Miss Mary Bennet
We chose Mary Bennet as the main character of our second novel because of where she falls in the Bennet family. I had been doing some reading on "middle child syndrome" and it struck me as a wonderful opportunity to give a voice to those people that are so often ignored or easily swept into the background. You could say my feelings
about this subject were personal, because the individual for whom I have the
greatest respect and high opinion of, my dear wife, is a middle child like Mary.
The
more I thought about how amazing my good wife is, therefore, the more I
considered what potential there must be in the fictitious character Mary
Bennet, who had the tenacity to study diligently and read extensively,
something she did for the sole purpose of bettering herself. And this in the
face of a family of siblings each pursuing, in one way or the other, the
pleasures and advantages to be found at the time. In addition to this, Mary had
the will to excel at the piano by constant practice, even without the stated
advice of someone like Lady Catherine; it seems she received no encouragement
from anyone in the family for that matter. I asked myself, why would Mary not
improve with the passage of time? Certainly seeing the events in her family’s
life would have undoubtedly caused her to think seriously about what she wanted
to do herself. So I set about giving Mary a life of her own.
Shirley Link & The Safe Case by Ben Zackheim
