Mousy Mary Bennet of 'Pride & Prejudice' gets her moment in new novel 'Mary B'

Jane Austen had little to say in “Pride and Prejudice” about the middle Bennet daughter, Mary, and most of it was dismissive. She is “the only plain one in the family,” who “had neither genius nor taste,” with a weak voice and an affection for “threadbare morality.”

Elder sister Elizabeth and Darcy got their happily ever after, while Mary was doomed to be the Jan Brady of Regency romance.

In Katherine J. Chen’s ingenious debut novel, “Mary B” (Random House, 322 pp., ★★★½ out of four), the title character gets some attitude, and a measure of revenge, in a story that inhabits and critiques Austen’s novel. “I, too, hoped quietly for romance and also for marriage as much as any of my sisters did,” she insists. She’s just disinclined to compromise her intelligence to achieve them.

Chen is mindful, though, that a young woman among the gentry of early 1800s England could only act out so much, especially with parents desperate to land financial security (i.e., husbands) for their daughters. So Mary abides her sisters’ stinging taunts, keeping her fury in check. Teased by her sister Kitty for her musicianship, she writes, “My fingers punched the keys. I imagined they were Kitty’s teeth and smiled to myself.”

The first third of “Mary B” roughly, somewhat ploddingly, matches the plot of “Pride and Prejudice,” with a few twists. The pretentious clergyman Mr. Collins, who delivered a comically presumptuous proposal to Elizabeth in the original novel, turns out to be a sympathetic outcast just like Mary. But his rejection of Mary in Chen's version underscores the culture’s demand that money and looks mean more than brains.

Once Chen leaps past Austen’s plot, “Mary B” becomes more fully inspired and free to upend Austen’s novel. Darcy’s storied estate, Pemberley, becomes a gilded cage for Elizabeth; Mary’s impetuous sister Lydia, who eloped to London, learns what little support society has for a woman without money or education.

Mary, for her part, uses a visit to Pemberley to put her much-mocked reading habits – her “silent rebellion” – to good use. She hunkers down with protofeminist works by Mary Wollstonecraft and writes her own novel about the “uncouth and vicious men who, despite their titles, have little learning and little breeding and absolutely no manners at all.” And she finds romance as well – this is still Austen’s world, after all.

“Pride and Prejudice” has been reimagined countless times, its characters transformed into everything from sexpots to zombies. Rather than remounting the “Pride” story in genre dress, Chen’s skillfully roots out blind spots in Austen’s perspective, the way “Pride” celebrated integrity and honesty but was often stingy with empathy or respect for contrarian women pursuing an intellectual life.

Chen doesn’t soft-pedal how challenging Mary’s task is – she’s forced to keep much of her self-possessed spirit hidden.

But quietude is a powerful resource: “Only think of how much in our day-to-day lives is lost in noise and what can be gained in its opposite – in the depths of silence,” she tells Darcy. In that regard, “Mary B” is a tribute not just to Austen but to defiant women of any era.

WFTV