The family consists of Mr and Mrs Bennet and their five daughters: Jane, Mary, Catherine, Lydia, and Elizabeth, who is the novel's protagonist.

[3] The relationships between the Bennets influence the evolution of the plot as they navigate the difficulties faced by young women in attempting to secure a good future through marriage.

Mr Bennet makes no effort to change the behavior of his wife or his younger daughters, being more intent on "enjoying the show".

Their estate, Longbourn House, comprises a residence and land located within the environs of the fictional town of Meryton, in Hertfordshire, just north of London.

For years, Mr Bennet hoped to father a son who would inherit the entire estate, which would see to the entail for another generation and potentially provide for his widow and any other children he might have.

Mr Bennet is described in his first appearance in the book as "so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character", and it is this same ironic, cynical, dry, wry sense of wit and humour that irritates his wife.

If he draws the sympathy of the reader by his skill at irony, he has nevertheless faults:[9] indifferent and irresponsible, self-centred, stubborn, indolent, and a dislike of company.

Mr Bennet admits he married a silly girl, but he has, for his part, largely given up his social role as pater familias.

[10] Although Mr Bennet is an intelligent man, his indolence, lethargy, and indifference results in him opting to spend his free time ridiculing the weaknesses of others (ironically) rather than addressing his own problems.

In volume 2, chapter 19, it is revealed that Mr Bennet had only married his wife based on an initial attraction to her: [Mr. Bennet] captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good humour, which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman, whose weak understanding, and illiberal mind, had, very early in the marriage, put an end to any real affection for her.

"[15] Despite the fact that his daughter must marry in order to be able to continue living the life of a gentlewoman, Mr Bennet appears, for the most part, unconcerned.

"[16] Mrs Bennet, born a Gardiner and married for twenty-three years at the start of the novel, is the daughter of an attorney in Meryton.

Though equally vulgar, ignorant, thoughtless, tasteless and gossipy, the marriages of the two sisters have resulted in them moving in different circles: one (Mrs Bennet) marries a member of the local gentry, while the other (Mrs Phillips) marries one of her late father's law clerks, while their naturally genteel brother pursues an education and a higher social status in general trade in London.

The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news' ... [Mr. Bennet] captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good humour, which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman, whose weak understanding, and illiberal mind, had, very early in the marriage, put an end to any real affection for her").

Elizabeth was the least dear to her of all her children; and though the man and the match were quite 'good enough' for her, the worth of each was eclipsed by Mr. Bingley and Netherfield".Of the Gardiner siblings, Mrs. Bennet had the best wedding, since she married a member of the local gentry, owner of an estate with an income of £2000 annually.

Mrs Bennet sends Jane to Mr Bingley's Netherfield estate in the rain to make sure that through illness she must stay there, encourages Mr Collins to ask for the hand of Elizabeth, and rejoices loudly at Lydia's marriage ("No sentiment of shame gave a damp to her triumph" specifies the narrator), remaining indifferent to the dishonourable reasons which made it necessary (that a man had to be bribed to marry her favourite daughter), since it corresponds to the realisation of "her dearest wishes" to have her daughter "well married".

For her, it is not the manners or behaviour that indicate belonging to a high rank, it is ostentatiousness and flaunting wealth,[23] and the validity of a marriage is measured by the amount "of calico, muslin and cambric" to buy for the bride's trousseau.

As Virginia Woolf wrote, "no excuse is found for [her fools] and no mercy shown them [...] Sometimes it seems as if her creatures were born merely to give [her] the supreme delight of slicing their heads off".

[25] Mrs Bennet is distinguished primarily by her propensity to logorrhea, a defect that Thomas Gisborne considers specifically feminine.

[28] Another emphasised and ridiculed aspect of Mrs Bennet is her "nervous disease", or her tendency to use it to attract sympathy to herself, or else demanding that the family pay attention to her, but ultimately failing to make herself loved.

[30] These egocentric characters, who use their real or imagined ailments to reduce all to them, seem to be inspired by Mrs Bennet, whose complaints about her health[29] had the ability to irritate Jane,[31] who speaks with certain ironic annoyance about it in her letters to her sister.

– so much ease, with such perfect good breeding"), a rich young man who has recently leased Netherfield Park, a neighbouring estate.

Mr Darcy, aided by Elizabeth, eventually sees the error in his ways and helps bring Jane and Bingley back together.

As described in volume 3, chapter 19 of the novel, after their marriage, the couple manages to live at Netherfield for a year before life in Meryton (being imposed upon by Mrs Bennet and Mrs Phillips) become too much for their good tempers, leading them to give up the lease on the estate and establish themselves elsewhere ("Mr. Bingley and Jane remained at Netherfield only a twelve-month.

The darling wish of his sisters was then gratified; he bought an estate in a neighbouring county to Derbyshire, and Jane and Elizabeth, in addition to every source of happiness, were within thirty-miles of each other.")

As the plot begins, her closest relationships are with her father (as his favourite daughter), her sister Jane, her Aunt Gardiner, and her best friend Charlotte Lucas.

However, it is said in volume 3, chapter 19, that with Jane, Elizabeth, and Lydia married and moved out of Longbourn, and Kitty living primarily with Jane and Elizabeth, Mary received more attention, and was made to socialise more with people during company ("Mary was the only daughter who remained at home; and she was necessarily drawn from the pursuit of accomplishments by Mrs. Bennet's being quite unable to sit alone.

Mary was obliged to mix more with the world, but she could still moralize over every morning visit; and as she was no-longer mortified by comparisons between her sisters' beauty and her own, it was suspected by her father that she submitted to the change without much reluctance").

According to James Edward Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen, Mary marries "one of her Uncle Philips' clerks, and was content to be considered a star in the society of Meryton".

According to A Memoir of Jane Austen, "Kitty Bennet was satisfactorily married to a clergyman near Pemberley", possibly a parish under the patronage of the Darcy family.