Victoria Janssen

More on my most recent re-read of Mansfield Park, from several years ago.

Mansfield Park can be read online at Gutenberg.org.

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November 15, 2004

I had a couple more thoughts on the rereading I’ve done so far. First, Edmund criticizes the behavior of Mary Crawford and blames her upbringing for it; but he never makes the same point about his brother and sisters, who also exhibit poor judgement on several occasions. He does not approve of them acting, or of the play they choose, but he does not bring his mother into the argument at all, even though she is present and his father is not. And in the end, Edmund goes along with his siblings.

Edmund feels entitled to direct Fanny’s behavior, but not that of his siblings, so in that way he treats her as poorly as Mrs. Norris does; Fanny goes along with him, but when they met she was much younger, and very alone, and received no attention from anyone else.

The text of the play Lover’s Vows which the characters in Mansfield Park plan to enact is very enlightening, if you’ve never read it before.

November 17, 2004

I’ve finished the section in which the young people attempt to act the play “Lover’s Vows,” and the section in which Henry Crawford decides he is in love with Fanny, asks her to marry him, and she refuses him, only to be pressured by Sir Thomas and Edmund, and later by Mary Crawford.

No one in this book understands anyone else; the only two people who are shown to have perfect felicity are Fanny and her brother William, but their bond does not depend entirely upon understanding of each other to flourish, and their times together, though intense, are widely separated while William is at sea. Fanny understands Edmund except in his feelings about Mary Crawford. Edmund, though he shares many opinions with Fanny, doesn’t understand her feelings against Henry Crawford at all. Sir Thomas wishes Fanny to be happy, but he doesn’t take the trouble to find out what that would really entail; his own thoughts on the matter are sufficient. Fanny is the poor relation in this as in everything else.

While Mary encourages Fanny to marry her brother, she uses as examples two marriages that did not end felicitously, with seeming disregard for how this reflects on the advice she’s dispensing; she’s too full of the vision of romance, not only where her brother is concerned but also blocked by her romantic feelings toward Edmund.

Everyone in this book is self-absorbed in one way or another.

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More tomorrow.

I recently located the journal entries I made when I last reread Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, way back in 2004. I reproduce them here for your enjoyment.

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November 12, 2004

I’ve just begun my first reread of Jane’s Austen’s Mansfield Park. It was the last of the Austen novels I read, excluding juvenalia, back in the spring of 1990. The paperback copy I’m reading from is the same one that traveled with me that year to England, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. The corners of the front cover are a little bent, and something dug into the back cover and left deep dents, probably in the suitcase; I think I finished it early in the trip, because I remember in Paris I was reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, and on the plane home I read Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and a Charles DeLint novel, The Riddle of the Wren.

Funny how I remember all that.

November 15, 2004

Mansfield Park was the last of the Austen canon I read, and for me it was the most difficult to get through. Fifteen years later, it still reads more slowly than the others, I think, but I don’t mind so much; this time, I’m watching Austen’s characterizations with great attention. Many of the characters in this book are not likable, at least not to me, but I understand each one very well through a few key actions and statements. Nothing in this book is random. Every sentence is making the world of Mansfield more and more real to the reader.

In our world, Fanny is a wimp who never speaks up for herself, and Edmund is a wet blanket who proses on about a narrow compass of morals that he thinks everyone should follow; they deserve each other, since they’re mostly in agreement about everything anyway. Yet in the world of the book, Edmund and Fanny are the only truly unselfish characters, except perhaps for Mrs. Grant, whom we don’t see enough of to really judge.

In the world of each character, they are the center of the universe, and this is as it should be, because isn’t that true in real life? It’s Fanny’s hard luck that she’s barely even the center of her own life; yet it’s a powerful commentary on Austen’s society that Fanny is as she is. Fanny is totally dependent on the charity of others; if she offends, she might be cast out, and she’s had no preparation whatsoever for living in any manner other than that of poor relation; there’s no Georgette Heyer hero waiting to take her up into his carriage. It’s no wonder Fanny is such a shrinking violet. Yet her beloved older brother William makes a career for himself in the Navy, underlining the fact that men had options.

I don’t like Miss Crawford, either, but in her own way, in her own world, she at least thinks for herself. It’s Edmund’s opinion that her upbringing has led her to think poorly; neither he nor Fanny believes Miss Crawford forms her opinions independently, attributing her faults to her uncle and aunt. Individualism is frowned on; behavior must be molded by the past and guided by figures in moral authority such as guardians and clergymen. It’s also interesting to note that nowhere in the book do the characters discuss the royal family or Parliament or anyone so far away as being in any way responsible for society’s mores. Everything is on the familial level, which might seem shallow unless you consider, as I do, the families to be English country society in microcosm.

I admit I don’t have deep historical knowledge of this place and period, but from reading Austen, it’s amazing how much I feel I understand.

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More tomorrow!

Mansfield Park can be read online at Gutenberg.org.