Mr and Mrs Bennet

Mr and Mrs Bennet

The news that a wealthy young gentleman named Charles Bingley has rented the manor known as Netherfield Park causes a great stir in the neighbouring village of Long bourn, especially in the Bennet household. The Bennets have five unmarried daughters, and Mrs. Bennet, a foolish and fussy gossip, is the sort who agrees with the novel's opening words: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." She sees Bingley's arrival as an opportunity for one of the girls to obtain a wealthy spouse, and she therefore insists that her husband call on the new arrival immediately. Mr. Bennet torments his family by pretending to have no interest in doing so, but he eventually meets with Mr. Bingley without their knowing. 

The opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice - "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife"- establishes the centrality of advantageous marriage, a fundamental social value of Regency England. The arrival of Mr. Bingley is the event that sets the novel in motion. He delivers the prospect of a marriage of wealth and good connections for the eager Bennet girls.

The first chapter consists almost entirely of dialogue, a typical instance of Austen's technique of using the manner in which characters express themselves to reveal their traits and attitudes. Its last paragraph, in which the narrator describes Mr. Bennet as a "mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice," and his wife as "a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper," simply confirms the character assessments that the reader has already made based on their conversation. There is little physical description of the characters in Pride and Prejudice, so the reader's perception of them is shaped largely by their words.