Set in the English countryside in a county roughly thirty miles from London, the novel opens with the Bennet family in Longbourn and their five unmarried daughters. The family itself is not nearly as rich as those they interact with and because they have no sons, the property is entailed to pass to a male heir, in this case Mr. Collins. Mrs. Bennet is intent on seeing her daughters married off to wealthy men and when Charles Bingley arrives at nearby Netherfield Park she is excited by the prosp