Mrs. Norris

I don’t even know where to begin describing Mrs. Norris – she’s a stingy, annoying, snobbish, sycophantic, hypocritical, credit-seeking, martyr-claiming, cruel, petty, interfering busybody. Every single sentence she’s in is bound to display at least one of these attributes. I can totally understand why some of the people Jane Austen asked told her that Mrs. Norris was the character they either hated most or enjoyed reading most – both of these probably amounting to the same thing. But there’s so much more to say about her than just a string of adjectives. It’s not just the character herself, but what Jane Austen was saying when she wrote her, and the meaning behind her behavior. Mrs. Norris has a fear of losing rank and status, a need to keep the lower classes in their place, and a desire to be associated with people of higher status than herself, and to stay in their favor. I don’t think she’s just supposed to be a bit of comic relief, I think she embodies the class system that was operating in England at that time, and her attitudes, as appalling and ridiculous as they seem to us, reflect the attitudes that society as a whole had in her day.

Her admiration of Sir Thomas and Lady Bertam, and her devotion to their children can only be explained by their wealth and status. As we are told early on, Mrs. Norris thinks her sister Frances disgraced the family by marrying beneath her, and she can’t rest until she has written a long angry letter admonishing her - and because she can’t keep her sister’s reply to herself, insults and all, she’s instrumental in putting an end to all contact between the families for a very long time (6). When Fanny’s mother reaches out to the estranged family for help, the only reason Mrs. Norris is interested in getting involved is because she thinks that at no cost to herself, there might be something to gain, whether it’s the opportunity to display her elevated position over her sister, or to gain the use of an unpaid servant. Either way, she has no intention of letting Fanny climb up from her low social position, and every intention of maintaining superiority over her. She can’t bear the thoughts of Fanny, or anyone, “stepping out of their rank” and “trying to appear above themselves” (151), and she takes every opportunity to remind Fanny that someone in her position should be grateful for the kindness and generosity she is receiving from Sir Thomas, Lady Betram and herself - as if she has had anything to do with the actual costs of taking Fanny in.

Mrs. Norris is hyper aware of people’s positions on the social ladder, maybe because her own position is so precarious. She seems to want to establish herself as a woman of consequence wherever she goes, as her treatment of the servants and other working people she encounters shows. She scolds the little boy who comes to the kitchen with wood for his father, sends him off looking miserable, and is very satisfied with herself that she’s foiled his hopes of getting a bite to eat at the kitchen door (100). She busybodies into the life of the Rushworth’s gardener, “setting him right” about his grandson’s illness, without ever having seen him, and pushing her diagnosis and cure on him (74). He is not really in a position to argue with her, since she occupies a higher status than he does (barely), and even ends up giving her some of his own plants after this little encounter. Even acts of “kindness” by her towards lower ranking people can be seen as displays of her own elevation above them.

Of herself, she states “I hate to be worrying and officious” (131), which is hilarious, since that describes her perfectly. She also declares that she hates “the sort of people who get all they can”(100), which is great too. She must know that this is another one of her own traits. It seems like another version of her fierce defense against Fanny. If these people somehow manage to get what she thinks they want (ie some food for nothing, or a legitimate place in the family) then this threatens her position somehow. She needs to be able to control things as far as she can, and the idea of people beneath her getting the better of her frightens and enrages her.  Mrs. Norris is as pushy and interfering with those she can dominate as she is pandering and sycophantic to Sir Thomas, Lady Bertram, and the Betram children. Anyone who is beneath her she feels entitled to scold or boss around, particularly Fanny, who is the most threatening to her own position. Mrs. Norris is well aware of this, determined to keep everyone in their place, unwilling to allow for any mobility on the social ladder, and very unhappy at the idea of change – an attitude shared by many people in England in Jane Austen’s time.