An excitable mother whose life's chief business is marrying her five daughters well.
Mrs. Bennet brings home Mrs. Long's news that Mr. Bingley, an unmarried young man with four or five thousand a year, has taken Netherfield Park. She immediately treats his arrival as an opportunity for one of her daughters and insists that her husband make the requisite first call.
Her husband regards her agitation as material for jokes, but the narration makes her priorities unmistakable: she has little information, a mean understanding, and an uncertain temper; when dissatisfied, she imagines herself ill with nerves. Marriage-making and neighbourhood news are both her work and her consolation.
She once considered herself handsome and has five grown daughters, but the text gives no further concrete account of her face, figure, hair, or clothing.
She drives the Bennet household's effort to secure advantageous marriages for its daughters.