Best Served Cold

[tamcranver]

Fanny Squeers knows better than anyone that she isn’t a pretty girl. Hasn’t her mother always scolded her for preening in the mirror, saying, “It don’t make you look any better, so leave off!” Haven’t her father and brother laughed at her for years, mocking her attempts to find a young man of her own? Hasn’t she seen the—the smug gleam in Tilda’s eye as John Browdie’s arm draws her closer to his side?

But despite her plain, even ugly looks, she knows she could be a good wife. Her father’s master of the schoolhouse here, lord of their own little bit of Yorkshire and as prosperous as a man without a farm could be. Fanny has watched her mother for years, watched the way she scrimps and saves, watched the way she beats Smike and the chambermaids. She’s learned that too much scrimping makes people that aren’t poor, like her mother, believe they are, and that beating servants only makes them weep or laugh behind one’s back. If Fanny were mistress of her own house, she’d make sure the servants knew their place, but they’d be well-fed, and they’d love her. She’d manage the finances so efficiently that everyone could have his deserts. They’d never call her a shrew or a harpy like they do her mother. She’d raise her children better than her parents have raised Young Wackford; she’d teach them not to be brutes, make them proper ladies and gentlemen.

Despite her looks, and her shrew of a mother, and her brat of a brother, Fanny knows that, given a chance, she could make a young man love her. Tilda’d taught her all about love. Tilda is Fanny’s only friend. She’s only a miller’s daughter—her father hasn’t anyone working for him, and her mother has only one maidservant—but Tilda is pretty, which has given her a wisdom Fanny can only dream of. Tilda tells Fanny what colors suit her complexion, what arrangements of hair will attract young men, how to make a dress so it ever-so-discreetly hides a woman’s excess flesh instead of squeezing it like a sausage in too small a wrapper. Tilda brings gossip from the town, telling about all the tricks the village girls employ to find themselves husbands. And once, long ago, Tilda lay down with Fanny in the straw of the barn and showed her how a man touches a woman on her wedding night, her hands smooth and soft on the most intimate areas of Fanny’s body. The experience made Fanny believe that, truly, Tilda knew everything there was to know about the ways of man and maid.

But Fanny’s tricks and her father’s money aren’t enough to make Mr. Nickleby look at her with anything but pity. And pity isn’t enough, oh no! Pity isn’t enough. For Fanny is terribly lonely, the only young woman among the dozens of boys of Dotheboys Hall (of course the maidservants don’t count). She is tired of the young girls laughing at her from the arms of their young men, tired of her mother’s scolding tongue, tired of her father’s self-congratulatory prattle and tired of seeing Tilda’s eyes, which once looked at her with kindness and mirth and affection, look past her to examine the rugged planes of John Browdie’s face. Love is the only cure, love and escape from her family and the school and Tilda.

But young, handsome, kind Mr. Nickleby has dashed her hopes, and so no revenge is enough for him. Certainly, he has gone now, away in the wilderness, taking Smike as a millstone about his neck. Surely he will starve and go cold on the moors. But it cuts to the quick of Fanny’s pride that he would rather starve than marry her. She may be plain, but she is the daughter of a prosperous teacher and his strong wife. She may not be clever, but her father is Mr. Nickleby’s master, and he can’t possibly be all that clever if he doesn’t understand the power that gives her over him. So let Mr. Nickleby suffer. Let him struggle to find work, or find some occupation for that half-wit Smike. It will never be enough to pay him back for the suffering she endures every day in the oppressive atmosphere of Dotheboys Hall, or under the blissful smiles of Tilda and John Browdie.

But by God, she will even the balance one day.