I feel Sir Thomas would have wanted a wife who shared his principles and whose behavior is modest (as in not forward) and as proper as his reserved and stern ideas of propriety required. However I cannot believe he actually desired a stupid lazy wife mostly without an original thought of her own and who appears to have almost no sense of personal duty. She cares not for her responsibilities as a mother or sister or as the mistress of a great house.

Sir Thomas was captivated by Miss Maria Ward and Edmund has been captivated by Miss Mary Crawford. I do not think it is unreasonable to draw parallels in these two situations. It is possible Sir Thomas was as blind to Miss Ward’s stupidity as Edmund is to Mary’s faults of principle and if he ever smelled a whiff of it thought, again like his son, that it could be corrected. Edmund does not want a wife with poor principles but he is surely rationalizing himself into trying for such a lady.