Okay, But How Much of an Auntie™ is Mrs. Gardiner?
Help me solve a small mystery, Pride and Prejudice fans.
I’ll be sharing an essay about Mrs. Gardiner’s temperance in a couple of days, but first I need to know your opinion on her behavior at Pemberley.
The Gardiners are the means by which Darcy and Elizabeth come back together. The day after they run into Darcy at Pemberley, he visits them in Lambton, and his attentions and Elizabeth’s embarrassment “opened to [the Gardiners] a new idea on the business,” that Darcy’s friendliness springs from affection for their niece.
On the previous day, apparently, they did not suspect the reason for Darcy’s friendly behavior and long walk with them.
But is that true? After their brief encounter with Darcy at Pemberley, Mrs. Gardiner says she is too tired to take a long walk and requests they turn back to the house, and she walks so slowly with Elizabeth that Darcy caught up with them.
And then, after Darcy and Mr. Gardiner had walked and talked a while, Mrs. Gardiner “found Elizabeth’s arm inadequate to her support and consequently preferred her husband’s”, shifting the party so that Elizabeth and Darcy are walking and talking together for the first amiable conversation they’ve had in the entire novel.
I can readily believe that Mrs. Gardiner, with a busy life and small kids, is not a great walker; and I appreciate that she doesn’t have to be energetic and athletic.
But is she being a bit sneaky here? Is she really too tired to walk, or does she think it couldn’t hurt to throw Darcy and Elizabeth together for a half hour or so? Consider that, on arriving at Lambton an hour later, she feels revived enough to socialize all day with her old friends.
This does not have too much to do with temperance, other than to emphasize that if the Gardiners did desire or encourage the match, they always did so with delicacy.
And maybe being an Auntie isn’t always a bad thing.
All quotes are taken from chapters 43-45 of Pride and Prejudice.
Y e s! I always believed she ships it there. And when Lizzy is back home Mrs. Gardiner is still very much watching the space of her Derbyshire friend. Also I love how Charlotte is the one who observes what’s going on in the first half and Mrs. Gardiner is the one in the second half.
I think she’s definitely making an opening for Elizabeth, even if she doesn’t know if there are any feelings between them. I like the way the 1995 series portrays Mrs. Gardiner. She has a suspicion, but she’s very calm and the conversation she has with Elizabeth about it is minimal.