Austen seemed derive as much amusement from Lady Bertram’s indolence and inertness as Mrs Norris’s hyper-activity and interference. While more educated people tend to adopt more impersonal ways of speaking, Lady Bertram takes this to extravagant lengths, sometimes almost rendering herself a non-entity in her speech, apparently vacating herself entirely.
By not one of the circle was he listened to with such unbroken, unalloyed enjoyment as by his wife, who was really extremely happy to see him, and whose feelings were so warmed by his sudden arrival as to place her nearer agitation than she had been for the last twenty years. She had been almost fluttered for a few minutes, and still remained so sensibly animated as to put away her work, move Pug from her side, and give all her attention and all the rest of her sofa to her husband. She had no anxieties for anybody to cloud her pleasure: her own time had been irreproachably spent during his absence: she had done a great deal of carpet-work, and made many yards of fringe; and she would have answered as freely for the good conduct and useful pursuits of all the young people as for her own. It was so agreeable to her to see him again, and hear him talk, to have her ear amused and her whole comprehension filled by his narratives, that she began particularly to feel how dreadfully she must have missed him, and how impossible it would have been for her to bear a lengthened absence. (19.9)
This will be emphasised later when her almost mortally ill son arrives while she is writing a letter to Fanny.
Her aunt did not neglect her: she wrote again and again; they were receiving frequent accounts from Edmund, and these accounts were as regularly transmitted to Fanny, in the same diffuse style, and the same medley of trusts, hopes, and fears, all following and producing each other at haphazard. It was a sort of playing at being frightened. 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 a letter which she had been previously preparing for Fanny was finished in a different style, in the language of real feeling and alarm; then she wrote as she might have spoken. “He is just come, my dear Fanny, and is taken upstairs; 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, and so is Sir Thomas; and how glad I should be if you were here to comfort me. But Sir Thomas hopes he will be better to-morrow, and says we must consider his journey.” (44.12)
It is often assumed that Austen herself embodies the kind of dispassionate and detached discipline that we see in Lady Bertram but she often, as here, is critical of such excesses. The following, reminiscent of some passages in her letters, gets Austen into deep trouble with unsympathetic modern readers.
“What shall I do, Sir Thomas? Whist and speculation; which will amuse me most?”
Sir Thomas, after a moment’s thought, recommended speculation. He was a whist player himself, and perhaps might feel that it would not much amuse him to have her for a partner. (25.5)
How we have become so sensitive, and so sentimental! Lady Bertram would destroy any amusement for her partner in a game of whist, but our feeling are quite aligned with Fanny towards the ‘aunt she loved best’ (32.11), and she does command the respect of all.
There was nothing more to be said, or that could be said to any purpose, till Sir Thomas were present; but the subject involving, as it did, her own evening’s comfort for the morrow, was so much uppermost in Lady Bertram’s mind, that half an hour afterwards, on his looking in for a minute in his way from his plantation to his dressing-room, she called him back again, when he had almost closed the door, with “Sir Thomas, stop a moment—I have something to say to you.”
Her tone of calm languor, for she never took the trouble of raising her voice, was always heard and attended to; and Sir Thomas came back. (23.11)
Lady Bertram isn’t held accountable for the catastrophe any more than she was for the theatricals, though her indolence contributes in a negative sense just as surely as Sir Thomas’s towards the forming of Maria’s character and disgrace. The problem is that Lady Bertram’s abilities are such that she seems to be making good use of them thanks to her kindly disposition and good breeding. Judgement only really makes sense where for those with suitably sharp faculties are concerned: Fanny, Edmund, Maria, Julia, Tom, Sir Thomas and the Crawfords. It is the misuse of sharp faculties that are in the spotlight.
