Does “not all” mean “none” here?

The sentence is really wordy, even as a native speaker it feels wordy. It means that all she asked her husband wasn't enough for him to be able to describe Mr. Bingley. It's a dated use for "not all." It's like instead of saying "All my time in training was not sufficient to prepare me," you say "Not all my time in training was sufficient to prepare me."

You can think of an "even" in there. It means she asked a lot of questions, with help from her daughters, but not even all those questions...

A strict reading of this would be that less than all of her questions produced satisfactory answers, but some may have. But it's the writer's intent to mean that despite all of her questions, none gave satisfactory answers. "Not all" in this case means none but, not all of the time is this the case.

That sentence feels gross. It gets easier to understand if we take out the however clause. "Not all that Mrs. Bennet could ask on the subject was sufficient to draw from her husband any satisfactory description of Mr. Bingley." So if we pick this apart a bit, we get the idea that Mrs. Bennet asked everything she could think to ask to gain a description of Mr. Bingley, and she was unsuccessful. The optional clause in there makes this sentence *really* awkward.

Despite everything he asked - even with his daughter's help - they didn't get a clear description.

"Not all that she could ask was sufficient to draw from her husband any satisfactory description of Mr. Bingley" is the same as "All that she could ask wasn't sufficient to draw from her husband any satisfactory description of Mr. Bingley"

This is honestly even tough for a native (US) speaker to understand if not paying attention. I always read these types of books slightly slowly and elegantly because it's all about the prose.

To answer the question. In this case, I think: “Not all” means: “some”. I think the simplified version would be that most of Mrs. Bennets’ questions were *insufficiently* answered. Perhaps a more nuanced view would be that it is implied (Before the succeeding explanatory paragraph) her husband is intentionally withholding details and the stress is placed on the parenthetical fact that despite extensive efforts he remains tight-lipped?

That is an awful sentence.

Take out the subordinate clause in the middle and it makes more sense. "Not all that Mrs Bennet... could ask on the subject was sufficient to draw out a satisfactory answer."

In a way, yes it does mean none, but grammatically you'd have to change more than just that for the sentence to make sense. Even being archaic, I still think this would have been confusing back then too. It's got four comas because the author couldn't put their words in the right order. Yoda-speak basically. I'd say:  No matter how I or my daughters questioned my husband, he could not accurately describe Mr. Bingley.

"Not all that Mrs. Bennet could ask on the subject was sufficient to draw from her husband any satisfactory description of Mr. Bingley." Almost synonymous with "Nothing that Mrs. Bennet could ask on the subject was sufficient to draw from her husband any satisfactory description of Mr. Bingley." Austen uses "not all" because it reinforces the idea that the questioning was incessant and that it wasn't because *Mrs. Bennet* was *unable* to ask enough but that *Mr. Bennet* was *unwilling* to answer. Using "nothing" would imply Mrs. Bennet asked *some* things but whether she asked *everything (all things)* is unclear. The meaning is that Mrs. Bennet asked everything there was to ask about the subject but Mr. Bennet refused to answer. It's reinforced by the text immediately after, as well.

In this case, to read in accord with the author's intention, one must separate out this bit: "all that Mrs. Bennet could ask on the subject" and understand it to mean: "all that Mrs. Bennet was capable of asking on the subject". Thus the sentence means that all the capabilities of Mrs Bennet as regards questioning the chap on this subject were insufficient to achieve her aim. Why would the author speak thus? I suppose it was fashionable among the chatty upper class so to do. Also it's prettyer and more poetical this way than in any more direct way I can think of. Also I suppose that this method depicts well the lack of depth of what is supposedly Mrs. Bennet's most heroical efforts in the narrated event; the sentence is roundabout and frivolous and her supposed strivings were probably roundabout and frivolous too, I would guess? But I really have no basis for guessing so. I never finished that book. The frivolity put me off terribly. Very irritating.

This is something I was faced with as a native speaker reading this book - all of the long convoluted sentences! It takes a bit of time and effort to untangle the clauses and understand the meaning of the sentences.

I *hated* this book in school - all 4 times we had to read it. Seeing this reminds me I still hate it. It is an awful rambling mess, excessively complex in every way. That's not just my opinion: *"Mark Twain wrote, "I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."*

I hope you are reading this book because you love classic literature and not for language learning purposes 🙏

I would try thinking about the sentence slightly differently. The -not- and the -all- are part of different parts of the sentence in this type of structure. The -not- is modifying "all that mrs bennet could say" instead of modifying just "all". This gives the meaning that -all that mrs bennet could say- was insufficient. If you take the -not- as just modifying -all- the emphasis leads to a suggestion that some of what Mrs Bennett said was sufficient while some was not sufficient. The sentence is poorly constructed for a modern reader and I can see why it would be difficult to easily understand.

Jesus Christ that sentence seems like its been written to purposely confuse non-native speakers. Tbh i think a fair few native speakers would struggle with it as well

It's closer to "nothing". You could simplify the sentence as something like "Nothing she asked was enough to get accurate info from her husband".

I almost had a stroke reading this

Mrs. Bennet's husband was unable to give a satisfactory description of Mr. Bingley despite all the questions she asked him.