In a rare moment of Fanny sharing her innermost thoughts with someone, she pontificates in Mary’s presence about the “wonderful” nature of memory, personifying it in the process:
"If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient—at others, so bewildered and so weak—and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond controul!—We are to be sure a miracle every way—but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting, do seem peculiarly past finding out."
Miss Crawford, untouched and inattentive, had nothing to say; and Fanny, perceiving it, brought back her own mind to what she thought must interest.
The personification comes across in Fanny’s declaration that memory is “so obedient […] so bewildered and so weak […] so tyrannic, so beyond control.” This moment demonstrates that Fanny is not merely a well-mannered and shy young woman but also a person with deep curiosity about what it means to be human.
On the other hand, Mary’s lack of interest in Fanny’s reflection (as evidenced by her being “untouched and inattentive”) suggests that, unlike Fanny, Mary is more shallow and interested mostly in mundane affairs. This is a primary difference between the two women, and is one of the reasons that Edmund eventually chooses to marry Fanny instead of Mary.
When Henry is visiting Fanny during her stay with her nuclear family in Portsmouth near the end of the novel, Austen uses imagery and personification to capture the scene in front of them, as well as Fanny’s emotional state:
The day was uncommonly lovely. It was really March; but it was April in its mild air, brisk soft wind, and bright sun, occasionally clouded for a minute; and every thing looked so beautiful under the influence of such a sky, the effects of the shadows pursuing each other, on the ships at Spithead and the island beyond, with the ever-varying hues of the sea now at high water, dancing in its glee and dashing against the ramparts with so fine a sound, produced altogether such a combination of charms for Fanny, as made her gradually almost careless of the circumstances under which she felt them.
By describing in detail the loveliness of the day—with its “mild air, brisk soft wind, and bright sun” and “the ever-varying hues of the sea”—Austen suggests that Fanny is having a pleasant time with Henry, and possibly easing into the idea of his future presence in her life. The personification of the sea—described as “dancing in its glee and dashing against the ramparts”—likewise invites readers to imagine Fanny’s own spirited energy as she comes to consider Henry as a potential partner.
