Character Analysis
Just like the original characters from Austen's novel, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet both have different goals for their daughters. This time around, Mrs. Bennet is the one who wants her girls to marry rich men, and Mr. Bennet is the one bent on training them to be the deadliest zombie-slayers in all of England.
Check out this exchange between them when Mr. Bingley first comes to town, for example:
"Bingley. A single man of four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!"
"How so? Can he train them in the ways of swordsmanship and musketry?"
"How can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them."
"Marriage? In times such as these? Surely this Bingley has no such designs."
"Designs! Nonsense, how can you talk so! It is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes."
"I see no occasion for that. And besides, we mustn't busy the roads more than is absolutely necessary, lest we lose more horses and carriages to the unfortunate scourge that has so troubled our beloved Hertfordshire of late."
"But consider your daughters!"
"I am considering them, silly woman! I would much prefer their minds be engaged in the deadly arts than clouded with dreams of marriage and fortune, as your own so clearly is!" (1.11-18)
For Mrs. Bennet, a husband means financial security and respectability. Sure, the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living, but a young woman just can't go around slaying zombies forever. She still needs a man to get by in this mad world.
Mr. Bennet is way more panicked about whether or not his daughters will survive the next zombie attack. Hmm…given that his estate is entailed to only a male heir, maybe he should be a little more concerned about what his daughters will live on after he dies? Just a thought.
Basically, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are kind of an odd couple, but in the end, they both do their part to prepare the Bennet girls for the realities of life as women in England during the zombie apocalypse of the 19th century. That's right: these girls will need husbands and muskets by their sides if they want to survive out there.