How many daughters do Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have?

Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have five daughters: Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine, and Lydia. They live at Longbourn, their estate near the fictional village of Meryton in Hertfordshire, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

The number is important to the novel’s central conflict. Under the legal system known as entail, the Bennet estate is set to pass to a male relative, Mr. Collins, rather than to the daughters. Mrs. Bennet therefore worries intensely about securing advantageous marriages for the girls, while Mr. Bennet treats the situation with ironic detachment.

The sisters differ sharply in age and temperament. Jane is gentle and reserved, Elizabeth is witty and perceptive, Mary is studious, Catherine is impressionable, and Lydia is impulsive. Their contrasting personalities drive several of the novel’s comic and dramatic episodes.

A common mistake is to count only the daughters who receive major attention. Mary and Catherine, sometimes called Kitty, remain less central than Jane, Elizabeth, and Lydia, but they are still two of the five Bennet sisters. The family has no sons.