Aunts (“I have always maintained the importance of Aunts”)
by Elizabeth Newark

“I have always maintained the importance of aunts,” wrote Jane Austen in 1815, in a letter to her niece Caroline.

And what is an aunt? Refer to the dictionary and you will find (1) an aunt is the sister of one’s father or mother, or (2) the wife of one’s uncle. Jane Austen was herself an aunt to the children of her brothers, and a fond one, and perhaps she was influenced by this pleasing state into thinking of aunts as interesting characters. Certainly aunts are scattered with a lavish hand throughout her novels, as is only fitting at a time when the family in all its ramifications had greater importance and closer ties than exist today. But is there more to it than that? They serve a purpose.

Four aunts in particular play highly visible roles in the novels; each is a source of considerable amusement to the reader. Miss Bates, Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris and Lady Catherine de Bourgh: a formidable array of ladies, remarkable for their differences. Two are widows, one is comfortably married, and one is that old-fashioned thing, a spinster. One is rich and powerful, one is rich and passive, one adds to her income of about 600 pounds a year by sponging on her relatives, and one is not far from the poverty line.

What do they have in common (if one dare use such a word as ‘common’ in the vicinity of Jane Austen)? Only their aunthood. On that score one might even call them great aunts. And they are delightful comic inventions.

These ladies are as different in character as they are in situation. But, before we examine them individually, let us take a look at literary aunts in general.

There is a strong literary tradition of comical aunts. “Charley’s Aunt (from Brazil, where the Nuts come from)” is a case in point, and a perennial favorite. Then we have Miss Pitty-Pat in Gone with the Wind; Dickens’ Aunt Betsy Trotwood in David Copperfield, with her parasol and her cry of “Boys! Donkeys!”     Eliza Doolittle’s aunt, in Shaw’s Pygmalion is famous because “Gin was mother’s milk to her.” And W.S. Gilbert has only to make his chorus sing “And so do his sisters and his cousins and his AUNTS,’ and we know we are supposed to laugh.

Barbara Pym has something to say on the subject of aunts and comedy in her novel Less Than Angels:

[The woman] paused and seemed to take a deep breath. ‘You see,’ she declared. ‘I am Tom Mallow’s aunt.’ Catherine’s first instinct was to burst out laughing. She wondered why there was something slightly absurd about aunts; perhaps it was because one thought of them as dear, comfortable creatures, somehow lacking in dignity and prestige.

But is there something ‘slightly absurd’ about aunts, are they ‘lacking in dignity and prestige?” in general? Those aunts who are spinsters might lack dignity because they are poor, and prestige because they are husbandless. Also, spinsters (or old maids, or unmarried women of a certain age, whatever one wants to call them), were supposedly innocent of the facts of life, persons from whom certain things must be hidden despite their age. They were supposed to be kept perpetually immature and were therefore laughable. There is a strong sexual element here, and considerable cruelty. W.S. Gilbert was notorious for his sneers at older single women; in the end, his partner, Sir Arthur Sullivan, rebelled and would not compose for yet another such character.

But we are getting away from our subject. Dickens’ Betsy Trotwood is a good example of the comic aunt, though she is not a spinster. But she is much more than that. She is a redoubtable character, funny, yes, eccentric, yes, but endearing, strong in her likes and dislikes, loyal and goodhearted, a feminist before her time.

Miss Bates certainly comes within this group, but she is not derided. Caustic though Miss Austen can be, her fun with Miss Bates is of a gentler sort. She is shown as desperately human in her anxious struggles to cope with life’s hazards, both big and small, which threaten to overwhelm her and which emerge in her conversation, as delightful irrationalities piled one on top of the other. And when Emma does poke public fun at Miss Bates, she is severely rebuked by Mr. Knightley , and deeply repentant.

Miss Bates is the only spinster in my gang of four. But both Lady Catherine and Mrs. Norris are widows. Widows can be comical (Dickens’ character Mrs. Gummidge, from David Copperfield is a case in point) but it is not a dominant characteristic.

But are aunts necessarily comic? There are, after all, literary aunts with a harsher aspect. For example, Jane Eyre‘s unpleasant Aunt Reid; the frightening Seeton’s Aunt, in the story of that name by Walter de la Mare; and, from Dickens’ Bleak House, Esther Summerson’s harshly moralistic aunt, Miss Barbary, who tells her: ‘It would have been far better, little Esther, that you had had no birthday — that you had never been born.’ Aunt Norris merges with this group for, although the reader sees her absurdities, she is not a pleasant woman and is terrifying to the small Fanny Price.

One thing all the aunts have in common is that they are facilitators. Each plays a part in affecting the lives of our protagonists.

A clear example is Aunt Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is Elizabeth Bennet’s friend and counselor, from whom she receives the good advice her mother has not the wit to give her. But she also serves a larger purpose. It is Mrs. Gardiner who, by taking Elizabeth with her on her tour of Derbyshire and, in particular, by visiting Pemberley, brings Elizabeth back into touch with Darcy, on his own ground, and under propitious circumstances. (How different their story might have been if the proposed trip to the Lakes had not been changed.)

Darcy, at home, shows to advantage. And Elizabeth is now free from the mortifications and distractions that so often beset her in the company of her parents and sisters. The Gardiners are an intelligent, well-bred and attractive couple, even though they do live in Cheapside; in their company Elizabeth has nothing to blush for, and appears at her best. And when the news of Lydia’s elopement reaches them, it is natural that Darcy should hear of it and be moved to action. It would have been much more difficult for Jane Austen to involve Darcy if he had been at Pemberley and Elizabeth at Longbourn (she would have managed it, of course). So, all in all, Aunt Gardiner is an extremely useful character.

Mrs. Philips, a milder, good-natured version of Mrs. Bennet, is, in her turn, useful for her social evenings; in particular she brings together Elizabeth and Mr. Wickham in surroundings away from the Bingleys and Darcy, where Wickham may pour our his false story to Elizabeth unfettered by any fear of being overheard, and turn her against Darcy.

Then there are the young aunts. But they are in a class of their own since their aunthood is incidental to their main purpose. They are our heroines, and need no other classification. However, it is interesting to consider what might have been.

Anne Elliot is aunt to her sister Mary’s children and, at the beginning of Persuasion, is not quite a spinster (except perhaps in her father’s eyes) but is hovering on the brink. Undervalued in her own home, she is appreciated by Lady Russell as a companion. Lady Russell is the first of what I will call the ‘courtesy aunts,’ for she, like Mrs. Gardiner, is a facilitator: by taking Anne to Bath she plays her part in reuniting the lovers. By her sister Mary, however, Anne is appreciated solely as someone to make use of, as, in fact, an aunt to her own tiresome children. It is while Anne is visiting Mary that she meets Captain Wentworth once again, so Mary has her uses. But if Anne had not been reunited with Captain Wentworth, as a spinster she would have had no home of her own, and few rights on her father’s death. Her father and sister Elizabeth do not want her and she would presumably have made her home with Lady Russell, who, we are told, is ‘extremely well provided for,’ and might well have left Anne a competence (that useful word) if it were within her power — we do not know how her money was left and what relations are waiting on the Russell sidelines. Mary might have wanted Anne because she was useful. But the prospects are not bright. Anne might well have ended up ‘poor Aunt Anne.’

Emma is different. She of course is an aunt and doubtless an affectionate one, though her esteem for Isabella’s children reaches new and vocal heights when she fears that Mr. Knightley may marry Jane Fairfax and, by siring a son, disinherit Mr. John Knightley’s eldest boy. “Mr. Knightley must not marry! You would not have little Henry cut out from Donwell? Oh no, no! Henry must have Donwell.”

We are given a charming vignette of Aunt Emma playing with her youngest niece, ‘a nice little girl about eight months old,’ and Uncle Knightley (impossible name) taking the baby out of her arms ‘with all the unceremoniousness of perfect amity.’ This brief description sheds a new light on the relationship between Knightley and Emma; it reveals a more casual, more physical relationship than has yet been apparent.

And if Emma had not married Mr. Knightley? If she had remained a spinster aunt? We have her own views on matrimony, given in a conversation with Harriet:

(Emma)     … I am not only not going to be married at present, but have very little intention of ever marrying at all.

(Harriet)    Ah, so you say; but I cannot believe it.

(Emma)     I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry …. I believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband’s house as I am of Hartfield, and never, never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man’s eyes as I am in my father’s.

(Harriet)    But then to be an old maid at last, like Miss Bates

(Emma)     That is as formidable an image as you could present, Harriet; and if I thought I should ever be like Miss Bates …. But between us, I am convinced there never can be any likeness, except in being unmarried.

(Harriet)    But still, you will be an old maid — and that’s so dreadful!

(Emma)     Never mind, Harriet, I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public. A single woman with a very narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid … but a single woman of good fortune is always respectable and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.

Emma has a point about poverty.

However, imagine Emma if she did not marry Mr. Knightley. She is already a spoiled, strong-willed, arrogant young woman. Imagine her at fifty, Aunt Emma (or would it be Aunt Woodhouse?), ruling the neighborhood, still wealthy, still handsome, still matchmaking, one of Jane Austen’s wonderful comical aunts. I think she might have become what is generally known as a ‘terror.’

Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, in Sense and Sensibility, are aunts, or half-aunts, to their half-brother’s nasty brood. But the only bearing the relationship has on the story is that it is their nephew, little Harry, who disinherits them. Ms. Austen does, however, supply them with one of her collection of courtesy aunts, a facilitator, in this case Mrs. Jennings. Mrs. Jennings is the mother-in-law of Sir John Middleton, the Dashwood’s next door neighbor. She sweeps Elinor and Marianne up in her generous grasp and takes them off to London, thus letting Marianne learn of Willoughby’s treachery and setting in train the events leading to the climax of the story. In London also Elinor sees more of Edward Ferrars and learns of his long time engagement to Lucy Steele. Colonel Brandon is also on hand to fall more deeply in love with Marianne and to be of help, eventually, to Edward Ferrars. All this we owe to Mrs. Jennings.

Catherine Morland, in Northhanger Abbey, is not yet an aunt, nor does she have one. Instead, she has Mrs. Allen, courtesy aunt number three, who sets the plot in motion by taking Catherine to Bath. Mrs. Allen is also a source of comedy.

Let us now return to take a more detailed look at our gang of four — Miss Bates, Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris and Lady Catherine de Bourgh — and examine the places they occupy in the novels.

Firstly, Miss Bates

Miss Bates, aunt to Jane Fairfax, is, as we have seen, the only spinster in the group. We have just heard how Emma viewed her, and it is possible that Charlotte Lucas had such a woman in mind and was already dreading the day when she would be nothing but an impoverished spinster aunt, at the beck and call of her brothers’ wives, and that this was a spur to her ‘practical’ marriage to Mr. Collins. For in Miss Bates we have a graphic drawing of the fate that lay in wait for the unmarried woman of Jane Austen’s time. Miss Bates lives with her elderly mother, the widow of a former vicar of Highbury:

[She] stood in the very worst predicament in the world for having much of the public favour; and she had no intellectual superiority to make atonement to herself, or to frighten those who might hate her into outward respect. She had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was devoted to the care of a failing mother, and the endeavour to make a small income go as far as possible.

We are given glimpses of strict economy and make-do and mend — it is not Miss Bates speaking, but naughty Emma mimicking her, who says:

Not that it was such a very old petticoat either — for still it would last a great while — and indeed, she must thankfully say that their petticoats were all very strong.

but this rings so true that I must quote it. Miss Bates leads a narrow life, enlivened by her love of and admiration for her niece, the beautiful and talented Jane Fairfax, who pays rare but precious visits, and by the hospitality of kindly neighbors. Miss Bates is probably in her forties, and we are told nothing of her history — whether for example, she was ever courted, however mildly (by a soldier, perhaps who was killed in battle?), or suffered from unrequited love, perhaps for a curate, that useful object of silent admiration for the unattached woman of the day. After all, Miss Bates’ father had been Vicar of Highbury. Did she ever treasure, like Harriet Smith, some small token once the possession of her love (a note, perhaps, written to the Vicar), which she could tuck under her pillow to dream about at night. We don’t know, but we can hope so. We know little of her past, but we hear her, oh how we hear her, in the present:

… it is not five minutes since I received Mrs. Cole’s note — no, it cannot be more than five — or at least ten — for I had got my bonnet and spencer on, just ready to come out — I was only going down to speak to Patty again about the pork — Jane was standing in the passage, were you not, Jane? — for my mother was so afraid that we had not any salting-pan large enough. So I said I would go down and see, and Jane said, ‘Shall I go down instead, for I think you have a little cold, and Patty has been washing the kitchen?’ ‘Oh, my dear,’ I said — well, and just then came the note.

But, despite her problems, she is a happy woman, we are told,

… and a woman whom no one named without goodwill … She loved everybody, was interested in every body’s happiness, quick-sighted to everybody’s merits; thought herself a most fortunate creature, and surrounded with blessings in such an excellent mother, and so many good neighbours and friends ….

Even Emma, no fan of Miss Bates, says of her:

I really believe, if she had only a shilling in the world, she would be very likely to give away sixpence of it”.

Her wealthier neighbours include her in their social evenings and outings, and send her presents from the bounty at their own tables: the hindquarter of pork from Emma, for example, or the apples that were so good for baking from Mr. Knightley. And, as with many of Ms. Austen’s characters, Miss Bates serves a purpose in the story. Her delightful ramblings serve as a means of disseminating information about other characters, little snippets that help to fill out the plot. She is in her own small way the Town Crier, the daily news gazette. Through her eyes we learn, for example, about Mr. Woodhouse with his food fads and finicky ways, and his selfish overlooking of other peoples’ wishes.

I was telling you of your grandmamma, Jane — there was a little disappointment. The baked apples and biscuits, excellent in their way, you know; but there was a delicate fricassee of sweetbreads and some asparagus brought in at first, and good Mr. Woodhouse, not thinking the asparagus quite boiled enough, sent it all out again.

And we also learn from her that Mr. Elton’s admiration of Emma had not gone unnoticed in the neighborhood, however blind she herself was to it:

Yes [he is to marry] a Miss Hawkins. Well, I had always rather fancied it would be some young lady hereabouts; not that I ever — Mrs. Cole once whispered to me — but I immediately said, ‘No, Mr. Elton is a most worthy young man — but’ … At the same time, nobody could wonder if Mr. Elton should have aspired….

It is Miss Bates who lets us know what pushed Jane Fairfax into accepting Mrs. Elton’s proposed of the post of governess with the dreadful Mrs. Smallridge:

… and so, when Mr. Elton came back, he told us what John Ostler had been telling him, and then it came out about the chaise having been sent to Randalls to take Mr. Frank Churchill to Richmond. That was what happened before tea. It was after tea that Jane spoke to Mrs. Elton.

And here we see one of the Jane Austen’s wonderful writing skills at work: she makes one character enlarge another.

It is, of course, the shock of Mr. Knightley’s disapproval, after her rudeness to Miss Bates, that starts Emma on the voyage of self-discovery which ends with her recognition of her love for Mr. Knightley.

Miss Bates also, poor innocent soul, serves as a barrier to Jane Fairfax’s marriage into the upper-crusty Churchill family. Emma puts this into words when she thinks what a degradation it would be for Mr. Knightley to marry Jane, and have Miss Bates as a kinswoman:

… a very shameful and degrading connection. How could he bear to have Miss Bates belonging to him? To have her haunting the Abbey, and thanking him all day long for his great kindness in marrying Jane? ‘So very kind and obliging! But he always had been such a very kind neighbour!’

Emma, however, we must admit, is prejudiced.

What would have become of Miss Bates if her mother had died while Jane Fairfax was still only a governess? Would the “small income” have continued? Who would have taken her in?

Lady Bertram

Let us now move on to Mansfield Park. Two of the aunts in my magnificent foursome, Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris, appear in this novel. They are sisters but it is hard to remember this, so dissimilar are they.

Lady Bertram won her husband (as did Mrs. Bennet, remember?) on the strength of her personal beauty and presumably ‘that appearance of good humor which youth and beauty give.’ She has borne Sir Thomas four children and, when we meet her at the age perhaps of 43 or 44, she is indolent, self-absorbed and passive. She is not actively unkind to Fanny Price, as is her sister, but she makes use of her in a way that is often inconsiderate, and she is too lazy to exert herself to protect Fanny from her sister’s tongue. However, her selfish need of Fanny is in itself some protection, since it limits Aunt Norris’ ill treatment of Fanny. At times, of course, the two of them combine to be too much for her. For instance, at the time when Mary Crawford is monopolizing the mare Edmund bought for Fanny’s use, we have the episode of the headache:

‘Fanny,’ said Edmund … ‘I am sure you have the headache!’

She did not deny it but said it was not very bad. ‘I can hardly believe you,’ he replied. ‘I know your looks too well…. Did you go out in the heat?’

‘Go out! To be sure she did,’ said Mrs. Norris; ‘would you have her stay within on such a fine day as this? Were not we all out? Even your mother was out today for above an hour.’

‘Yes, indeed, Edmund,’ added her Ladyship … ‘I was out above an hour. I sat three-quarters of an hour in the flower-garden, while Fanny cut the roses, and very pleasant it was, I assure you, but very hot.’

‘Fanny has been cutting roses, has she?’

‘There was no help for it, certainly,’ rejoined Mrs. Norris. ‘but I question whether her headache might not be caught then, sister. There is nothing so likely to give it as standing and stooping in a hot sun; … Suppose you let her have your aromatic vinegar; I always forget to have mind filled.’

‘She has got it,’ said Lady Bertram. ‘she has had it ever since she came back from your house the second time….’

Lady Bertram expects things to be done for her, and is willing to let Mrs. Norris take charge of the household management, the day-to-day organization, and even the upbringing of her daughters. But if her husband is as exasperated with her as Mr. Bennet is with Mrs. Bennet, we do not hear of it from Sir Thomas, who is courteous in the extreme. He probably spends no more time with her than Mr. Bennet does with Mrs. Bennet, but in appearance at least he has more justification, since he is a Member of Parliament and must spend some time in London, and is also a man of affairs, who runs his own estate and deals personally with his investments overseas. We are given a quick insightful sketch of Lady Bertram’s feelings for her husband, and indeed her attitude to life in general, when Sir Thomas goes to Antigua:

Lady Bertram did not all like to have her husband leave her; but she was not disturbed by any alarm for his safety or solicitude for his comfort, being one of those persons who think nothing can be dangerous, or difficult, or fatiguing to anybody but themselves.

Since it was her good looks that brought her a wealthy husband, she has an excessive regard for personal appearance, and the rewards due to such appearance:

She had been a beauty, and a prosperous beauty, all her life; and beauty and wealth were all that excited her respect. To know Fanny to be sought in marriage by a man of fortune raised her, therefore, very much in her opinion. By convincing her than Fanny was very pretty, which she had been doubting about before, and that she would be advantageously married, it made her feel a sort of credit in calling her niece.

And she does not hesitate to claim credit for Fanny’s good looks when, at the time of the Ball, Sir Thomas praises them:

‘Yes,’ said Lady Bertram, ‘she looks very well. I sent Chapman to her.’

When we see her playing Speculation, at the Grant’s Parsonage, she seems to have less than common sense, as when she says, in response to Mrs. Grant’s inquiry:

‘Oh dear, yes. Very entertaining indeed. A very odd game. I do not know what it is all about. I am never to see my cards; and Mr. Crawford does all the rest.’

But she is not quite the fool she sometimes seems. For example, it suits her to be lazy and let her more energetic sister rule the roost, but she sees Mrs. Norris quite plainly, as is shown in the following conversation. Mrs. Norris is speaking:

‘… I must live within my income, or I shall be miserable; and I own it would give me great satisfaction to be able to do rather more — to lay by a little at the end of the year.’

And Lady Bertram replies:

I daresay you will. You always do, don’t you?

One does not exactly like Lady Bertram, but it is amusing to watch her, with her pug and her sofa, and her embroidery which she does not do (she feels industrious when she watches Fanny sort her embroidery silks). We see her part in the management of her household when Sir Thomas decides to give a dance for Fanny:

Lady Bertram was perfectly quiescent and contented, and had no objections to make. Sir Thomas engaged for its giving her very little trouble; and she assured him ‘that she was not all afraid of the trouble, indeed she could not imagine there would be any.’

And of course for Lady Bertram there is no trouble.

One of my favorite glimpses of her, brief but totally in character, is at the beginning of Chapter XIII of Vol. II, when Henry Crawford, courting Fanny, arrives at Mansfield Park with the news that William is now a lieutenant. Lady Bertram and Fanny are together in the breakfast-room:

… and, fortunately for him, Lady Bertram was on the very point of quitting it as he entered. She was almost at the door, and not choosing by any means to take so much trouble in vain, she still went on, after a civil reception, a short sentence about being waited for, and a ‘Let Sir Thomas know,’ to the servant.

Only towards the end of the novel, when her elder son, Tom, is brought home from London sick, and she is jarred into reality, does she become more human. It is a credit to Austen’s genius that this woman, who might well have been simply a caricature, does make this change, and is believable:

The sufferings which Lady Bertram did not see had little power over her fancy; and she wrote very comfortably about agitation, and anxiety, and poor invalids, till Tom was actually conveyed to Mansfield, and her own eyes had beheld his altered appearance … then, she wrote as she might have spoken. ‘He is just come, my dear Fanny, and is taken up-stairs; and I am so shocked to see him, that I do not know what to do. I am sure he has been very ill. Poor Tom; I am quite grieved for him, and very much frightened….

If Lady Bertram had been a strong, energetic character there would have been no excuse for Aunt Norris’ continual presence and, without Aunt Norris, Fanny’s story might have been quite different; indeed, she might never have come to Mansfield Park.

Aunt Norris

Aunt Norris is the eldest of the three good-looking Ward sisters. We are told that Miss Ward and Miss Frances Ward were thought by some of their acquaintance to be quite as handsome as Miss Maria (who becomes Lady Bertram) but I, at least, find it hard to think of Mrs. Norris as good-looking; to me she is just a frown and a sharp tongue. We are told also that it was six years after Lady Bertram’s marriage before Miss Ward found and attached herself to the Rev. Mr. Norris. This was doubtless hard on the eldest sister at a time when society expected the elder to marry before the younger. Perhaps it had the effect of souring her temper. The couple have no children. Is this a disappointment, or was it just as well? I can imagine her raising a son something like Mr. Elton, can’t you? Intent on pleasing those above him in rank, condescending and even rude to those he thought beneath him, and always with an eye to the main chance.

Aunt Norris is a dragon to Fanny and an excellent source of conflict in the novel. At first she is a dragon at one remove, since she lives at the Parsonage but, on her husband’s death (when Fanny is 15), she moves first to Mansfield Park itself, and then to a small house of Sir Thomas’s in the village, where she:

consoled herself for the loss of her husband by considering that she could do very well without him; and for her reduction of income by the evident necessity of stricter economy.

It is worth notice that her income is given as 600 pounds a year, and that presumably she lives rent free. When we compare that with the 200 pounds a year that Edward Ferrars would receive from the living of Delaford presented to him by Colonel Brandon, and on the strength of which he will marry Elinor Dashwood and probably start a family, we know we need not worry about Aunt Norris. Her income compares very favorably, for that matter, with the income on which Jane Austen, Mrs. Austen and Cassandra will one day live, namely 460 pounds per annum.

It is interesting indeed that it is Mrs. Norris who is instrumental in bringing Fanny to Mansfield Park and thereby setting the stage for the whole novel). When Fanny’s mother, Mrs. Price, writes to Mrs. Norris, at the time of her ninth lying-in, it is in the hopes of obtaining the promise of some sort of situation for William in the future (he had reached the great age of ten). But Mrs. Norris, in one of her do-unto- others-at-no-cost to herself moods, suggested that they (pretending to mean the Bertrams and herself, but really meaning just the Bertrams) should take complete charge of the eldest girl. Sir Thomas has doubts, but Mrs. Norris overrules them:

My dear Sir Thomas, I perfectly comprehend you, and do justice to the generosity and delicacy of your notions, which indeed are quite of a piece with your general conduct; and I entirely agree with you in the main as to the propriety of doing everything one could byway of providing for a child one had in a manner taken into one’s own hands; and I am sure I should be the last person in the world to withhold my mite upon such an occasion. Having no children of my own, who should I look to in any little matter I may ever have to bestow, but the children of my sisters.

She goes on to say:

Whatever I can do, as you well know, I am always ready enough to do for the good of those I love; and, though I could never feel for this little girl the hundredth part of the regard I bear for your own dear children, nor consider her, in any respect, so much my own, I should hate myself if I were capable of neglecting her. Is not she a sister’s child? and could I bear to see her want, while I had a bit of bread to give her?

With this kept firmly in mind, it is delightful to hear what Mrs. Norris has to say only two chapters later (though six years later in Fanny’s life), when it is proposed, after Mr. Norris’ death, that Fanny go to live with her:

I can only say that my sole desire is to be of use to your family; and so if Sir Thomas should ever speak again about my taking Fanny, you will be able to say that my health and spirits put it quite out of the question — besides that, I really should not have a bed to give her, for I must keep a spare room for a friend.

Miss Austen continues to use Aunt Norris actively in her novel as an instigator of change. Her interference strongly affects all characters. For example, without her spoiling, would Maria and Julia have grown up quite so arrogant and willful? If her judgment had been more in line with Sir Thomas’ (since he leaves his family in her care), would “Lovers Vows” ever have been considered. And without her encouragement, would Maria have become engaged to Mr. Rushworth? And if Maria were not engaged to Mr. Rushworth, it is doubtful if Mr. Crawford would have flirted with her so openly. Mr. Crawford is not the man to allow himself to be trapped into an engagement which he does not wish, and it seems to me that he indulges his taste for flirtation more freely with Maria than Julia because he feels protected by Maria’s standing as an engaged woman.

Mrs. Norris treats Fanny harshly from the moment of her arrival at Mansfield Park, and comes to dislike her more and more as time passes. One particularly nasty attack is on the occasion of the casting of Lovers Vows. Fanny steadfastly refuses to act, though everyone but Edmund tries to persuade her. At last Mrs. Norris joins in, both angrily and audibly:

What a piece of work here is about nothing — I am quite ashamed of you, Fanny, to make such a difficulty of obliging your cousins in a trifle of this sort — so kind as they are to you! Take the part with a good grace, and let us hear no more of the matter, I entreat.

Edmund seeks to deter Mrs. Norris, who continues:

‘I am not going to urge her,’ replied Mrs. Norris, sharply. ‘but I shall think her a very obstinate, ungrateful girl, if she does not do what her Aunt and cousins wish her — very ungrateful, indeed, considering who and what she is.’

Mrs. Norris is an extremely useful cog in Miss Austen’s wheel, and she is used one last time at the end of the story, when it is necessary to dispose of Maria:

It ended in Mrs. Norris’ resolving to quit Mansfield, and devote herself to her unfortunate Maria, and on an establishment being formed for them in another country — remote and private, where, shut up together with little society, on one side no affection, on the other no judgment, it may be reasonably supposed that their tempers became their mutual punishment.

Miss Austen sums up her useful character in a few telling sentences:

Mrs. Norris’ removal from Mansfield was the great supplementary comfort of Sir Thomas’ life.

And:

She was regretted by no one at Mansfield … Not even Fanny had tears for Aunt Norris — not even when she was gone for ever.

Lady Catherine de Bourgh

Last, but oh so very much not least, we have Lady Catherine de Bourgh, in Pride and Prejudice, the cream, as it were, of the cream. Why man, we might go on to say, echoing Shakespeare, she doth bestride her narrow world like a Colossus! This, at least, is how she sees herself.

How old is Lady Catherine? She is Darcy’s aunt, his mother’s sister, and his mother is dead. But people died younger in those days, and a great many women died well before they reached forty, during the childbearing years. Lady Catherine has a daughter of marriageable age in, say, her early twenties, so Lady Catherine herself my be no more than 45, but perhaps she married late. She is so outrageous, so arrogant, opinionated and snobbish that it is easy to see her as older, as she was portrayed by the delightful Edna Mae Oliver in the Hollywood movie version. (Miss Oliver, by the way, also played Aunt Betsy Trotwood in the early version of David Copperfield). I cannot myself imagine her with a husband, let alone young, in love, or pregnant. She would have had a wet nurse, of course, but can you imagine her playing with her baby, the possibly already sickly Anne? And yet Lady Catherine obviously loves her daughter, perhaps as an appendage to her own importance, but probably as fiercely as a tigress loves her cub.

A great deal of her time is spent in interfering with other peoples’ business. Sometimes those people are her relations, but more often they are the nearby villagers, and dependents such as the Collins. I feel there is something almost pathetic about her interest in other people’s petty affairs. It shows how empty her life is, alone with her dull daughter and her self-importance in her great house:

She inquired into Charlotte’s domestic concerns familiarly and minutely, and gave her a great deal of advice, as to the management of them all, told her how everything ought to be regulated in so small a family as hers, and instructed her as to the care of her cows and poultry.

It is almost like a young girl playing with a toy village.

Lady Catherine is a good source of comedy. Her speech is as individual as Miss Bates’, and as self-revealing:

Mrs. Collins, you must send a servant with them. You know I always speak my mind, and I cannot bear the idea of two young women traveling post by themselves. It is highly improper. You must contrive to send somebody. I have the greatest dislike in the world to that sort of thing. Young women should always be properly guarded and attended, according to their situation in life.

and

Miss Bennet would not play at all amiss, if she practised more, and could have the advantage of a London Master. She has a very good notion of fingering, though her taste is not equal to Anne’s. Anne would have been a delightful performer, had her health allowed her to learn.

She is a living illustration of the ‘pride’ of the title and an example of what Mr. Darcy might have become if Elizabeth, with her wit and charm and sense of proportion had not danced into his life. But she also serves a stronger purpose. Even more than aunt Norris, she is a dragon, a source of conflict, an obstacle to be overcome, and Miss Austen uses her to bring Elizabeth to an open admission of her feelings toward Mr. Darcy by making Lady Catherine arrogantly oppose the marriage.

I am reminded here of another aunt who serves much the same purpose. If you go back a few years in your reading you may remember Louisa May Alcott’s Aunt March, in Little Women, also a formidable lady who, by her snobbish attack on the young tutor, Mr. Brooke, makes Meg realize how much he means to her.

Here is the actual passage from Pride and Prejudice; Elizabeth is speaking:

‘… if I am that choice, why may not I accept him?’

‘Because honour, decorum, prudence, nay interest, forbid it. Yes, Miss Bennet, interest; for do not expect to be noticed by his family or friends, if you willfully act against the inclinations of all….’

‘These are heavy misfortunes,’ replied Elizabeth. ‘But the wife of Mr. Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of happiness necessarily attached to her situation that she could, upon the whole, have no cause to repine.’

‘Tell me once for all, are you engaged to him?’

‘I am not.’

‘And will you promise me, never to enter into such an engagement?’

‘I will make no promise of the kind.’

When Elizabeth marries Darcy, we learn that:

Lady Catherine was extremely indignant on the marriage of her nephew; and as she gave way to all the genuine frankness of her character, in her reply to the letter which announced its arrangement, she sent him language so very abusive, especially of Elizabeth, that for some time all intercourse was at an end.

What a pity we do not see that letter.

Jane Austen was no radical. But although she was a respecter of the status quo, she was no respecter of persons, and had a keen sense of the ridiculous. She was quite as willing to poke fun at the arrogance and conceit of a member of the aristocracy as she was at a social climber. It is here that I find her so close to my favorite of her characters, Elizabeth Bennet, for both of them “dearly love a laugh.”

As for Lady Catherine, I am persuaded she would have been a more admirable character had she had more to do. She would, I believe, have made an excellent member of parliament — better by far than Sir Thomas Bertram — a Tory of the deepest blue dye, of course, but genuinely interested in her constituents, fearless, outspoken and quite ready to give battle on the floor of the House of Commons. We leave her, at the end of Pride and Prejudice, condescending to

wait on [Darcy and Elizabeth] at Pemberley, in spite of that pollution which its woods had received, not merely from the presence of such a mistress, but the visits of her uncle and aunt from the city.

Uncles

It would be crass of me to ignore, totally, the uncles in Jane Austen’s work, although she does not make use of them in the same way as the aunts, nor are they identified as such. Which of us thinks of Sir Thomas Bertram as anything but Sir Thomas, never as Uncle Bertram, but so he is to Fanny and William. He is certainly referred to as Fanny’s uncle and we are told, for example, that “her uncle’s anger gave her the severest pain of all.”

But Uncle Tom he is not.

Mr. Knightley is also an uncle. He tosses his nephews about in a way that delights them, but appalls Mr. Woodhouse. Mr. Gardiner is Elizabeth Bennet’s blood relative (though one has to wonder how he manages to be so different from his sisters), but although he proves his worth by conversing with Mr. Darcy while Elizabeth “gloried in every expression, every sentence … which marked his intelligence, his taste, or his good manners,” and by searching London for his wayward niece, Lydia, he is not as important to Elizabeth as his wife.

On the whole nothing much seems to be expected from uncles, except a kind word now and then, and probably a sovereign or guinea slipped to a departing child.

Conclusion

But enough of the men. Let us end as we began, with those remarkable and profoundly conceived ladies, the aunts of the novels of Jane Austen. So, what have we learned?

Basically, I think we have learned that they are introduced as characters to help or hinder our heroines. They are facilitators, characters outside the protagonist’s main family, who can be employed to transport them to a more favorable place or, by presenting them with obstacles, allow them to develop in various unexpected ways.

And our four leading ladies?

Firstly, that they are complicated characters, all in their own ways eccentric, and drawn with great attention to detail. Mrs. Norris, for example, cannot refrain from ‘scrounging’ even on her visit to Sotherton; Lady Catherine, when she descends on Longbourn to confront Elizabeth, gives way to her nosy-parker habits by poking her head into Mrs. Bennet’s drawing room for a quick look around; Lady Bertram is deeply shocked when she first sees how sickness has changed her son, but only a week later “he was so far pronounced safe, as to make his mother perfectly easy…. The fever was subdued; the fever had been his complaint, of course he would soon be well again” and Miss Bates, even when most concerned about her niece, can still barely complete a sentence.

Secondly, that they are very cleverly used by Miss Austen to facilitate her plots; and

Thirdly, and most of all, that they amuse us.

To conclude, let me draw you a picture.

Visualize a quiet village street. Walking towards us are the aunts: good-natured Aunt Phillips and elegant Aunt Gardiner; the young aunts, Anne Elliot, Emma Woodhouse and Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, four abreast, hand in hand; and then comes Miss Bates, big with news, aflutter with excitement, wearing her bonnet and spencer; Lady Bertram, carried, of course, in a sedan chair (don’t ask how it came to the village) with Pug snuffling on her lap; Aunt Norris, a roll of green baize under her arm, her nose held high, bustling down the street and nagging at Dick Jackson as she comes; and sweeping along, the hem of her dress just clearing the horse manure, in splendid isolation, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, aware of her great importance and incredible condescension in being there at all, but taking note, just the same, of the crest on a passing carriage and the size of the roast the butcher’s boy was about to deliver:

— the Aunts, the wonderful Aunts, of the novels of Jane Austen.

Copyright © 1991 by Elizabeth Newark

Elizabeth Newark is a Londoner by birth and a San Franciscan by choice. She was infected by Jane Austen at the age of 14. The senior class in her English secondary school put on Pride and Prejudice as a play one Christmas, and she found it so delightful that she immediately sought out the books. She has still not recovered from the infection.