Auntship

This was a Mrs Archer, to whom I was taught to pay homage, under the appellation of Aunt Archer; the auntship consisting in that her husband had had for a first wife a sister of my grandmother.

A quick survey of Austen's novels yields an aunt's-eye view of the variety of aunts: in Pride and Prejudice, Lady Catherine stands corrected by Elizabeth's aunts Gardiner and Philips, who balance one another; Mrs. Norris and Lady Bertram are opposite kinds of aunts in Mansfield Park; the middle-aged aunt mentioned in The Watsons surprises her niece's family by still being a scandalously sexual creature; and Emma, of course, is among other things a novel about auntship, with its heroine who draws hasty chalk portraits of her sister's children (all looking more or less the same) and claims she will never marry partly because she "will always have a niece with me" as an object of affection.

Edith, still rather in a dream, rather resentful that her dream was being broken, pulled herself together and said she had had a very nice time at Northbridge, and Mrs. Dunsford had said she did hope Mrs. Halliday would come and see the portrait of their ancestress; using the word ancestress because she could not remember exactly what degree of auntship or cousinship it was.

Christina's letter to Mary Haydon about prospective auntship shows that she had looked forward to greater friendship. Now, barely a year later, this hope had vanished; and a certain regret tinged Christina's later references to Fame.