There's a really long speech that Mary makes to Fanny right before she leaves Mansfield to London. She starts talking about her friend Mrs. Fraser and her marriage. Here's a part of it:
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“I wish Margaret were married, for my poor friend’s sake, for I look upon the Frasers to be about as unhappy as most other married people. And yet it was a most desirable match for Janet at the time. We were all delighted. She could not do otherwise than accept him, for he was rich, and she had nothing; but he turns out ill-tempered and exigeant, and wants a young woman, a beautiful young woman of five-and-twenty, to be as steady as himself.... Poor Janet has been sadly taken in, and yet there was nothing improper on her side: she did not run into the match inconsiderately; there was no want of foresight. She took three days to consider of his proposals, and during those three days asked the advice of everybody connected with her whose opinion was worth having, and especially applied to my late dear aunt, whose knowledge of the world made her judgment very generally and deservedly looked up to by all the young people of her acquaintance, and she was decidedly in favour of Mr. Fraser. This seems as if nothing were a security for matrimonial comfort.”
The thing that always stuck me about this was how lost Mary seems to be. Earlier in the book she confidently proclaimed that a good income was the best guarantee of happiness she knew of--but here, she admits that her experience hasn't actually borne that out, that she can see for herself it doesn't work--and yet, she doesn't seem to know what else to think. When her worldly maxims don't work she just gets confused, rather than look to replace them with a more cogent philosophy.
The Mary who is writing this letter is embittered, because she's had to put up with Edmund being disappointed and shocked at her over and over again, and she doesn't want to put up with that any more, but she's also a Mary who continues to cling to her philosophies even though they're not working for her. Her pride demands she put the blame on him rather than accept her own culpability in it. And I think that makes her a rather pitiful figure.
Thanks, Shannon!
