. . . that Catherine's father is a clergyman. I suppose that when I thought of that section, I was always remembering the witticism about how he was a decent enough man in spite of being named Richard. Clergymen so often get the worst of it in Austen's novels.

I find it harder to chuckle over the passage about how her mother had a good constitution and had all those children and lived to see them growing up around her, instead of dying in childbirth as a heroine's mother so often does. I can't help thinking of what a dangerous business childbirth so often was in those days. Much of Austen's humour has that kind of bite underneath it.