"Anne, satisfied at a very early period of Lady Russell's meaning to love Captain Wentworth as she ought, had no other alloy to the happiness of her prospects than what arose from the consciousness of having no relations to bestow on him which a man of sense could value. There she felt her own inferiority keenly. The disproportion in their fortune was nothing; it did not give her a moment's regret; but to have no family to receive and estimate him properly, nothing of respectability, of harmony, of good will, to offer in return for all the worth and all the prompt welcome which met her in his brothers and sisters, was a source of as lively pain as her mind could well be sensible of under circumstances of otherwise strong felicity."
One can readily understand her regret. Her father was a fool, her elder sister Elizabeth a slave of convention, with few rational ideas of her own, and her younger sister a neurotic egotist, who grudged to others the simplest pleasures if she did not feel able or disposed to share them.
Fanny Price was ashamed of the slovenly home at Portsmouth to which Henry Crawford so inopportunely penetrated. Elizabeth Bennet's mother was, of course, more nearly "impossible" even than Lady Catherine had so pointedly suggested, for her defects were far worse than those of obscure birth. This terrible woman, who kept her elder daughters constantly on the rack by her fatuous chatter, who always said the wrong thing, who had no desire for her children's welfare but to marry them to anybody, with money if possible, or without it rather than not at all, made one of her usual quick changes when she heard the surprising news of Elizabeth's engagement to Darcy—
"She began at length to recover, to fidget about in her chair, get up, sit down again, wonder, and bless herself.
"'Good gracious! Lord bless me! only think! dear me! Mr. Darcy! Who would have thought it! And it is really true? Oh, my sweetest Lizzy! how rich and how great you will be! What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages you will have! Jane's is nothing to it—nothing at all. I am so pleased—so happy! Such a charming man!—so handsome! so tall—Oh, my dear Lizzy! pray apologize for my having disliked him so much before. I hope he will overlook it. Dear, dear Lizzy! A house in town! Everything that is charming! Three daughters married! Ten thousand a-year! Oh, Lord! what will become of me? I shall go distracted.'
"This was enough to prove that her approbation need not be doubted; and Elizabeth, rejoicing that such an effusion was heard only by herself, soon went away. But before she had been three minutes in her own room, her mother followed her.
"'My dearest child,' she cried, 'I can think of nothing else! Ten thousand a-year, and very likely more! 'Tis as good as a lord! And a special license. You must and shall be married by a special license. But, my dearest love, tell me what dish Mr. Darcy is particularly fond of, that I may have it to-morrow.'
"This was a sad omen of what her mother's behaviour to the gentleman himself might be; and Elizabeth found that, though in the certain possession of his warmest affection, and secure of her relations' consent, there was still something to be wished for."
Of Catherine Morland we are told that "her whole family were plain matter-of-fact people, who seldom aimed at wit of any kind; her father at the utmost being contented with a pun, and her mother with a proverb." Having given us this little aperçu of Mr. and Mrs. Morland, the author, more suo, adds the information: "They were not in the habit, therefore, of telling lies to increase their importance, or of asserting at one moment what they would contradict the next."