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My being the mother is the very reason why my feelings should not be tried. I am not at all equal to it. You saw how hysterical I was yesterday.
Mary wants always to be the center of attention. She is primarily a comic character in the novel, and she spends so much time talking about how considerate she is to gain sympathy from other characters. When her son, Charles, falls and hurts himself, Mary claims she is not the right person to care for him because she feels his pain too acutely. Therefore, caring for him would just put both her and Charles in pain. It is no coincidence that Mary says this quote (from Chapter 7) to Anne when she has been invited to dine at Uppercross Manor in Chapter 7 and would have to miss the event if she tended to her son. Mary’s approach to parenting is to take as much credit for the good in her children as possible and to blame the people and circumstances around her for the bad—all without doing much to affect her kids either way.
Sir Walter talked of his youngest daughter; “Mr. Elliot must give him leave to present him to his youngest daughter [Anne]” (there was no occasion for remembering Mary).
Sir Walter is cartoonishly vain throughout the novel, to the point where he only remembers his children exist when their presence serves his ego. He is a caricature of the aristocracy, showing how children are simply a tool for him to elevate himself. He can show off Elizabeth because she is beautiful, and he is proud to introduce Anne to Mr. Elliot when he first arrives in Bath because she has been looking prettier than she did at Kellynch Hall. Mary is not in Bath when this scene takes place, so she can’t serve Sir Walter. Even so, the narrator gently ridicules him with this cheeky parenthetical aside from Chapter 15, which draws the reader’s attention to Sir Walter’s vanity and self-absorption.
Anne had never seen her father . . . before in contact with nobility, and she must acknowledge herself disappointed. She . . . was reduced to form a wish which she had never foreseen; a wish that they had more pride; for . . . “our cousins, the Dalrymples” sounded in her ears all day long.
As shown by this quote from Chapter 16, Anne grows increasingly more disappointed in her father. When the Dalrymples first arrive in Bath, Anne sees her father refocus his life around their tenuous connection with the Dalrymples. His absurdity was one thing when they were in the country with their limited social sphere. But Bath is full of all kinds of people, and Anne finds it undignified of Sir Walter to overplay the Elliots’ relationship with Lady Dalrymple. Ironically, Sir Walter’s pride at his connection to the Dalrymples diminishes Anne’s pride in the family name. She wants him to treat Lady Dalrymple with restraint and respect as is proper, but Sir Walter is determined to flaunt his one connection to the nobility.
