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There seems to be no easy answer to this. Mr. Hurst is said to look like a gentleman, but we really do not know much about his background, and so we have no explicit answer. It really depends on what is meant by the term. By early definitions of the term, a gentleman was a member of the nobility, but the meaning changed in time to mean someone who was fashionably polite.

In Pride and Prejudice, a distinction is drawn between a gentleman and a man of good fortune, not based on the way a person acts, but on the family from which he comes. Lady Catherine makes this distinction plainly when Elizabeth says Darcy is a gentleman and she is a gentleman's daughter, and so they are equal. Lady Catherine's reply is to question class of the Elizabeth's mother's family. They were prosperous, but they had been attorneys or in trade. So to Lady Catherine believes that a tradesman or lawyer was not a gentleman. By this definition, a gentleman was a person who had inherited some sort of landed estate, so Mr Hurst is clearly not a gentleman.

Bingley, by the same definition, is also not a gentleman, because his fortune was inherited from a person who earned it in trade, a fact his sisters would very much like to forget. But Darcy, who holds Lady Catherine's view when he is dealing with Elizabeth, clearly finds it easy to have Bingley as his best friend. This fact shows Darcy has not thought things quite through in the beginning of the novel. Instead he applies a later standard that a gentleman is a person of some wealth who is well educated and has good manners. By this other standard, which would seem to accept Bingley as a gentleman, Mr. Hurst would probably qualify as one also.

Mr. Hurst is also dull, self centered, snide, and intolerant. Personally, I would say he is barely a gentleman, but only because he dresses well and prefers ragout to plainer fare.

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14y ago
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1mo ago

Yes, Mr. Hurst in Pride and Prejudice is considered a gentleman in terms of social class and manners, but he is portrayed as lazy and indifferent in the novel. He is seen as a typical example of the idle rich of his time.

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Q: Is Mr Hurst in Pride and Prejudice a gentleman?
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