steadman’s character is socially incompetent, impulsive, and endowed with a level of self-awareness usually bestowed on creatures that attack their own reflections when scientists present them with mirrors. Kingston’s on the other hand is actually a little frightening. When she tells her daughters how to behave for Mr Collins, for example, we see her as certain critics have described her – as essentially prostituting her own daughters for financial gain. Ironically for a comic spin-off, there is less of her to laugh about in Lost in Austen than there is in the straight adaptations.
Mrs Bennet pimping her daughters
Another thing I liked is that she is younger than her predecessors in the role, and perhaps closer to the age Jane Austen intended. In Alex Kingston, much remains of the beauty that attracted the young “Claude” Bennet to his future bride, so the fact they are together isn’t a complete mystery. She also has the social skills to suggest that not only a true masochist would join her in matrimony. Alison Steadman’s Mrs Bennet is so majestic in her awfulness, that why he would have proposed to her is anyone’s guess. With Alex Kingston’s, it’s as if she uses her hysteria on her husband because he has become numb to the feminine charms that once attracted him. She can’t threaten him as she does Miss Price, or manipulate him as she does her daughters, so she she shrieks and flaps around him until he caves in.
To be fair, she is redeemed a lot towards the end, as she sees the true ‘Prometheun misery’ of her daughter Jane in marriage to Mr Collins, and it’s nice when she threatens Lady Catherine de Bourgh with being turned upside down and used to scrape out Lady Ambrosia’s sty!
Mrs Bennet in defence!
What did you think of Alex Kingston as Mrs Bennet in Lost in Austen? What’s your interpretation of my interpretation of her interpretation (so to speak)?
Please let me know your thoughts!
Your ever so slightly scared friend,
Lizzy
Alex Kingston’s Mrs. Bennet is SO different. You can really feel the aggression. It is a new slant on this character that I appreciated. She was much smarter and craftier than previous interpretations. Thanks for the great analysis.
Indeed! I agree wholeheartedly that Alex Kingston is the best Mrs. Bennet of all. Just acquired DVD and am…uh…lost in it, I must confess.
I block off ALL the scenes of Alison Steadman’s 1995 version. I have never detected any such behavior in the book which I constantly read and know by heart. Andrew Davies has written a most faithful screenplay, I concede, which makes the viewer almost see the book in action. However, in my opinion he has exaggerated and spoiled the flow of the story by introducing such an obnoxious and entirely disagreeable Mrs. Bennet.
Discovered your site quite by accident and have enjoyed pictures and all.
Being French , I must shamefully and regrettably admit that my love for Jane Austen has come late in my life, however, I am certainly making up for it, now.
Forgive me, I have a tendency to rant like all Frenchmen.
Thank you.
Marlene
["Andrew Davies has written a most faithful screenplay, I concede, which makes the viewer almost see the book in action. However, in my opinion he has exaggerated and spoiled the flow of the story by introducing such an obnoxious and entirely disagreeable Mrs. Bennet."]
All Andrew Davies did was closely follow Jane Austen’s portrayal of Mrs. Bennet. How could he have “introduced” an obnoxious and disagreeable Mrs. Bennet, when she was already like that in the novel?