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The Crofts are an amiable couple who decide to rent Kellynch Hall when Sir Walter and his family can no longer afford to stay there. Admiral Croft is a decorated naval officer, and his devoted wife Mrs. Croft travels with him when he is at sea. Mrs. Croft is also Captain Wentworth’s sister, which reintroduces Captain Wentworth into Anne’s life.
The Crofts, unlike many older married couples in Austen novels, have a genuinely happy marriage that is based on mutual love and respect. Austen attributes their marital success to their equal partnership. When Anne is riding in a carriage with the Crofts, she notices that while Admiral Croft drives the carriage most of the time, Mrs. Croft often grabs the reins to steer them around posts, ruts, and other obstacles. The sharing of the reins symbolizes their symbiotic relationship—the two of them work together and depend on each other for their happiness. Their equal, healthy, and happy relationship acts as a window into Anne and Captain Wentworth’s future because they, too, are like-minded people who care about and respect one another.
The Crofts offer much by way of gender commentary. Many of Austen’s love stories involve a man and a woman seeking and ultimately entering into an equal marriage, but their stories generally end at the altar. The long-married Crofts, on the other hand, illustrate the happiness and longevity of a balanced partnership, one in which the husband cares for and respects his wife as much as the wife cares for and respects the husband. Mrs. Croft resists the culturally accepted idea that a woman must be passive, subservient housewife with no mind of her own; she delivers one of Austen’s most famous feminist lines: “But I hate to hear you talking…as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.” Though the Crofts, and Mrs. Croft in particular, Austen is able to comment upon and subvert the expectations that come along with Regency-era gender roles.
