Mary Crawford possesses many attractive qualities including kindness, charm, warmth and vivacity. However, her strong competitive streak leads her to see love as a game where one party conquers and controls the other, a view not dissimilar to that of the narrator when in ironic mode. Mary's narcissism results in lack of empathy. She insists that Edmund abandon his clerical career because it is not prestigious enough. With feminist cynicism, she tells Fanny to marry Henry to 'pay off the debts of one's sex' and to have a 'triumph' at the expense of her brother.