Just thinking about Mary's falling for Edmund Bertram, following on from some earlier discussion. I think Mary's is a bit like Darcy, in being rich and good-looking and thus used to flattery and London manners. Both Elizabeth and Edmund don't have London manners and don't do flattery and thus are in contrast to this. JA says that Mary was first attracted by Edmund's conversation:

to the credit of the lady it may be added that, without his being a man of the world or an elder brother, without any of the arts of flattery or the gaieties of small talk, he began to be agreeable to her. She felt it to be so, though she had not foreseen, and could hardly understand it; for he was not pleasant by any common rule: he talked no nonsense; he paid no compliments; his opinions were unbending, his attentions tranquil and simple. There was a charm, perhaps, in his sincerity, his steadiness, his integrity, which Miss Crawford might be equal to feel, though not equal to discuss with herself. She did not think very much about it, however: he pleased her for the present; she liked to have him near her; it was enough.

And I think we see this, for example in this conversation at Sotherton. Mary speaks disrespectfully of the family assembling at chapel, and Edmund challenges her, but not in a John Thorpish "you're wrong and an idiot way", but with some humility on his part and making use of questions to get Mary thinking:

You have given us an amusing sketch, and human nature cannot say it was not so. We must all feel at times the difficulty of fixing our thoughts as we could wish; but if you are supposing it a frequent thing, that is to say, a weakness grown into a habit from neglect, what could be expected from the private devotions of such persons? Do you think the minds which are suffered, which are indulged in wanderings in a chapel, would be more collected in a closet?”

And when Mary defends her position, Edmund responds:

The mind which does not struggle against itself under one circumstance, would find objects to distract it in the other, I believe; and the influence of the place and of example may often rouse better feelings than are begun with. The greater length of the service, however, I admit to be sometimes too hard a stretch upon the mind. One wishes it were not so; but I have not yet left Oxford long enough to forget what chapel prayers are.”

So on the one hand he's challenging her, on the other he's admitting that there's validity to her points. They have a similar debate over the role of a clergyman, and at one point Mary says:

"You assign greater consequence to the clergyman than one has been used to hear given, or than I can quite comprehend."

Compare that to this description of Mary's reflections on the loss of Tom's conversation when he goes to the races:

In comparison with his brother, Edmund would have nothing to say. The soup would be sent round in a most spiritless manner, wine drank without any smiles or agreeable trifling, and the venison cut up without supplying one pleasant anecdote of any former haunch, or a single entertaining story, about “my friend such a one.”

There's nothing in there of any intellectual depth or debate. It's all wit and lightness.

I think Mary enjoys being treated as a rational human being by Edmund. She's intelligent and clever and there's no sign she's had that much of that treatment from men before, her uncle was a misogynist and JA was fairly negative about the educational quality of fashionable London schools.

Anyway what are your thoughts?