Mary Bennet - How to be the Outsider

What happens to a woman when she doesn't get attention?

Being an outsider is often praised in the modern world. As we are all increasingly isolated from each other and relegated to our own little worlds of specialized playlists, shows, niche interests, and online jobs, the occasions to tolerate and be tolerable to others diminish. What motive is there to be likeable, charming, humorous or witty when we can just enjoy the cocoon of our own hobbies? Being okay with being “the outsider” calcifies us in an ever deepening loneliness that marks itself as a delicious melancholy, hollowing out the meaning and purpose behind even the noblest pursuits.

A character who embodies this trouble with being the outsider is Mary Bennet.

Among the five Bennet sisters, Mary Bennet is often the most overlooked both by the characters within the novel and by readers themselves. Yet in her quiet, unglamorous way, Mary serves a crucial role in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: she is a figure of comic relief, social commentary, and quiet tragedy.

Mary is the middle Bennet sister, and unlike her sisters Jane, Elizabeth, or Lydia, she neither captivates with beauty nor delights with charm. Austen describes her as “the only plain one in the family,” and this physical plainness is matched by her solemn personality. Where her sisters delight in dancing, flirting, and the natural play of social life, Mary retreats into books, sermons, and the stiff, awkward pursuit of moral improvement. She is most often found at the piano, less to share joy than to exhibit her discipline and in conversation, she offers not spontaneous wit but ponderous maxims.

Her most infamous moment in the novel comes at the Netherfield ball, where she insists on continuing her piano performance well past the point of propriety. Her music is “pedantic and laboured,” and her obliviousness to the social cues around her results in public embarrassment, particularly for her family. Even her own father, Mr. Bennet, interrupts her with a stinging remark: “You have delighted us long enough.” It is a brutal line and not merely a comment on her playing, but a rebuke of her entire approach to social interaction.

Yet Mary is not a villain, nor a figure of malice. She is, in fact, desperately sincere. Her over-reliance on moral aphorisms and decorum reveals an earnest desire to find structure in a world where she does not naturally fit. Mary is not witty like Lizzy, nor admired like Jane, nor carefree like Lydia. Instead, she clings to moral instruction, piety, and study as her means of self-worth. In this way, she becomes a subtle foil to her more socially adept sisters. Where Elizabeth sparkles with insight and irony, Mary is literal, rigid, and gauche. But her flaws do not come from arrogance or cruelty, they come from exclusion and misunderstanding.

There is, arguably, something tragic in Mary’s situation. She lacks the tools to shine in the world Austen depicts—a world where social grace and intuitive understanding of human character are paramount. Yet she tries to matter. Her speeches, though wooden, come from a place of aspiration. She wants to be wise, admirable, virtuous. In a different novel, or perhaps a more forgiving household, Mary might have been guided gently toward her strengths rather than left to stew in awkward isolation.

There is another kind of outsider which is the outsider due to virtue. However, I suspect many of us overestimate our virtue in this world. We believe we do not belong because we are so much better than others and therefore we eschew any attempt to bridge the gap with others. They are too stupid, too plebeian, too indolent to understand as we do.

The rise of the “right wing” brought forth many good ideas, but it also inculcated a certain kind of person who was addicted to being an outsider, or addicted to losing. Because to win requires the ability to extend a hand of friendship and understanding to “the normie” or people who might have been on the other side at one point. To win requires the people who fought for that victory to somehow be engulfed in the normalcy of their own values. If for example, the pro-life movement truly won, it would no longer be a source of identity for pro-life activists. They would have to find other ways to define who they are, other missions to fight for, other ways to derive their sense of self-virtue. In this way, although many people who are “outsiders” due to their virtue, are actually outsiders due to their pride.

It is also important to recognize that Austen uses Mary to satirize a particular type of performative virtue. Through Mary, Austen critiques the kind of moral seriousness that is unmoored from empathy and insight. Mary parrots ideas from conduct books and religious tracts, but rarely applies them with understanding. Her version of virtue is cold and abstract, and in Austen’s moral universe, that is not enough. True virtue, the novel implies, is grounded in discernment, kindness, and humanity, not just rules.

To be an outsider on principle as a form of identity, is to marry yourself to self-defeating identity rather than on any virtue or love. One can imagine a person like Mary developing a chip on her shoulder from always having been the outsider and determining to forever resent those who made her feel excluded, rather than to do some souls searching and inquire into the reasons for her social awkwardness.

In the end, Mary Bennet remains in the shadows of the narrative. She does not evolve as Elizabeth does, nor is she offered a romantic redemption. Yet her presence deepens the novel’s texture, offering a glimpse of what it means to long for significance in a world that rewards grace over gravity. Mary may be the least beloved Bennet sister, but she is, in her own way, one of the most poignantly human.

In a world where women may measure their rewards based on how much attention they get from the millions on social media, it is easy to believe ourselves to be Mary Bennets if we simply mind our own business. However, what Mary would have benefited from learning is that attention, though appealing to one’s vanity, is not always a good friend. Attention can inflate one’s pride or damage one’s ego as it did to both Elizabeth and Jane. Attention can set expectations so rigid that we are called “hypocrites” for ever deigning to be human and change in any way. Attention can bring danger, prejudice, hatred and malice.

If I could have spoken to Mary, I would have encouraged her to find joy in her pursuits and interests themselves rather than in the meagre crumbs of attention she might gain from others. Then, slowly, gently, she might have gained more valuable attention of someone who loved her, rather than fell for any exterior theatrics.

You see, people like Mary have an enormous, quiet advantage in their lives, because they can be left alone to observe, make mistakes in the dignity of their own privacy, and when they love and are loved, that bond has greater intimacy than anything that is put on display.

To be an outsider is often seen as the abnormality in what we know to be a “social species” and yet the feeling of being on the outside, not belonging, is the most human and normal thing there is to feel. In this way, we are none of us truly outsiders. We are together in our lonelinesses.

The magic of Jane Austen’s (and in deed any great writer’s) writing is not that we identify with one character, but that we see ourselves in all of them. Each character is a facet of our humanity, fleshed out and given the breath of ink to reveal something to us about ourselves. Perhaps the modern woman would do better to pay attention to Mary Bennet and the virtues and vices she reflects back onto them.