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The Explicator, Summer 1998 v56 n4 p181(3)
Austen's 'Mansfield Park.' (novel by author Jane Austen) Palmer, Sally B.
Abstract: Woman author Jane Austen knowledge of breeding to signify decorum in its literal and figurative sense is reflected in her novel 'Mansfield Park.' The novel portrays different kinds of horses in correlation to the different characters in the story. A scrutiny of Austen's work would suggest that, in the author's view, the family amounts to a controlled domestic breeding program where only the morally well-bred are selected to reproduce and therefore perpetuate the family lineage.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1998 Heldref Publications
In nineteenth-century British fiction, the primary role of the middle- to upper-class aunt with respect to her nephews and nieces is to oversee the development of proper manners and promote suitable marriages. The term breeding encompasses both these matters, both in its literal sense and figuratively, as Jane Austen uses it, to signify decorum. The aunt, then, assumes the position of a breeder - a bloodstock agent or horticulturist, both of which professions were just emerging in the first half of the nineteenth century. Stockbreeders were also known as "improvers."(1)
Although in Austen's day the voyage of the Beagle was still to come, interest ran high in pre-Darwinian and Lamarckian ideas about the laws of organic development and natural selection as they related to both biological and social characteristics. An 1814 manual mentions the necessity of agricultural crossbreeding,(2) and sheep were being cooperatively bred in 1827 for "joints" or wool. By 1840 David Low was boasting that "the cultivation of the Horse . . . has been carded to the highest perfection," and asserted:
Since 1750 the practice of breeding has been reduced to a system, and founded upon principles. To the natural causes which produce diversities in the characters of animals, we must add those produced by art. By breeding from animals of certain characters, we can communicate the distinctive properties of the parents to the progeny. (i)
Jane Austen's knowledge of this subject surfaces in Mansfield Park, where we read about different kinds of horses correlating to different characters: Tom Bertram's thoroughbred racehorses, Edmund's hunters, the cart horse to carry Mary Crawford's harp, and the pony and "ladies' mount" for Fanny Price to ride.
The problem of the apricot tree in Dr. Grant's garden producing fruit of an inferior variety calls attention to the subject of domestic breeding and in doing so addresses the central problem of the novel itself: corruption of the family line. We read about it in a brief interchange between Dr. Grant and Mrs. Norris, whose role as the Bertram aunt is to forge prudent marriage connections and thus preserve the quality of the original family stock. The interchange occurs in the middle of a discussion of "improvements" to be made at Sotherton Court, significant in view of the two meanings for the word. Sotherton faces "improvements" in its scenic aspect - the cutting down of ancient trees - and "improvements" in the breeding line - anticipating the impending marriage of Maria Bertram to Sotherton's Mr. Rushworth - neither of which will prove salutary. Mrs. Norris says:
We were always doing something [to improve the place]. It was only the spring twelvemonth before Mr. Norris's death, that we put in the apricot . . . which is now grown such a noble tree, and getting to such perfection, sir. (Austen 478)
Although the object of discussion is Dr. Grant's apricot tree, Mrs. Norris might equally be speaking of Sir Thomas Bertram's family tree, whose youngest branches have been her especial pride and care, and with which she can likewise find no fault. Dr. Grant's reply also applies to the Bertram family: "The tree thrives well beyond a doubt, madam, the soil is good; and I never pass it without regretting, that the fruit should be so little worth the trouble of gathering" (478). In Mansfield Park the family represents the land, and the land the family. Here we learn that Mansfield Park should be producing a better generation of heirs.
Always anxious to absolve herself from blame and to deny faults in her favorites, Mrs. Norris indignantly defends the quality of the tree's fruit by invoking its pedigree name, whose similarity to the name of Mansfield Park should not be ignored. She also alludes to its high price, reflecting the high economic status of the Mansfield Park family: "Sir, it is a moor park, we bought it as a moor park . . . and I know it cost seven shillings, and was charged as a moor park."
When, later, the quality of Mansfield Park stock - Bertram scions Tom and Maria - proves as corrupt as the apricots worthless, Mrs. Norris, although the primary breeding agent, again refuses responsibility. It is left to Fanny Price, herself grafted onto the Bertram rootstock by her aunt's efforts, to reject crossbreeding with the tainted Crawford stock and ensure that the ancient line is transmitted pure with a closed system of inbreeding through Fanny's marriage to her cousin Edmund.
Many critics have noted in Mansfield Park Austen's essential distrust of modern reconstructions or "improvements" upon traditional family life, as well as on the "noble old places" where they live. Yet, at the novel's end, when the reconstructed Mansfield Park family has itself been "improved" by the elimination of aunt Norris and Maria, the substitution of Fanny as daughter, and the importation of Susan Price as resident niece, it is evident that we are to see this reconfigured family as changed for the better. For Austen, the Bertram pedigree has been shored up and the line of descent improved through the natural consequences of morality and immorality. This, then, is Austen's "natural selection."
Alistair Duckworth, in "Jane Austen's Accommodations," sees Austen's aim in Mansfield Park as to "invigorate existing structures." In a program to preserve a declining bloodline, hybrid vigor is achieved by introducing a strong representative of a different strain. Austen inserts Fanny Price's middle-class blood into the depleted Bertram strain, whose effeteness is suggested by the perennial lassitude of Lady Bertram and the moral degeneration of Tom and Maria. In rejecting deficient bloodstock such as the Crawfords, and discarding defective specimens such as Maria Bertram, Austenian family reconfiguration amounts to a controlled domestic breeding program where only the morally well-bred are selected to reproduce and thus perpetuate the family lineage.
Austen's 'Mansfield Park.' (novel by author Jane Austen) Palmer, Sally B.
Abstract: Woman author Jane Austen knowledge of breeding to signify decorum in its literal and figurative sense is reflected in her novel 'Mansfield Park.' The novel portrays different kinds of horses in correlation to the different characters in the story. A scrutiny of Austen's work would suggest that, in the author's view, the family amounts to a controlled domestic breeding program where only the morally well-bred are selected to reproduce and therefore perpetuate the family lineage.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1998 Heldref Publications
In nineteenth-century British fiction, the primary role of the middle- to upper-class aunt with respect to her nephews and nieces is to oversee the development of proper manners and promote suitable marriages. The term breeding encompasses both these matters, both in its literal sense and figuratively, as Jane Austen uses it, to signify decorum. The aunt, then, assumes the position of a breeder - a bloodstock agent or horticulturist, both of which professions were just emerging in the first half of the nineteenth century. Stockbreeders were also known as "improvers."(1)
Although in Austen's day the voyage of the Beagle was still to come, interest ran high in pre-Darwinian and Lamarckian ideas about the laws of organic development and natural selection as they related to both biological and social characteristics. An 1814 manual mentions the necessity of agricultural crossbreeding,(2) and sheep were being cooperatively bred in 1827 for "joints" or wool. By 1840 David Low was boasting that "the cultivation of the Horse . . . has been carded to the highest perfection," and asserted:
Since 1750 the practice of breeding has been reduced to a system, and founded upon principles. To the natural causes which produce diversities in the characters of animals, we must add those produced by art. By breeding from animals of certain characters, we can communicate the distinctive properties of the parents to the progeny. (i)
Jane Austen's knowledge of this subject surfaces in Mansfield Park, where we read about different kinds of horses correlating to different characters: Tom Bertram's thoroughbred racehorses, Edmund's hunters, the cart horse to carry Mary Crawford's harp, and the pony and "ladies' mount" for Fanny Price to ride.
The problem of the apricot tree in Dr. Grant's garden producing fruit of an inferior variety calls attention to the subject of domestic breeding and in doing so addresses the central problem of the novel itself: corruption of the family line. We read about it in a brief interchange between Dr. Grant and Mrs. Norris, whose role as the Bertram aunt is to forge prudent marriage connections and thus preserve the quality of the original family stock. The interchange occurs in the middle of a discussion of "improvements" to be made at Sotherton Court, significant in view of the two meanings for the word. Sotherton faces "improvements" in its scenic aspect - the cutting down of ancient trees - and "improvements" in the breeding line - anticipating the impending marriage of Maria Bertram to Sotherton's Mr. Rushworth - neither of which will prove salutary. Mrs. Norris says:
We were always doing something [to improve the place]. It was only the spring twelvemonth before Mr. Norris's death, that we put in the apricot . . . which is now grown such a noble tree, and getting to such perfection, sir. (Austen 478)
Although the object of discussion is Dr. Grant's apricot tree, Mrs. Norris might equally be speaking of Sir Thomas Bertram's family tree, whose youngest branches have been her especial pride and care, and with which she can likewise find no fault. Dr. Grant's reply also applies to the Bertram family: "The tree thrives well beyond a doubt, madam, the soil is good; and I never pass it without regretting, that the fruit should be so little worth the trouble of gathering" (478). In Mansfield Park the family represents the land, and the land the family. Here we learn that Mansfield Park should be producing a better generation of heirs.
Always anxious to absolve herself from blame and to deny faults in her favorites, Mrs. Norris indignantly defends the quality of the tree's fruit by invoking its pedigree name, whose similarity to the name of Mansfield Park should not be ignored. She also alludes to its high price, reflecting the high economic status of the Mansfield Park family: "Sir, it is a moor park, we bought it as a moor park . . . and I know it cost seven shillings, and was charged as a moor park."
When, later, the quality of Mansfield Park stock - Bertram scions Tom and Maria - proves as corrupt as the apricots worthless, Mrs. Norris, although the primary breeding agent, again refuses responsibility. It is left to Fanny Price, herself grafted onto the Bertram rootstock by her aunt's efforts, to reject crossbreeding with the tainted Crawford stock and ensure that the ancient line is transmitted pure with a closed system of inbreeding through Fanny's marriage to her cousin Edmund.
Many critics have noted in Mansfield Park Austen's essential distrust of modern reconstructions or "improvements" upon traditional family life, as well as on the "noble old places" where they live. Yet, at the novel's end, when the reconstructed Mansfield Park family has itself been "improved" by the elimination of aunt Norris and Maria, the substitution of Fanny as daughter, and the importation of Susan Price as resident niece, it is evident that we are to see this reconfigured family as changed for the better. For Austen, the Bertram pedigree has been shored up and the line of descent improved through the natural consequences of morality and immorality. This, then, is Austen's "natural selection."
Alistair Duckworth, in "Jane Austen's Accommodations," sees Austen's aim in Mansfield Park as to "invigorate existing structures." In a program to preserve a declining bloodline, hybrid vigor is achieved by introducing a strong representative of a different strain. Austen inserts Fanny Price's middle-class blood into the depleted Bertram strain, whose effeteness is suggested by the perennial lassitude of Lady Bertram and the moral degeneration of Tom and Maria. In rejecting deficient bloodstock such as the Crawfords, and discarding defective specimens such as Maria Bertram, Austenian family reconfiguration amounts to a controlled domestic breeding program where only the morally well-bred are selected to reproduce and thus perpetuate the family lineage.