The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.

Recently, my friend Susan and I were discussing the subject of mothers in Jane Austen.  I’m not sure how the particular topic of mothers came up, since our friendship is one extended conversation about all things Janeite – but it may have been that we both (independently) finished re-reading Northanger Abbey recently.

At some point in the conversation, I mused that I had been trying to suss out a theme in Austen’s portrayal of mothers.  It seemed a bit of a stretch, but the closest thing that I could find to a common thread was that none of Austen’s heroines can entirely rely upon their mothers for wisdom or guidance.  Some don’t have mothers in their lives at all; others have mothers somewhere in the deep background, but none of them are overly helpful to our heroines.  Witness:

• Anne Elliot‘s mother is deceased.  She has a surrogate in Lady Russell, but that good lady’s advice isn’t always particularly good, since it was her meddling that drove Anne and Captain Wentworth apart originally; one wonders if, had Lady Elliot been living, Anne would have had her happily-ever-after when she first fell in love with Wentworth, instead of having to wait eight years.
• Emma Woodhouse‘s mother is also deceased.  The closest to a mother that Emma comes is “poor Miss Taylor” – her governess, who becomes “poor Mrs Weston” and departs the house in the beginning of the book.  Mrs Weston plays a role in bringing Frank Churchill to Hartfield and is otherwise distracted by marriage and pregnancy – hardly available to guide Emma through her growing pains.
• Fanny Price lives apart from her mother, under the arch eye of two unpleasant aunts.  Even from afar, Fanny can’t rely on her mother – worn down by poverty and a drunken husband, she’s just trying to get through the days.
• Elinor and Marianne Dashwood have a living mother in the same household, and she’s generally okay, but not a particularly solid source of relationship advice – she thinks Willoughby is a delightful young man, after all.  (Which makes sense, because she’s basically Marianne, twenty years on.)  And she fails to recognize the distress that Elinor is in for most of the novel.  I may be a bit hard on Mrs Dashwood, but Elinor Dashwood is one of my favorite Austen heroines, and every time I read Sense and Sensibility I am frustrated anew at Mrs Dashwood’s enabling of Marianne’s diva tendencies and her demand that Elinor enable them too.
• Catherine Morland has probably the best (most decent, non-embarrassing) mother in the Austen landscape, but even bustling and kindly Mrs Morland isn’t much help to her daughter – she is too distracted by the other members of her brood and, likely, by the demands of being a rector’s wife.  Catherine spends most of the book out of her parents’ presence – first in Bath with the Allens and then at Northanger Abbey, seat of the Tilney family – and the Morland parents are a benign offstage presence, mostly forgotten, for the bulk of the book.
• Elizabeth Bennet, I saved for last, because I have feelings about Mrs Bennet.  She’s clearly meant for a comic character in the book (“You have no compassion for my poor nerves!”) and Jane slyly pokes fun at her repeatedly – but I’ll champion her.  Mrs Bennet is an excellent mother.  She had a hard job to do with very high stakes – marry off five daughters (five!) to ensure their comfort once their parents are no longer living.  (Austen is very clear about what happens to women who do not marry in her universe.  They become Miss Bates, ridiculed by her community and very probably at least a little bit hungry.)  Mrs Bennet has no choice – she has to marry those girls off, or they could legitimately end up miserably poor, and she has to do it without any help from their father, who it’s clear mismanaged their estate and takes no interest in his daughters’ future comfort.  And she succeeds – boy, oh boy, does she succeed.  Jane married to Bingley (rich); Lydia to Wickham (hey, she’s out of the house at least); and Lizzy married to Darcy (super rich, owner of a great estate, descended from aristocracy).  Kitty is “much improved” by spending more time with Lizzy and Jane after their marriages and makes a good match with a clergyman near Pemberley, and we are told that even Mary finds a man, eventually.  Mrs Bennet may be ridiculous, but you can’t argue with the fact that she has one job to do, and it’s a difficult job with a high cost for any failure – and she is wildly successful.  I’d make the case that Mrs Bennet is a far better parent than laissez-faire Mr Bennet (as much as we love his dry quips), that she’s much savvier than she gets credit for, and that her daughters’ comfort in later life owes much more to her than to their father.  Shouts to Mrs Bennet!

This does seem to be the common thread.  All of the heroines have to muddle through their young womanhood without much – or any – help from their mamas.  Some have sisters they can rely on (Jane Bennet is the best example, but Elinor Dashwood is a stand-up sister too and seems to take great comfort in her close relationship with Marianne, for some reason).  Others have female role models that they look to with varying degrees of success – Mrs Weston, Mrs Allen, and Lady Russell come to mind.  And poor Fanny Price just has to go it alone.  I wonder what that says about Austen’s view of mothers in general.  Superfluous?  Perhaps I’m biased – being a mom to a daughter – but I believe that a constant, steady, reliable mother figure would have smoothed the path of any of the Austen heroines.  Maybe that’s why all the mothers are in the background, if they’re there at all – it makes better reading when the heroine has to struggle, after all.

Who do you think is the best Austenite mother?  Would Lady Elliot have encouraged Anne to marry Wentworth to begin with?  And how underrated is Mrs Bennet?

Happy Mother’s Day to all my friends!  I hope you have a lovely day celebrating with the moms in your life.