Mrs. Farebrother

Mrs. Farebrother is a member of the Farebrother household whose brief appearances show her concern for religious vocation and her attentiveness to the judgments of those around her. In conversation with Mary Garth, she challenges Mary’s mixed feelings about Fred’s choice to leave the Church, while her presence in a later discussion helps show how news of Casaubon’s codicil travels through local society.

Identity and Household

Mrs. Farebrother appears as the mother of Camden Farebrother and a participant in the family’s domestic conversations. Her attention to Mary Garth is affectionate but not uncritical: she expects Mary’s opinions to have reasons behind them and says so when Mary’s explanation of her dislike of most clergymen initially seems unserious.

Views on Fred’s Change of Vocation

When Fred tells Mary that he has arranged to work with her father, Mrs. Farebrother interprets Mary’s evident pleasure as approval of Fred’s leaving the Church for which he was educated. She asks whether Mary is glad only because Fred will be working under an excellent man like her father. Mary answers that she is glad of both things, adding that she has a secular cast of mind and likes few clergymen. Mrs. Farebrother presses her to explain, because she believes Mary usually has a good reason for her opinions. The exchange places Mrs. Farebrother’s respect for the clerical vocation beside Mary’s personal, wry judgment of its representatives.

Mary’s joke that she dislikes other clergymen’s neckcloths because they wear them does not satisfy Mrs. Farebrother. She replies that Mary must be joking and ought to have better reasons for slighting a respectable class. Fred intervenes by describing Mary as severe in her standards for people; Mrs. Farebrother then says she is glad Mary makes an exception for her son. Her response is both maternal and socially tactful: she does not force Mary to defend the joke further, but frames her exception as a welcome sign of regard for Fred.

The Farebrother Household and Local News

Mrs. Farebrother is present when discussion at Lowick Parsonage turns to news brought by the old servant from Tantripp: shortly before his death, Casaubon had made an unusual reference to Will Ladislaw in a codicil to his will. The codicil had already become a subject of speculation among the women. Miss Winifred is surprised that Fred knew of it, Mary jokes about the news becoming entangled with spiders, and Mrs. Farebrother connects the codicil’s significance to the fact that the household had seen Ladislaw at Lowick only once. Miss Noble responds with small sounds of sympathy. Mrs. Farebrother’s contribution is brief, but it shows her joining the effort to interpret a private testamentary matter through the limited encounters and circulating information available to the local community.