NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {J} ane Austen’s most overlooked novel contains her best villain. I speak, of course, of Mansfield Park, home of the least-liked heroine in Austen’s oeuvre, Fanny Price. Alas for Fanny, she is a much maligned, much misunderstood character, and is often seen as weak and prudish. While my defenses of Fanny are many (and have been briefly documented), I’m here to propose another unpopular opinion: Fanny’s Aunt Norris is far, far worse than any and all of Austen’s other unsavory characters.
Pride and Prejudice’s George Wickham, Sense and Sensibility’s Willoughby, and Persuasion’s Mr. Elliot all certainly have their claims to sleaziness, but no matter how much they seduce and preen, their actions in their respective tales can’t rival the vile stench Mrs. Norris spreads wherever she appears.
Mrs. Norris is the sister of Lady Bertram and Mrs. Price. The last is Fanny’s mother, who married very badly. Lady Bertram and her husband, Sir Thomas Bertram, reside at Mansfield Park. Married to a man of the cloth, Mrs. Norris is settled in Mansfield parsonage, and her revolting qualities appear at the tale’s outset. A nasty letter from her causes a rift among the three sisters, which is not remedied for nearly ten years. Mrs. Price, out of desperation, heals the breach by begging for help, and as a consequence, Fanny is sent to live with her rich relations. Aunt Norris’s nagging, overbearing, pushy manner is on continuous display throughout the book, causing readers to wince each time she opens her mouth.
Always eager to look important, Mrs. Norris is constantly listing her accomplishments, from cutting costs on the superfluous curtain used in the book’s ill-fated play, to working to forward the imbalanced match between one of her nieces and an idiotic young man. Lauding herself for her deeds and goading those beneath her to equal praise is done frequently:
“Well, Fanny, this has been a fine day for you, upon my word!” said Mrs. Norris, as they drove through the park. “Nothing but pleasure from beginning to end! I am sure you ought to be very much obliged to your aunt Bertram and me, for contriving to let you go.”
The queen of bustling about for no useful reason, Mrs. Norris also has a special talent for interrupting conversations and making everyone around her feel uncomfortable:
Mrs. Norris could fidget about the room, and disturb everybody in quest of two needlefulls of thread or a second hand shirt button in the midst of her nephew’s account of a shipwreck or an engagement.
If she is not consulted on any manner of topic, she is offended. She also spends enormous amounts of energy arranging outings and gatherings in unnecessarily complex ways that inevitably hurt or hinder someone else. Have no fear, though: She will always manage to make it worthwhile for herself, through bullying servants into giving her fresh produce, plants, or recipes.
In his excellent book A Jane Austen Education, William Deresiewicz sums up Mrs. Norris as “probably the most repulsive character in all of Austen: spiteful, miserly, and mean as dirt, a woman who reacted to the death of her husband ‘by considering that she could do very well without him.’”
If this list of aptly stated faults merely poisoned her own existence, Mrs. Norris would simply be another Austen character notable for the accurate caricature of meanness. Unfortunately for her nephews and nieces, Mrs. Norris’s follies wreak terrible damage on their lives.
In Fanny’s case, we see Mrs. Norris disturb her peace of mind by unkind remarks and add to her sense of inferiority by treating her as a servant. In one memorable moment, after Fanny seeks to be excused from acting in her cousins’ play, Mrs. Norris says to Edmund, the younger of the Bertram sons:
“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.”
Perhaps Fanny was lucky, though, not to have fawning attention from her aunt, because such attention directed at her cousins served them very ill. All through their childhood and into adulthood, Tom, Maria, and Julia Bertram are flattered and spoiled by Aunt Norris. She feeds their vanity, molds their sense of self-importance, and trains them to look down on their cousin. She plays favorites, has no discernment of good and bad character, and is easily persuaded to see no wrong in the various schemes dreamed up by Tom and Maria.
This laundry list of bad qualities eventually leads to the ruin of Tom’s health, a questionable marriage for Julia, the shattering of Edmund’s marriage prospect, and the permanent destruction of Maria’s reputation.
“But Wickham seduced Lydia!” you might say. “And Willoughby caused Marianne to almost die of grief!” True, but remember: Wickham ended up stuck with Lydia, and Willoughby deeply regretted his treatment of Marianne. Mrs. Norris, in contrast, has no self-awareness whatsoever. She is completely unable to see herself as ever being wrong — a massive character flaw that injures and sometimes permanently destroys the lives of those around her. To the bitter end, even after the utter chaos and family scandals that unfold, she can see no problem with her actions, and even wants Maria welcomed back to Mansfield after she runs away from her husband to live with another man.
Thankfully, for Fanny’s sake and the peace of all at Mansfield, “it ended in Mrs. Norris’s resolving to quit Mansfield, and devote herself to her unfortunate Maria, and in 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.”
Good riddance.