Page:Compromises (Repplier).djvu/76

what moment of madness did Mr. Bennet ask Mrs. Bennet to be his wife? Nothing can explain such an enigma; but Miss Austen's philosophy, and her knowledge of that commonplace middle-class English life, which the eighteenth century had stripped bare of all superfluous emotions, enabled her to prove—to her own satisfaction at least—that Mr. Bennet was tolerably content with the situation. It is not too much to say that he enjoys his wife's absurdities. Only in his few earnest words to Elizabeth, when Darcy has asked for her hand: "My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life," do we catch a glimpse of the Valley of Humiliation which he has trodden for twenty-four years. A still more emphatic illustration of Miss Austen's point of view is afforded us in "Sense and Sensibility," when Eleanor Dash wood decides that Mrs. Palmer's surpassing foolishness cannot sufficiently account for Mr. Palmer's rudeness and discontent. "His temper might perhaps be a little soured by finding, like many others of his sex, that, through some unaccountable bias in favour of beauty, he was the hus-