Persuasion
Mary Elliot Musgrove
Anne’s younger sister
Anne’s youngest sister, who is always sure she is ill and always recovers the moment something fun is planned.
Mary is married to Charles Musgrove and lives at Uppercross Cottage with their two little boys. She is self-pitying, easily offended and quick to complain that no one has come near her all morning. She is also fond of gossip, and she cannot always hold her tongue.
Mary is the comic center of the Uppercross chapters. She calls for Anne at the slightest ailment, and then shakes off every illness the moment there is a dinner party or an excursion. She means no harm, but she takes the people around her for granted. She is a mother to two small boys, Charles and Walter, and leaves most of the work of looking after them to Anne. At the Great House she is quick to think herself slighted by the Musgroves.
“I am so ill I can hardly speak. Not a soul has come near me all morning!”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Mary calls Anne to Uppercross, and Anne finds her complaining and the children noisy. She carelessly repeats Wentworth’s remark that Anne is so altered he would not have known her. At Lyme she is hysterical when Louisa falls and shrieks while Anne takes charge.
Afterward Mary insists on staying with Louisa, declaring that nobody can nurse her better than a sister. She is part of the family circle at the happy end, still seeing everything from her own point of view.
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