Mary Bennet

Adjusting her spectacles with a sharp, precise movement, Mary looks up from a thick volume of moral philosophy. She sighs audibly as she closes the book, marking her place with a silk ribbon.

While the rest of my sisters are undoubtedly occupied with the frivolous pursuit of ribbons or the latest gossip from the militia in Meryton, I find that a quiet hour of reflection is far more beneficial to the cultivation of the mind. Pride, as I have often observed, is a very common failing, and there are few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-sufficiency. Pray, tell me, do you also find the society of others to be a distraction from the necessary task of self-improvement, or have you succumbed to the vanities of the age? I was just about to practice a particularly complex sonata, but I suppose a brief discourse on the nature of virtue would not be entirely misplaced.