Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 61: Ever After at Pemberley

Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which Mrs. Bennet got rid of her two most deserving daughters. This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 61, the final chapter of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, in which Austen distributes futures to the whole cast with one last round of perfectly aimed sentences.

The double wedding empties Longbourn of sense, and life sorts itself accordingly. Mrs. Bennet remains occasionally nervous and invariably silly; her husband misses his second daughter exceedingly and delights in visiting Pemberley, especially when he is least expected. And thirty miles from Elizabeth, within an easy distance after all, the Bingleys buy an estate and complete the happiness of everyone but their mother-in-law's nerves.

• Kitty, kept mostly at her elder sisters' homes and away from Newcastle, improves remarkably in society superior to what she has known; Mary alone remains at home, obliged at last to mix with the world at her mother's side.
• Lydia's congratulations arrive with an invoice attached: a place at court for Wickham would be pretty well, for they are not rich enough to live on without help, and such applications continue for the length of the marriage.
• Georgiana lives at Pemberley and learns, with some alarm and growing delight, that a wife may take liberties with a husband that a sister can never dare; even Lady Catherine, after abuse of Elizabeth worthy of her rank, condescends at last to visit.
• The last word goes where the debt is owed: the Gardiners, ever on the most intimate terms with the Darcys, loved by both as the ones who, by bringing Elizabeth into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.