68 JANE AUSTEN 



her mother, while her vulgarity came from Sir 

 Walter. Then again, Emma had none of Mr. 

 Woodhouse's qualities, and we must suppose her 

 to be a repetition of her mother. Unless, indeed, 

 her general kindliness came from her father, and 

 possibly also the stupidity which wrecked her 

 matrimonial agency. We must, I think, believe 

 that Mrs. Woodhouse had been a managing woman, 

 who probably insisted on Mr. Woodhouse marrying 

 her ; thus her instinct for matrimonial scheming was 

 confined (we may fancy) to her own interests. It 

 is too fanciful to suggest that Mrs. Woodhouse had 

 a tinge of hardness in her which came out in Emma's 

 celebrated rudeness to Miss Bates. At any rate, it 

 is certain that it was not a heritage from her father. 

 I knew a lady who could never forgive this slip of 

 poor Emma. And the vividness of this feeling 

 was not a symptom of that want of literary sense 

 which makes the gallery hiss the villain on the 

 stage, but must be taken as a proof of the vitality 

 of the character. Isabella Woodhouse is obvi- 

 ously of her father's type, with hardly a mental 

 feature to remind us of Emma. 



In the Bertram family the inheritance is not 

 very clear ; the Miss Bertrams seem to show the 

 hard narrowness of Mrs. Norris, and none of the 

 sheep-like good nature and futility of Lady Bertram. 

 I suspect that in Mrs. Norris, hardness and business 

 tendency were an inheritance from her uncle, the 

 Huntingdon solicitor, for we know that he made 

 the harsh and commercial statement that his niece 

 was at least ;£30oo short of any equitable claim to 

 the hand of Sir Thomas. We do not know any- 



