In the middle of those chapters in Mansfield Park that relate Fanny Price's misery in the family home at Portsmouth, there occurs an interesting and odd moment. Her slatternly mother, with Betsy the spoilt youngest child on her lap, remarks idly that Betsy's godmother, her Aunt Norris, hasn't sent the child any gift, but that must be because she lives too far off to think of her. The narrator comments:

The narrator swerves away from Portsmouth for a moment, as if unable to resist adding one more twist to the comic variations on Mrs Norris' inveterate meanness. Though some of Mansfield Park's earliest readers told the author how much they were ‘delighted’ by Mrs Norris, or, like Mrs Austen, ‘enjoyed’ her, modern readers more often find her too nasty to be amusing, and certainly there is more to this incident than comedy. For one thing, the reasons Mrs Norris gives herself for not sending the gift are so transparently inadequate. They might lead a re-reader to suspect that something more than parsimony is behind her reluctance here. These books will cost her nothing to send, so what is it that makes it impossible for her to act generously? What form of inner resistance hinders her from sending this present of an odd old volume?