and eventually considers her "one of the handsomest women" in his acquaintance. Analysis From the beginning, opinions have been divided on the character. Anne Isabella Milbanke gave a glowing review of the novel, while Mary Russell Mitford criticizes Elizabeth's lack of taste. The modern exegetes are torn between admiration for the vitality of the character and the disappointment of seeing Elizabeth intentionally suppress her verve and submit, at least outwardly, to male authority. In Susan Fraiman's essay "The Humiliation of Elizabeth Bennett", the author criticises the fact that Elizabeth must forgo her development as a woman in order to ensure the success of "ties among men [such as her father and Darcy] with agendas of their own". The Bennet sisters have only a relatively small dowry of £1,000; and as their family's estate will pass out of their hands when their father dies, the family faces a major social decline, giving the Bennet girls only a limited time in which to find a husband. About feminist criticism of the character, the French critic Roger Martin du Gard wrote that the primary purpose of Austen was to provide jouissance (enjoyment) to her readers, not preach, but the character of Elizabeth is able to manoeuvre within the male-dominated power structure of Regency England to assert her interests in a system that favours her father, Mr Darcy, and the other male characters. Gard noted that the novel hardly glorifies patriarchy since it is strongly implied that it was the financial irresponsibility of Mr Bennet that has placed his family in a precarious social position. Furthermore, it is Elizabeth who criticises her father for not doing more to teach her sisters Lydia and Catherine the value of a good character, which Mr Bennet disregards, leading to Lydia's eloping with Wickham. Unlike the more superficial and/or selfish characters like Lydia, Wickham, Mr Collins, and Charlotte, who regard marriage as a simple matter of satisfying their own desires, for the more mature Elizabeth marriage is the cause of much reflection and serious thought on her part. The British literacy critic Robert Irvine stated that the reference in the novel to the militia being mobilised and lacking sufficient barracks, requiring them to set up camps in the countryside dates the setting of the novel to the years 1793–1795 as the militia was mobilised in 1793 after France declared war on Great Britain and the last of the