Creative Scientist

We aren't told much about the exact nature of Fanny's feelings regarding the loss of Mary, but I wonder if there was some guilt. Guilt that she left her sister and wasn't there to help nurse her through her illness. Guilt that she was the one to leave. Was Mary prone to illness like Fanny? And if so, if she had been chosen to live at Mansfield, could she have received better medical care and survived? (Which might then have left Fanny to be the one who died in childhood. But she, with her low self-esteem, might consider that fate as much as she deserves.)

Given Fanny's tendency to anxiety, there might be fears too. Fear that she might lose more siblings before she ever sees them again. Fear that everyone she's close to will leave her, one way or another. If that's the case, then Fanny's determined closeness to her brother William, the other sibling she's particularly close to, makes further sense.

Surely it would be helpful to Fanny to talk about her late sister with someone who would understand, and who better than the people who knew and loved Mary too? Instead, Fanny feels that she cannot bring up the subject of Mary to her mother without grieving her. So she's left alone with her grief and denied the potential bonding she could have had with her mother over their mutual loss.

Right after Fanny is recalling Mary, she finds out that Betsey, the youngest Price sister, age five, is holding something of Mary's.

It was a silver knife. Up jumped Susan, claiming it as her own, and trying to get it away; but the child ran to her mother’s protection, and Susan could only reproach, which she did very warmly, and evidently hoping to interest Fanny on her side. “It was very hard that she was not to have her own knife; it was her own knife; little sister Mary had left it to her upon her deathbed, and she ought to have had it to keep herself long ago. But mama kept it from her, and was always letting Betsey get hold of it; and the end of it would be that Betsey would spoil it, and get it for her own, though mama had promised her that Betsey should not have it in her own hands.”

Susan, now fourteen, is upset that Betsey has appropriated what she considers her rightful property, and the vehemence with which she expresses herself about this suggests that for her it isn't simply about having the knife just to have it--it's an object with sentimental significance for her. It's all she has left of her late sister (whom she very likely was close to, considering the nearness of their ages). This situation of being denied something important to her must feel emblematic of the injustices that Susan is constantly subject to in this household that doesn't care for her. Susan isn't afraid to stand up for herself (her upbringing has given her a very different trauma response from Fanny's), but she tries to look to Fanny as a potential advocate because usually no one is on her side. Mary is gone. For the last eight years, Fanny has been gone. Susan's been fighting alone for a long time.

Fanny doesn't come to her aid. Not yet. She has a somewhat ambiguous reaction.

Fanny was quite shocked. Every feeling of duty, honour, and tenderness was wounded by her sister’s speech and her mother’s reply.

Is Fanny shocked at the injustice that Susan reports or at how petulantly and forcefully Susan expresses herself (something that Fanny has been raised to believe is always out of line)? Or perhaps both?

As for Mrs. Price's reply...

“Now, Susan,” cried Mrs. Price, in a complaining voice, “now, how can you be so cross? You are always quarrelling about that knife. I wish you would not be so quarrelsome. Poor little Betsey; how cross Susan is to you! But you should not have taken it out, my dear, when I sent you to the drawer. You know I told you not to touch it, because Susan is so cross about it. I must hide it another time, Betsey. Poor Mary little thought it would be such a bone of contention when she gave it me to keep, only two hours before she died. Poor little soul! she could but just speak to be heard, and she said so prettily, ‘Let sister Susan have my knife, mama, when I am dead and buried.’ Poor little dear! she was so fond of it, Fanny, that she would have it lay by her in bed, all through her illness. It was the gift of her good godmother, old Mrs. Admiral Maxwell, only six weeks before she was taken for death. Poor little sweet creature! Well, she was taken away from evil to come. [...]”

Their mother acknowledges that Mary intended the knife for Susan, yet she denies her daughter this heirloom, preferring to hold onto it herself or let Betsey appropriate it. She refuses to listen to Susan's grievances and blatantly takes sides with Betsey. No wonder Fanny is shocked. This is really no different from the favoritism that her cousins have always received, while she herself has been in Susan's position (albeit without the courage to raise her voice) all these years.

It's clear that Mrs. Price is grieving Mary too. Perhaps that's why she has kept the knife from Susan; she wants a memento of her lost daughter. Betsey's physical resemblance to Mary might account for why Mrs. Price is so partial to her while uncaring toward her other daughters, and this might be why Mrs. Price allows her and not Susan to take possession of the knife.

Mrs. Price's grief further comes through in her idealized memories of Mary (had Mary lived, would her mother, who typically favors her sons, regard her so fondly?), and she's coping with the death by considering a means by which Mary "was taken away from evil to come." Does she mean that Mary has been spared a life of being ill? Or that she has avoided something dreadful that has happened/will happen to the family? Or that she will never have to grow up and inevitably follow in her mother's footsteps of making an unwise marriage and living in overcrowded poverty? Or is it simply a platitude of the "in a better place now" sort, as a way to shut down having to process the grief?

And still Fanny says nothing, even when her mother has given a potential opening to address their loss--the subject changes back to Betsey.

Fanny, Susan, and Mrs. Price are all heartbroken, in their own ways, after losing Mary. But the family is so fractured that they are unable to bond even over this shared feeling.

At least, not all three of them at once.

Fanny finds a solution to the knife problem.

Her influence, or at least the consciousness and use of it, originated in an act of kindness by Susan, which, after many hesitations of delicacy, she at last worked herself up to. It had very early occurred to her that a small sum of money might, perhaps, restore peace for ever on the sore subject of the silver knife, canvassed as it now was continually, and the riches which she was in possession of herself, her uncle having given her £10 at parting, made her as able as she was willing to be generous. But she was so wholly unused to confer favours, except on the very poor, so unpractised in removing evils, or bestowing kindnesses among her equals, and so fearful of appearing to elevate herself as a great lady at home, that it took some time to determine that it would not be unbecoming in her to make such a present. It was made, however, at last: a silver knife was bought for Betsey, and accepted with great delight, its newness giving it every advantage over the other that could be desired; Susan was established in the full possession of her own, Betsey handsomely declaring that now she had got one so much prettier herself, she should never want that again; and no reproach seemed conveyed to the equally satisfied mother, which Fanny had almost feared to be impossible. The deed thoroughly answered: a source of domestic altercation was entirely done away, and it was the means of opening Susan’s heart to her, and giving her something more to love and be interested in. Susan shewed that she had delicacy: pleased as she was to be mistress of property which she had been struggling for at least two years, she yet feared that her sister’s judgment had been against her, and that a reproof was designed her for having so struggled as to make the purchase necessary for the tranquillity of the house.

It seems so simple: just get Betsey her own knife so that Susan can have the one that means so much to her. But Fanny has been so stifled by her emotionally abusive upbringing that has policed everything she does and thinks that she struggles to act on her own behalf. She has a hard time giving herself permission even to do something kind and generous for her sisters--is it okay for her to do that? Will it make her seem too condescending? But being away from Mansfield is slowly making Fanny more independent, so she makes up her own mind to do the right thing.

Betsey is thrilled with her gift. She doesn't care about the original knife's connection to Mary--she probably wasn't even born at the time Mary died (her being born afterward would further explain Mrs. Price's special attachment to her as the first child born after the death of another).

So Susan gets to keep this symbol of her connection to Mary and develops a new connection to Fanny, who has demonstrated that she is on Susan's side and understands what's important to her and shares her love for Mary. No one else in the house really sides with Susan, so this is a huge relief for her. And there's more to Susan than rage at unfairness; she's genuinely worried that Fanny will be upset with her for having raised such a fuss in the first place. Which leads to honest conversation and vulnerability between the sisters, and ultimately bonding. Fanny feels good about doing her sister some good and having someone in the house who is open to receiving the love she is so eager to give. In a way, Fanny is doing for Susan what Edmund did for her as a child, albeit with much less condescension. (And unfortunately, Fanny still isn't past thinking of Edmund as the Moral Standard and is starting to pass some of that mindset on to Susan, but that's another issue). In a way, Fanny and Susan are finding in each other something of what they lost in Mary.

Anyway, Fanny's having lost a sibling should further color our understanding of her reaction to Mary Crawford's "jokes" about Tom dying so Edmund can inherit.