Chapter Text
Elizabeth Bennet escaped out of doors, away from the oppressiveness of Longbourn, feeling huffy with indignation. It had been a trying few weeks with her mother and she needed to get out of the house, out of Mrs. Bennet’s sight, out into the sunlight where she could be alone to work out the worst of her temper.
It did not particularly bother her, that she was not her mother’s favorite - her father liked her best, and his opinion was much more valuable than Mrs. Bennet’s - but things had grown more uncomfortable since her fifteenth birthday, several weeks ago. Since then, Mrs. Bennet scarcely spoke without pointing out some fault or other of Elizabeth’s, always ending by telling her to try to be more like Jane. Even this did not bother her much. What caused the vexation was the way her mother never listened to her; the way her mother invented things Elizabeth had said or done; the way her mother took on that smug look and said, “I know you better than you know yourself, Miss Lizzy.”
She huffed again, kicking a pebble with more force than was necessary.
Gone were the days when Elizabeth would run to her mother with every question, every hurt, every concern; when Mrs. Bennet had been the all-knowing, all-seeing, beneficent comforter, the soother of all childish ailments, the most important figure in life. Her mother was growing sillier with every passing year, Elizabeth thought; her nerves, though never robust, were her continual complaint; her mind, never cultivated, was ever more fixated on news and gossip and getting her eldest daughter married off to the richest man who would have her.
Elizabeth pictured the glances she exchanged with her father, the ones where they would roll their eyes in mutual contempt at whatever petty matter Mrs. Bennet happened to be wailing about, and snorted. Her father had started to take more of an interest in Elizabeth as she’d gotten older and had grown out of the most frivolous of her girlishness. Elizabeth was clever, he said; Elizabeth was witty. Elizabeth was everything most other girls were not.
She cherished his approval; her father was not easily impressed and did not bestow it lightly.
Well, Elizabeth thought, wandering further down the path, relishing the distance she was putting between herself and Longbourn, one day she would be away from here; she would impress the right sort of people; her life would improve. She would be away from her mother’s silly, narrow-minded influence. It was only a matter of time.