Mansfield Park: Mary Crawford

[plumapen]

In the first paragraph of Chapter 5 of Volume 1, we're told Mary Crawford charmed the Bertram brothers "with her lively dark eye, clear brown complexion, and general prettiness." Doesn't this sound a lot like Elizabeth Bennet? How do you react to Mary Crawford and why? Do you like her, hate her, or feel indifferent? She's got all the wit and

Comments

[mauvaise_etoile]

I've only just got through Chap. 5, but I immediately got the impression that Mary is a character we are meant to dislike. The way she's presented is to be perhaps conceited or shallow and to have airs.

I suppose it speaks of JA's writing abilities to create two characters so (possibly) similar in nature and yet make one the heroine and likable (if not lovable) and the other loathsome (to be fair I'm unsure yet if she's that loathsome, but you get my drift).

[canutius]

On the one hand I want to say that Mary Crawford is shallow and conceited, which she is, but on the other, I don’t think she was much worse than many of the other women of the day. They were all on the lookout for a good match and wanted their husbands or lovers to make the best of themselves in the interest of self-preservation. Was Mary any worse than Maria or her sister? They both were on the lookout for a good match and Maria made one at that. Of course, that’s where Jane’s message comes in. Maria made a good match, but without taking mutual affection and respect into consideration and because of this, she paid in the end. She was left unhappy and remorseful in and of her situation and this is what ultimately led her to run off. Had she had more respect or more affection for Mr. Rushworth, she would not have run off with Henry thereby sparing her family the shame and herself exile in the country with Aunt Morris (ugh!). Maria might have had a little more affection for Edmund than Maria did for her husband, but she was too

[plumapen]

Hmm. Another good parallel! My thing with Mary is that she was financially independent--she had an inheritance of £20,000 so I don't really get why she thought she and Edmund would be strapped financially, unless there was something in her inheritance that said her money wouldn't pass to her husband on her marriage, which is quite possible. If that was the case, then I can definitely see how, like Willoughby, she'd feel constrained by rank and privilege. I wonder why there weren't fortune hunters or any other males flocking around her, like Canute said. The only thing I can think is that her coquettish ways and "liveliness" put men off, making them not see her as marriageable. It's funny how JA took some of Mary's circumstances (money, status, liveliness) and transferred them to Emma, making her the next protagonist. But then, she seems to take a type from a previous novel to focus on in the next with all her novels, or at least it seems so to me. /ramble

[mauvaise_etoile]

I wonder if Mary expected, because she had a significant fortune of her own, that her own husband should have more than her. She has an arrogance about her, so in her opinion why should she settle for less? It is peculiar she doesn't have a flock of men about her, though I can easily see it being because of her personality. It's still surprising to me that Edmund would take such a liking to a girl like her. Perhaps Mary has purposely driven men away - she has her fun with them and then either doesn't approve of their status/fortune or she doesn't take a significant enough liking to them. Though, given her flirtatiousness, maybe she just wasn't interested enough in marriage, content to wait for just the right guy.

That's an interesting point, Pen, about taking a piece of a character and focusing on it further in the next novel. I definitely see pieces of Mary in Emma.

[plumapen]

That's true, keep money with money, etc etc. She did have the luxury of choosing when and if to marry because of her fortune, like Emma.