The Unexpected Marriage of Mary Bennet
Alison Leonard
Independently published, 2023
ISBN 979 8 39263 582 5
RRP £10.99

Jane Austen is a famously perceptive commentator on the lives of the landed gentry around 1800. Alison Leonard, in The Unexpected Marriage of Mary Bennet, imagines the subsequent coming-of-age of one of the five sisters featured in Austen’s most celebrated novel, Pride and Prejudice.
Leonard delves into the relationships not only of young Mary, her new husband and her sisters, but also of the household servants on whom their young mistresses depend. Their own ignorance, especially about bodily functions, is quite shocking. She also tackles what to modern minds are the misguided ethical standards of the times, for instance in attitudes to enslavement, the subservience of women and the treatment of unmarried mothers and their children.
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