Mansfield Park: A Tolerable Comfort

[harmony_bites]

As some of you might know, silburygirl is a serious Austen scholar; she's doing a paper on Mansfield Park and urged me to reread it when I told her it was the one Austen novel I loathed and gave me instructions on what to look for. I did and posted a review on LibraryThing and Goodreads. Sil urged me to post the review on LJ, because she wants to see what

Comments

[kellychambliss]

Yay, Jane Austen! I'm in the middle of teaching a JA seminar this semester, and we'll be beginning MP soon. It's definitely different in tone from PP and Emma and the others, but I still like it for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is Mary Crawford. But Fanny does have spirit, for all her submissiveness -- to stand up against them all and refuse to marry Henry? That takes guts. I tend to think that Austen is a darker novelist than she's usually considered, and there's a savagery about MP that appeals to me, in a twisted sort of way.

In many ways, I think JA rewrites her stories in different novels, testing out alternative plot resolutions. PP, to my mind, is SS with the structural flaws fixed, and MP, I've always thought, is what PP might have been if Mr. Wickham could not have been prevailed upon to marry Lydia. It's as if JA said to herself, "all right, I've given Lydia a comic resolution, but what if I wrote a story in which the sexual transgressor does NOT get 'rescued'?" We'd end up with poor Julia, imprisoned in her own private Azkaban with her own Dementor guard. (And I did read somewhere that JKR said that she definitely named Filch's cat after Austen's Mrs. Norris). Anyway, the end of MP is devastating, in its way.

We see that savagery in other places, too -- Mr Collins, I think, is quite monstrous, hilarious though he is.

I enjoy giving radically alternative readings to my students -- like insisting to them that Lydia Bennet is really a heroine, a modern woman who likes sex and is unapologetic about it and refuses to learn a "lesson" in submission. Half the time I'm just playing devil's advocate, but JA really does lend herself to a variety of readings. (One of my favorite essays is Eve K. Sedgwick's, where she challenges those interpretations of JA that argue that books like PP, Emma, and NA are all about "teaching girls lessons." I can't recall its title now, but even if you don't buy all her arguments, she makes you really rethink the traditional ways of reading Austen.)

Well, I could go on (and on and on), but I need to go prepare my next Austen class /g/ (on Marxist interpretations).

[harmony_bites]

a monster of complacency and pride who, under a cloak of cringing self-abasement, dominates and gives meaning to the novel

She really popped out at me on second read. I confess I rather love her, and am still in my mind making excuses defending her behavior. Thinking to myself, that in the letter when she talks about wouldn't it be great if Tom died making Edmund a Sir, she's just making one of her at times shocking and tasteless jokes. And as for her reaction about Maria and Edmund--well my first reaction too wasn't so much, how wicked, but how stupid. I guess I forgive Henry more easily than Wickham or Willoughby because he didn't after attempt to seduce an innocent. In Wickham's case trying to get Georgiana's fortune and then intending with Lydia at first not to marry her at all to her ruin. In Willoughby's case, getting that girl pregnant and abandoning her.

In fact, the whole elopement makes no sense to me. An affair yes, that would have been in character. But the two of them off together in open adultery had so very much to lose, that I rather feel Austen cheated, so another reason to forgive Mary her just wanting to try to mend things. And is "covering things up" all so very different than what Darcy and the Bennets did for Lydia?

So there, you're right, Austen can lend herself to a greater variety of readings than I thought--but I think more in MP than any other work. I found Kingsley Amis' quotes about the book recently and had to laugh out loud at his subversive reading of Fanny's character, because it's very much how she hit me--a monster of complacency under a cloak of cringing self-abasement. Although on second read, especially with silburygirl pointing me to it, I do see it more as amour than cloak and do feel sorry for her. With that family, it's not as if she could have wound up otherwise.

It's as if JA said to herself, "all right, I've given Lydia a comic resolution, but what if I wrote a story in which the sexual transgressor does NOT get 'rescued'?" We'd end up with poor Julia, imprisoned in her own private Azkaban with her own Dementor guard.

*shudders* Yes, you're right, that ending is devastating. I didn't like Maria--but I can't help feel NO ONE deserves her fate--at least not for adultery and for a lifetime.

We see that savagery in other places, too -- Mr Collins, I think, is quite monstrous, hilarious though he is.

Very true. Poor Charlotte!

One of my favorite essays is Eve K. Sedgwick's, where she challenges those interpretations of JA that argue that books like PP, Emma, and NA are all about "teaching girls lessons."

Sil says we don't get the full context because we don't know the literature of the time, but she thinks JA was deliberately working against that tradition in MP--against the "conduct book" and that aspects of that last chapter are suggestive--that Austen was deliberately trying to craft a sense of dissatisfaction and we're NOT supposed to like Fanny or Edmund

Well, I could go on (and on and on), but I need to go prepare my next Austen class /g/ (on Marxist interpretations).

I'm only sorry I can't see you teach MP!

[silburygirl]

An entire seminar on Austen? Such wonders! I've never even read Austen for a university-level class; it's all been personal interest and directed readings/thesis things.

What are you talking about in it? I must know!