However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”

Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

“But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”

Mr. Bennet made no answer.

“Do not you want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently.

“You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”

This was invitation enough.68

Jane Austen, who never married, is writing about marriage here, and at two levels. First, about her legendary man “in want of a wife” and second, about a man who has one; and the second man, Mr. Bennet, might lead us to wonder why the first would be so in want.

Austen’s opening sentence is rightly famous. It begins grandly, like Jefferson’s “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” opening the American Declaration of Independence of 1776; and follows that claim to universal truth with an axiom tilted rather dramatically closer to the mind of Mrs. Bennet than to her husband’s. The wit here is again twofold: Austen may be ribbing Mrs. Bennet and her ilk, but she is also ribbing the moral philosophers who announce the truths they have arrived at by sentiment or deduction. From the incipit, we are thus informed that Austen’s narrator will be a slippery and partial creature, as are we all in the end, and rather like the narrator of Pushkin’s Evgenii Onegin (1825–1832)—another very witty author.

Throughout this passage, Austen’s pacing is superb. The second sentence, which is its own paragraph, contrasts the black box of the new neighbor’s mind with the certainty regarding it that characterizes the surrounding families. As Fénelon writes, “Il y a des folies de diverses espèces,” and this is folly, to believe we know another’s mind.69 The entire novel will play on this theme, with Darcy in particular, but also with Lydia and Wickham. The folly distinguishes Mrs. Bennet, but it does not spare Austen’s heroine, the Bennets’ daughter Elizabeth, who also believes she can read people when their mystery remains intact. Elizabeth is, in short, a victim of prejudice as much as of pride.

Having established an important axiom to open, Austen’s narrator proceeds to pass to its practical application: a conversation between Mrs. Bennet and her husband. Mrs. Bennet launches what might be called a sneak attack, asking if he knows that a neighboring manor is let at last. The interest, of course, resides in who is letting it, but Mrs. Bennet prefers to beat around the bush. The argument may be made that with absolute power comes freedom from subterfuge and guile; one may simply proceed with one’s plans, much as Russia, Prussia, and Austria did in carving Poland up between them in 1772–1795. By the same token, it is natural for the weak to use guile to achieve their ends, since brute force cannot be relied on. Perhaps that is why Mrs. Bennet prefers to approach obliquely; in 1813, independently of any moral standing Mr. Bennet might have, he is also the paterfamilias, and more vested in rights than his spouse is. Or perhaps she simply wants more of a conversation than a bare announcement will get her: a question, for instance, solicits an answer.

Mr. Bennet now enters the scene. His speech is not given but reported—his mind is another black box—and it appears curt. One may again speculate. Perhaps he is distracted, or perhaps he has heard enough of Mrs. Bennet to know that she just requires the ball of conversation to clear the net in order to proceed. As the novel continues, one is often given the sense that they have been married many years and Mr. Bennet is, in his way, making the best of it, much as Mrs. Bennet is in hers. And Mrs. Bennet does return the ball—“returned she,” writes Austen—in providing the source of her new gossip. One may wonder how Mr. Bennet is to react to that provincial authority, and indeed, he remains silent. And thus, Mrs. Bennet returns to the interrogative mode—but she does so “impatiently,” she is seemingly unhappy with how her plan of attack has played out on the battlefield of marriage. Now Mr. Bennet, who as we will see is essentially a well-meaning person, at last somewhat condescendingly opens the door to his wife’s entreaties. One has the sense that Mrs. Bennet finds gossip of consuming importance whereas Mr. Bennet prefers to avoid it.