Mrs. Musgrove

Mrs. Musgrove, the wife of Mr. Musgrove and mother of Charles, Henrietta, and Louisa, is the matriarch of the Great House at Uppercross. She is a fundamentally good-natured, hospitable, and well-intentioned woman, but her character is defined by a lack of discernment and a tendency toward sentimental exaggeration that contrasts sharply with the quiet, perceptive intelligence of Anne Elliot. Her most prominent role in the narrative is as a comic figure, particularly through her misplaced and belated grief for her son Richard, which serves to highlight the novel's themes of genuine feeling versus performed emotion.

Family and Domestic Life

Mrs. Musgrove and her husband are described as being in the "old English style"—friendly and hospitable, but not much educated and not at all elegant. Their home is a place of constant, cheerful bustle, filled with the noise of children and the activities of a large, popular family. She is a devoted grandmother, though she finds the children from Uppercross Cottage, her grandchildren, to be troublesome and spoilt, and she is not above complaining about them to Anne. She is also a somewhat interfering mother-in-law, freely offering her opinions on Mary's management of her children and servants, and she is quick to share her grievances with Anne, whom she sees as a sensible and trustworthy confidante. Her domestic life is one of comfortable, unreflective activity, and she is happiest when surrounded by her family, even in the midst of what Anne considers a "domestic hurricane."

Grief for Richard Musgrove

Mrs. Musgrove's most memorable trait is her exaggerated and belated grief for her son Richard, a "thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove" who had been sent to sea because he was "stupid and unmanageable on shore." He had been little cared for in life and scarcely regretted when news of his death arrived two years prior. However, upon learning that Captain Wentworth, who is visiting the area, was once his captain, Mrs. Musgrove is suddenly struck by a "recollection of the name of Wentworth" and is thrown into a paroxysm of sorrow. She re-reads his old letters, which were written under Captain Wentworth's influence and are the only ones she and her husband ever received that were not mere applications for money, and her spirits are "exceedingly" affected. This grief, which she displays with great theatricality, is treated by the narrator with a mixture of satire and compassion. The famous scene at the concert party, where Captain Wentworth sits beside her on a sofa, is a masterpiece of ironic contrast: the large, sighing Mrs. Musgrove, mourning a son no one cared for when alive, is separated from the slender, pensive Anne only by Mrs. Musgrove's own substantial figure. The narrator dryly observes that "personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions," yet the "unbecoming conjunction" of her bulk and her sentiment is something that "ridicule will seize." This episode underscores the novel's interest in the disparity between the appearance and the reality of feeling.

Role in the Plot

Mrs. Musgrove is a key figure in the social life of Uppercross, and her actions often inadvertently shape the plot. It is her sudden, sentimental recollection of Captain Wentworth's name that first brings him fully into the consciousness of the family and sets the stage for the repeated encounters between him and Anne. She is a warm and grateful hostess, and after Louisa's accident at Lyme, she is deeply appreciative of Anne's practical help and kindness. Her genuine affection for Anne is a stark contrast to the coldness Anne experiences from her own family. She is also a central figure in the negotiations surrounding her daughters' marriages, and her willingness to accept Charles Hayter for Henrietta and Captain Benwick for Louisa, despite their modest fortunes, demonstrates her fundamentally good-hearted, if not particularly ambitious, nature. Her presence in Bath, where she comes to buy wedding-clothes, provides the setting for the novel's climactic scenes of reconciliation. She is a creature of open-hearted, if sometimes foolish, feeling, and her role is to provide a warm, bustling, and often comic backdrop against which the more refined and profound emotions of Anne and Captain Wentworth are played out.