Harriet Smith's mother is...

I have been reading a book by Natalie Tyler called "The Friendly Jane Austen" and the author writes about a theory she (among other authors) have regarding the lineage of Harriet Smith. In brackets are my own words.

Tyler writes: More than one critic has noted that Emma may be read as a mystery story, pure and simple. Hints, deftly woven into the fabric of the novel, can easily pass unnoticed, so that each rereading yields one more delighted "Of course. Why did I never notice that before?"

Yet in 170 years' study of the book, no one has ever caught the clue, mischievously left in plain sight by Jane Austen, to the identity of Harriet Smiths' mother.

Perhaps modern readers miss it becaues they forget the convention governing the naming of daughters in Jane Austen's world. The first girl was properly named for the mother. Thus Jane's older sister bore the name of Cassandra, and their cousin Jane Cooper was named for her mother, Mrs. Austen's sister Jane Leigh.

[For time's sake, I will now abbreviate the evidence supplied by Tyler.]

Evidence for this tradition being strictly observed:

- Miss Frances Ward becomes mother of Ganny Price, and Miss Maria Ward's first daughter is Maria Bertram.
- Lady Elizabeth Elliot of Persausion has given her name to her oldest daughter.
-Jane Bates is the mother of Jane Fairfax in Emma.
-Isabella Woodhouses' oldest daughter is Bella (also from book Emma), and Miss Taylor (also referred to as Anne or Anna) names her infant Anna Weston.
...And the most significant evidence (in wide_eyed15's humble opinion), the illegitimate child of S&S is named for her mother, despite her illegitimacy.

[Now for the good part...]

Taylor: when Emma Woodhouse pays her penitent call on the Bateses, to find all in disarray, worth old Mrs. Bates flutters about and, "I hope you find a chair. I wish Hetty had not gone," she says.

Hetty?

Why does Jane Austen take the trouble to name Miss Bates for us? And is that name a diminutive for Harriet?

The chronology, carefully constructed as always by Jane Austen, easily allows for a visit by the secretly pregnant Miss Bates to her dying sister, for Jane Fairfax was three years old when her mother dies, and is not quite three years older than Harriet Smith. The child is born far from Highbury, and Lieutenant Fairfax's widwo, the only witness, dies soon after. Moreover, as old Mrs. Bates complains, nobody tells her anything.

we are never told about Harriest Smith's infancy, but she was undoubted placed, like the austen children themselves, with a country nurse who kept her until she was old enough to attend the esablishment of the Bateses' friend Mrs. Goddard. Miss Bates, whose warm heart and undemanding intellect resembple those of Mrs. Goddard - and of Harriet Smith herself - could keep a contented eye on the child without raising any comment while her maternal feelings found an outlet in the Fairfax child who had become her "foundling."

Jane Fairfax would have been too young to understand the significance of the infant if indeed she ever saw it. In any event, Jane's discretion is well-established. If we assume she knew that the parlor boarder at Mrs. Goddarg's was indeed her cousin, we have ironclad confirmation of the relationship.

Many a scholar has argued, from a complete lack of evidence, that "such universal silence on the matter clearly strengthens my thesis." And mannerly Jane Fairfax, who knows so well how to keep a secret, never once speaks a single word to Harriet Smith.

[...That's where I finish quoting from Ms. Tyler. What do you think? Is Miss Bates really Harriet's mother?]