Mrs. Bennet was restored to her usual querulous serenity.

This line occurs in Jane Austen’s novel *Pride and Prejudice* (1813), during the domestic ebb and flow of the Bennet household. Mrs. Bennet’s moods repeatedly swing between agitation and self-satisfaction as she pursues advantageous marriages for her daughters. Austen uses such moments to sketch the family’s everyday emotional weather: crises (real or imagined) flare up, then subside into a familiar baseline of complaint. The phrase captures Mrs. Bennet returning to her characteristic state after a disturbance, underscoring how quickly she normalizes drama and how her temperament shapes the household’s atmosphere.

Austen’s wit is concentrated in the oxymoronic pairing “querulous serenity.” “Serenity” suggests calm, but “querulous” (habitually complaining) qualifies it, implying that Mrs. Bennet’s version of peace is not quiet contentment but a steady, comfortable grumble. The line satirizes a personality for whom dissatisfaction is a default mode—so ingrained it becomes a kind of equilibrium. It also reflects Austen’s broader social comedy: the domestic sphere is governed less by grand events than by habitual dispositions, and Mrs. Bennet’s incessant fretfulness becomes both a source of humor and a critique of shallow anxieties tied to status and marriage.