Austen Said:

Patterns of Diction in Jane Austen's Major Novels

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That a letter from Edmund should be a subject of terror!
When no longer under the same roof with Edmund, she trusted that Miss Crawford would have no motive for writing strong enough to overcome the trouble, and
at Portsmouth their correspondence would dwindle into nothing.
Would they but love her, she should be satisfied.
She was at home. But, alas! it was not such a home, she had not such a welcome, as—
she was unreasonable. What right had she to be of importance to her family? She could have none, so long lost sight of! William's concerns must be dearest, they always had been, and he had every right. Yet to have so little said or asked about herself, to have scarcely an inquiry made after Mansfield! It did pain her to have Mansfield forgotten; the friends who had done so much —the dear, dear friends! But here, one subject swallowed up all the rest. Perhaps it must be so. The destination of the Thrush must be now preeminently interesting. A day or two might shew the difference. She only was to blame. Yet
it would not have been so at Mansfield. No, in her uncle's house there would have been a consideration of times and seasons, a regulation of subject, a propriety, an attention towards everybody which there was not here.
it as a proof of anything more than their being for the time thoroughly fagged,
she should be very glad of a little tea,
Susan had an open, sensible countenance; she was like William,
her mother meant to part with her when her year was up.
'Let sister Susan have my knife, mama, when I am dead and buried.'
William was gone: and the home he had left her in was,
in almost every respect the very reverse of what she could have wished. It was the abode of noise, disorder, and impropriety. Nobody was in their right place, nothing was done as it ought to be.
It was the greatest misery of all. At Mansfield, no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings were consulted. If tenderness could be ever supposed wanting, good sense and good breeding supplied its place; and as to the little irritations sometimes introduced by aunt Norris, they were short, they were trifling, they were as a drop of water to the ocean, compared with the ceaseless tumult of her present abode. Here everybody was noisy, every voice was loud (excepting, perhaps, her mother's, which resembled the soft monotony of Lady Bertram's, only worn into fretfulness). Whatever was wanted was hallooed for, and the servants hallooed out their excuses from the kitchen. The doors were in constant banging, the stairs were never at rest, nothing was done without a clatter, nobody sat still, and nobody could command attention when they spoke.
though Mansfield Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures.
Susan tried to be useful, where she could only have gone away and cried; and that Susan was useful
that things, bad as they were, would have been worse but for such interposition, and that both her mother and Betsey were restrained from some excesses of very offensive indulgence and vulgarity.
In every argument with her mother, Susan had in point of reason the advantage, and never was there any maternal tenderness to buy her off. The blind fondness which was for ever producing evil around her she had never known. There was no gratitude for affection past or present to make her better bear with its excesses to the others.
That her manner was wrong, however, at times very wrong, her measures often ill-chosen and ill-timed, and her looks and language very often indefensible,
her sister's judgment had been against her, and
a reproof was designed her for having so struggled as to make the purchase necessary for the tranquillity of the house.
so much better knowledge, so many good notions should have been hers at all; and that, brought up in the midst of negligence and error, she should have formed such proper opinions of what ought to be; she, who had had no cousin Edmund to direct her thoughts or fix her principles.
to be a renter, a chuser of books! And to be having any one's improvement in view in her choice!
if reading could banish the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.
Either his going had been again delayed, or he had yet procured no opportunity of seeing Miss Crawford alone, or he was too happy for letter-writing!
she could not regret it;
She was ashamed, and she would have been yet more ashamed of her father than of all the rest.
He must be ashamed and disgusted altogether. He must soon give her up, and cease to have the smallest inclination for the match;
here he had been acting as he ought to do. To be the friend of the poor and the oppressed!
he might have more good qualities than she had been wont to suppose.
but he was and must ever be completely unsuited to her, and ought not to think of her.
her uncle as all that was clever and good, and her aunt as having the sweetest of all sweet tempers.
she had not forced herself into the acknowledged comprehension of one half of his meaning, and encouraged him to say something more of his sister and Edmund.
It was a subject which she must learn to speak of, and the weakness that shrunk from it would soon be quite unpardonable.
he was much more gentle, obliging, and attentive to other people's feelings than he had ever been at Mansfield; she had never seen him so agreeable— so near being agreeable; his behaviour to her father could not offend, and there was something particularly kind and proper in the notice he took of Susan. He was decidedly improved.
but it was not so very bad as she would have expected:
the pleasure of talking of Mansfield was so very great!
To have had him join their family dinner-party, and see all their deficiencies, would have been dreadful! Rebecca's cookery and Rebecca's waiting, and Betsey's eating at table without restraint, and pulling everything about as she chose,
Her poor mother now did not look so very unworthy of being Lady Bertram's sister as she was but too apt to look.
where nature had made so little difference, circumstances should have made so much, and
her mother, as handsome as Lady Bertram, and some years her junior, should have an appearance so much more worn and faded, so comfortless, so slatternly, so shabby.
It was parting with somebody of the nature of a friend; and though, in one light, glad to have him gone, it seemed as if she was now deserted by everybody; it was a sort of renewed separation from Mansfield;
his being astonishingly more gentle and regardful of others than formerly.
And, if in little things, must it not be so in great? So anxious for her health and comfort, so very feeling as he now expressed himself, and really seemed, might not it be fairly supposed that he would not much longer persevere in a suit so distressing to her?
The only certainty to be drawn from it was, that nothing decisive had yet taken place. Edmund had not yet spoken.
How Miss Crawford really felt, how she meant to act, or might act without or against her meaning; whether his importance to her were quite what it had been before the last separation; whether, if lessened, it were likely to lessen more, or to recover itself,
Miss Crawford, after proving herself cooled and staggered by a return to London habits, would yet prove herself in the end too much attached to him to give him up. She would try to be more ambitious than her heart would allow. She would hesitate, she would tease, she would condition, she would require a great deal, but she would finally accept.
A house in town— that,
must be impossible. Yet there was no saying what Miss Crawford might not ask. The prospect for her cousin grew worse and worse. The woman who could speak of him, and speak only of his appearance! What an unworthy attachment! To be deriving support from the commendations of Mrs. Fraser! She who had known him intimately half a year!