Q 11

11. In the introduction to his The Improvement of the Estate (1971; rpt. with new introduction, 1994), Alistair Duckworth says--

Mrs. Smith . . . is important as the final embodiment of a fate that haunts all [Austen's] novels. Here at the last is the entirely unsupported woman, reduced to bare existence without husband, society or friends. Though she appears at the end of Jane Austen's writing life, Mrs. Smith has always existed as a latent possibility in the novelists' thought, an unvoiced threat, the other possible pole of existence. Meeting her old friend after twelve years, Anne Elliot comes face to face with her own possible fate. . . . For this is the danger facing many of Jane Austen's heroines, that present security may become total isolation, that residence 'in the centre of their property' in the enjoyment of 'the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance ' may be exchanged for life 'in lodgings' without the money even 'to afford . . . the comfort of a servant.'"

What do you think of this interpretation of Mrs. Smith? Try pulling together all the details about her and then ask yourself how you would interpret her significance to the novel. (The evidence begins with p. 173.)