The Failures of the Anglo Father
Mr. Bennet and Daddy Issues in Jane Austen
It is both controversial and undeniable to assert that the modern anglo-woman is not okay in many ways. Something has gone terribly wrong in her culture to lead to her demise. She is at war with her own nature via sexual promiscuity, spiritual degeneracy and through a promotion of every political idea that compromises her safety and happiness.
Why would any creature, let alone a human being with an intellect, act so contrary to her well-being and benefit? It is an interesting psychological question but it is also a very simple one to answer when one remembers that most human decisions and ideas are not the product of thoughtful reflection, but rather of automatic absorption and repetition of the culture around them. While both men and women are vulnerable to the consequences of thoughtless ideology and the propaganda that promotes it, women being the weaker vessel are more vulnerable. It is, therefore, the divine prerogative of men to protect women and especially young women from the world and from themselves.
Perhaps many men would argue that these young women are not their responsibility and ought to face the consequences of their own folly. I do not disagree with this statement in general. However, a daughter is most certainly the responsibility of her father and I argue that a cultural failure of women at a mass scale indicates a failure in the fathers of that culture. While not all good women have good fathers, it is true that a good father makes it far more likely that his daughter will turn into an intelligent, virtuous and thoughtful person.
Although Jane Austen is often claimed by the feminists, having read her works for five months continuously now, I have realized she could not be further from that ideology. When it comes to fathers, her stories, if anything, warn the reader of the consequences of an absent, foolish, or negligent patriarchy. Patriarchy, in Jane Austen’s world, is precisely what protects young women from self-destruction. While an entire book could be written on the subject parsing each paternal character and his feminine charges, the character that we dissect today is from Austen’s most famous novel, Pride and Prejudice. Join me on a journey of figuring out what exactly Anglo Fathers have done wrong to produce the most self-destructive race of women through the case study of Jane Austen’s Mr. Bennet.
