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Hi everyone,
I am (re re) watching the 1995 adapation. There is a passage I cannot understand.
Elizabeth and Jane talk about Mister Bingley the morning after the 1st Ball:
-Miss Bingley is to keep house for her brother. They will be very charming neighbours.
- One of them maybe.
- No, Lizzy, I'm sure you're wrong.
What does Elizabeth imply in that sentence? If she is just saying that Bingley is charming why does Jane tells her that she's wrong.
Jane tends to think well of all people, while Lizzy judges them more stringently.
Jane is saying that the Bingleys will be charming neighbors.
Lizzy says, "Perhaps Mr. Bingley will be, but not likely his sisters."
And Jane replies by expressing her belief in the amiability of her acquaintances.
I think you could put more of a spin on it by seeing it from this point of view (and probably inspired by Austen's satiric look-out).
So, there are new neighbours, one of them a SINGLE gentleman. Needless to say that half the village, the female half, is excited. Either because they have daughters who are to be married, or because they are those daughters themselves.
Jane is a tad naïve and would never think in that strategic way, but Lizzie and her father no doubt as well, think the same about things and directly see the 'potential' that that new neighbour (or is it neighbourS?) has in Mrs Bennet's eyes. They are by no means considered to be sympathetic only because they are, no, if Bingley were a married gentleman, he wouldn't be half as sympathetic as he is now.
I think that that is what Lizzie is implying in that 'one of them maybe'. She is directly referring to the excitement in the village about that Mr Bingley the same as in the book Mrs Bennet is so excited about him when she storms into Mr Bennet's library in chapter 1, which is not featured in that adaptation, I thought.
That adaptation is brilliant.