The lovely, lazy Lady B with her pug, from the '99 movie adaptation, of which I have not seen. "The heat was enough to kill any body. It was as much as I could bear myself. Sitting and calling to Pug, and trying to keep him from the flower-beds, was almost too much for me" (59).
I love Lady Bertram: The exchange between Edmund and his mother on whether or not Fanny should go to the Grant's for dinner made me laugh; it was so delightful (170). She is completely spacey and fabulous. I am convinced she was on some kind of narcotic, because no one is that comatose.
Also, I'm a sucker for a wife with an ugly dog, like the German and her bulldog in Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools. Deferred affection?
William Deresiewicz says Lady Bertram is "as lovely, energetic, and intelligent as an expensive throw pillow." Gilbert and Gubar, in Madwoman in the Attic, describe her as "corpselike." Yikes.
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