Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.

The line is a wry paradox: it suggests that “cleverness” can be used not to understand more, but to rationalize refusal. The mother’s intelligence becomes a tool for selective comprehension—she can always find reasons to dismiss what she dislikes, thereby protecting her preferences and authority. Bennett’s humor turns on the inversion of a virtue: mental agility is portrayed as enabling self-deception or willful blindness. More broadly, the remark captures a familiar family dynamic in which a parent’s strong opinions are insulated from challenge, not by ignorance, but by an adeptness at argument and reinterpretation.