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Charles Musgrove is Mary’s husband and Anne’s brother-in-law. Charles initially wanted to marry Anne, but his proposal was rejected. However, Charles holds no ill will towards Anne and treats her like a sister. In many ways, Charles is his wife’s very antithesis. He is good-natured where she is often sour, quick for a laugh where she is easily offended, patient where she is impatient, and good with their children where she struggles to control them. Unsurprisingly, the two are often at odds. Towards the beginning of the novel, Anne notes that the two “might pass for a happy couple” when they were not bickering, but that this is not often the case. She observes that Charles, while generous towards his wife’s whims and bouts of hysteria, has a tendency to tease Mary and rile her up for his own amusement. For example, during the Bath portion of the novel, Charles and Mary get into an argument about their evening plans; Charles has gotten a box for them all to see a play, but Mary thinks that they should go to her father's evening party so that they can be introduced to their high-ranking cousins, the Dalrymples. The rest of the group resolves the issue by deciding to attend the dinner that night and the theater on Tuesday, but Charles maintains that he is still going to go to the play that night purely to agitate Mary. Though Charles and Mary’s marital squabbles are comical, they also highlight the novel’s emphasis on the virtues of choosing a partner whose disposition complements your own. The novel makes it very clear that matches like that of the Crofts as well as Anne and Captain Wentworth are successful because the couples work well together. Charles and Mary, with their opposing temperaments and priorities, can never expect the same harmony.
