...was the sort of thing you could expect from this pure and spiritual place called the Country. April For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn ? JANE AUSTEN Dave the Bread took off his cap and threw it down on the scrubbed deal table in his own...

...quips, "I am quite at leisure" (377). By placing into Mr. Bennet's mouth a rhetorical question—"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in our turn?"— Austen indirectly steers us toward a different conclusion (364). Mr. Bennet has too little sense of...

...in need of special handling. "For what do we live," Jane Austen has asked millions of her readers, "but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?"29 Because participants in the foregoing stories are speaking off-the-cuff, not ex cathedra,...

...young olive-branch. But, Lizzy, you look as if you did not enjoy it. You are not going to be missish, I hope, and pretend to be affronted at an idle report....Had they fixed on any other man, it would have been 533 nothing; but his perfect indifference, and your pointed dislike, make it so delightfully absurd!...

...sardonic father, while even the malevolence of gossip is defanged by the astringent acceptance that 'we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn'. Like Sense and Sensibility, the novel portrays individuals negotiating personal needs with external...

...painful situations and view them with a little detachment. Why else do we live, concluded Jane Austen, but "to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in return"? To the genial-spirited anything that happens can be shrugged off as yet another part of "life's...

...read on.' '. . . But, Lizzy, you look as if you did not enjoy it. You are not going to be Missish, I hope, and pretend to be affronted at an idle report....strange!' 'Yes - that is what makes it amusing... And pray, Lizzie, what said Lady Catherine about this report? Did she call to refuse her consent?'...

...young olive branch. But, Lizzy, you look as if you did not enjoy it. You are not going to be \Iissish, I hope, and pretend to be affronted at an idle report....'I am excessively diverted. But it is so strange!' To this question his daughter replied only with a laugh; and as it had been asked without the least...

...phenomenon long ago in Pride and Prejudice, when she had Mr. Bennet remark, "For what do we live for, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?" But when Lydia runs off with the nefarious Wyckham, all bemused aplomb is abandoned. Elizabeth Bennet...

...like Mr. Collins or Mrs. Bennet, and he, like Mr. Bennet, does not believe that the purpose of life is to "make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn" (323). Gardiner is not interested in establishing unquestionable authority or raising himself at the...