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

[jill_rg]

Thank you for the reassurance! That second paragraph is so true!

I do agree that the ending is a little squicky and incestuous in more than the simple fact that Fanny and Edmund are first cousins.

Austen always comes up with ways for her heroines to be allowed to interact with their intendeds more than her society's very rigid rules of propriety normally allowed, for them to actually get to spend time together and get to know each other. Edward Ferrars and George Knightley are married to Elinor Dashwood's and Emma Woodhouse's siblings, so they're allowed to spend time together like family. Catherine Moreland becomes friends with Henry Tilney's sister, so she gets to stay under the same roof as him as his sister's guest. Too many circumstances to list throw Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth together over and over again. Making Fanny's intended her cousin (which was not at all seen as incestuous back then and hasn't been in most cultures for most of history) was a loophole that allowed her to get to spend more time with a man that her society normally allowed.

And I like to pretend that Susan's sentence to the service of Lady Bertram is not a permanent one. ;-)

I took her permanent placement at Mansfield Park to mean that she eventually ended up marrying Tom. ;) In any case, she would have considered working for her aunt a blessed release from the dysfunctional home she escaped, and the last chapter explains that she had an easier time than Fanny because she was more fearless.

[albathetross]

Oh, it's not the cousinhood that I object to as incestuous -- I accept that as part of the world of the story; it's the Pygmalion aspect that harmony_bites mentions that makes me a little uncomfortable. Still, I like seeing Fanny happy. ;-)

I took [Susan's] permanent placement at Mansfield Park to mean that she eventually ended up marrying Tom.

Hehe, that's definitely one of my scenarios for her. I guess it's the most obvious one in any case, since we aren't left with any other single young men at the end of the story except William.

As for Mary...

I think one of the problems with the story that causes people to root for Mary rather than Fanny is that we aren't really exposed to the depth of Mary's depravity until the very end, after most readers would begin to root for her -- and most don't go back for a second read. For almost all of the book she appears to be a rival, not a villain, and between rivals we often choose the one whom we aspire to be like. Many women, modern women especially, would aspire to be more like the lively and self-confident Mary than the timid and introverted Fanny, especially while unconvinced of any serious negatives in Mary's character. I think it's a little easier to dislike Mary on a second reading (knowing who she is at heart), and therefore easier to sympathize with Fanny not just in romantic rivalry but in her fear that Mary will make Edmund miserable.

The faults that Fanny and Edmund point out in the first half of the book -- particularly her speaking ill of her uncle and of the clergy, but also her reluctance to give up the lifestyle of luxury to which she's accustomed -- are difficult to convince the reader (and probably even the less modern reader) of being faults, and *do* make Fanny and Edmund look priggish in our eyes for complaining about them.

There are some hints that she's more than just materialistic, of course, but they require close reading -- her rant in the East Room about the nature of marriage; her complicity in Henry's attempt to seduce Fanny. And at the same time they can be excused as insufficiently self-examined thoughts and sisterly partiality: she's more careless of Fanny's feelings than actively malicious. (And maybe, along with the Bertrams, by this point we've developed a depleted view of Fanny's right to be treated with compassion.)

In any case, it's not until she defends Henry and Maria's affair that she really shows her true colors to the reader; and again, it's less shocking a crime to the modern reader than to the 19th C reader. Now extramarital affairs, although considered deplorable, are commonplace rather than unthinkable, and almost never result in the utter ruination of either party. The modern reader is inclined to condemn outdated morals as much as to condemn Henry and Maria.

Similarly, we don't think of acting in a play as being the least bit morally dangerous, so we have to change our mindset in order to sympathize with Edmund and Fanny's moral objections to the pursuit.

Part of the problem is that all of Mary's crimes are crimes of thought rather than of action. She herself never elopes with or seduces anyone. She merely fails to condemn her brother's crimes.

I actually think that her clearest moral failure in the eyes of the modern reader is in hoping for Tom's death so that she can marry Edmund *and* be rich and fashionable. Although she never explicitly states that hope (which would be unacceptable even in more playful company than Fanny's; heck, even hinting at it makes one uncomfortable), it's certainly implied.

But again, that occurs so near the end of the novel that it's too late to influence a reader who's already decided which couples she wants to see live HEA. (By contrast, Wickham and Willoughby are exposed around the midpoints of their respective novels, giving us plenty of time to [at least attempt to] transfer our affections to their more deserving rivals.)

OK, enough ranting about Mary.

I have a half dozen theories about why people have so much difficulty empathizing with Fanny, but this has gone on long enough, so they'll have to wait for another day. ;-)

[jill_rg]

When it comes to sympathy, Mary's a rich heiress dripping with effortless charm without a care in the world, and Fanny grows up in poverty and psychological abuse. Fanny should logically be the *most* sympathetic Austen heroine to readers who aren't Regency era British upper class.

What turned me away from Mary early in the book was her conclusion at the end of the chapter covering the dinner party at the parsonage - that Edmund taking orders after she's made her dislike of the profession clear is a personal insult to her; if he loved her, he would let her direct his career choices. That struck me as ridiculously snobby, self-centered, and shallow the first time I read the novel, and the feeling hasn't changed since.

At any rate, Anne Elliot not only judges but lectures others as well, and outright claims she's perfect ("I have ... nothing to reproach myself with"), and everyone loves her. Imho, one thing 100 times more annoying than a heroine who does little wrong (which isn't true of Fanny anyway, since she's guilty of more envy and sexuality than any of Austen's other heroines) is a heroine like Anne who does wrong and refuses to admit it.