I had been meaning to respond to a post by Arnie on Austen-L about PJM Scott’s assessment of Mansfield Park.

Scott shows a good instinct for the deeper mysteries of MP when he spends a good amount of time in his chapter on MP raising questions regarding the following narration about Fanny Price’s thoughts about the home theatricals at Mansfield Park:

“For her own gratification she could have wished that something might be acted, for she had never seen even half a play, but everything of higher consequence was against it.”

Scott asks: “Are [Fanny’s] reactions hysterical, are Austen’s out of scale? Is the author advocating a supremely punctilious decorum for young people of the upper middle class such as hardly existed in her own life? and if so, why with such a passion?”

I agree with Trilling in fingering parental authority, as Edmund explains in this exchange with Tom.

“And I am convinced to the contrary. Nobody is fonder of the exercise of talent in young people, or promotes it more, than my father, and for anything of the acting, spouting, reciting kind, I think he has always a decided taste. I am sure he encouraged it in us as boys. How many a time have we mourned over the dead body of Julius Caesar, and to be’d and not to be’d, in this very room, for his amusement? And I am sure, my name was Norval, every evening of my life through one Christmas holidays.”

“It was a very different thing. You must see the difference yourself. My father wished us, as schoolboys, to speak well, but he would never wish his grown-up daughters to be acting plays. His sense of decorum is strict.” (13.25-6)

It is part of Austen’s genius that she managed represent the awful parental authority of the absent Sir Thomas through the drama around the theatricals. I think this is important for a few of reasons.

• Tom is shown to be spineless in proceeding with the theatre and then refusing to stand up for the project on his father’s return. His defence of his actions to Edmund is dishonest and he is shown to be weak.
• Edmund is guilty of the same but more subtly so, hence Fanny’s wretchedness when ‘His sturdy spirit [bends] as it did’ (36.9) to Mary’s charms. It shows his integrity being compromised as he comes under Mary’s influence.
• All of this is contrasted with Fanny refusing to cave in to peer pressure take part in what she has judged to be wrong and later to allow her integrity to be compromised in accepting Crawford’s hand at a point when she could neither love nor respect him, despite coming feeling the full force of that parental power and peer pressure to cave-in to the worldly logic and the pressures of other people’s conveniences.

There are some interesting comparisons and contrasts with King Lear with Fanny remaining loyal to the institution of parental authority while standing up the parent when their judgment fails.

To my mind there is no question but that Fanny’s approach to the theatre is just. To proceed with it, knowing that their father wouldn’t authorise it was wrong, having no good grounds to challenge that judgement (entertaining their worried mother?) and the subsequent disorder once the parental authority disregarded is palpable—as Henry said himself, “It was more pleasant than prudent. We were getting too noisy” (23.59) and Mrs Grant:

“You will find his consequence very just and reasonable when you see him in his family, I assure you. I do not think we do so well without him. He has a fine dignified manner, which suits the head of such a house, and keeps everybody in their place. Lady Bertram seems more of a cipher now than when he is at home; and nobody else can keep Mrs. Norris in order. […]” (17.20)

Fanny’s desire to respect her uncle’s wishes are hardly contemptible, unlike the peer pressure that is exerted on her by her cousins, and of course her Aunt Norris:

“I am not going to urge her,” replied Mrs. Norris sharply; “but I shall think her a very obstinate, ungrateful girl, if she does not do what her aunt and cousins wish her—very ungrateful, indeed, considering who and what she is.”

As unpleasant as this sentiment is we are manoeuvred into assenting to it, maybe without realising it.

Instead it is a monster of complacency and pride who, under a cloak of cringing self-abasement, dominates and gives meaning to the novel. What became of that Jane Austen (if she ever existed) who set out bravely to correct conventional notions of the desirable and virtuous? From being their critic (if she ever was) she became their slave. That is another way of saying that her judgement and her moral sense were corrupted. Mansfield Park is the witness of that corruption.

Kingsley Amis, What Became of Jane Austen?, p. 144

There is irony in Sir Thomas disapproving of his sons and daughters engaging in theatrics while forcing them into the social theatrics of ‘strict decorum’ while ignoring everything behind the facade. On returning from Antigua he wipes ‘away every outward memento of what had been’ (20.9) without attending to its causes and and sets about marrying Maria to man he knew she held in contempt.

Something must have been wanting within, or time would have worn away much of its ill effect. He feared that principle, active principle, had been wanting; that they had never been properly taught to govern their inclinations and tempers by that sense of duty which can alone suffice. They had been instructed theoretically in their religion, but never required to bring it into daily practice. To be distinguished for elegance and accomplishments, the authorised object of their youth, could have had no useful influence that way, no moral effect on the mind. He had meant them to be good, but his cares had been directed to the understanding and manners, not the disposition; and of the necessity of self-denial and humility, he feared they had never heard from any lips that could profit them.

By getting the reader to assent to all of this, to take sides with Aunt Norris on Fanny’s participation in the theatre project, and with Sir Thomas in contracting a love-less, mercenary marriage to Henry Crawford, Austen shows how neither Hume’s sentiments nor Kant’s duties can be exclusively relied upon in making life judgments, with the judgments and misjudgments inside the novel get reflected in the readings and misreadings of it. (David Hume thought ethics should be based on sentiment while Immanuel Kant favoured a deontological ethics founded on duties.)

Sir Thomas’s conservative fixation on rules are just as theatrical and hollow as the Crawford’s more progressive fixation on sentiment. Despite their lack of sparkle, Fanny and Edmund point the way towards a more substantial as well as a more balanced future.

It was long before Fanny could recover from the agitating happiness of such an hour as was formed by the last thirty minutes of expectation, and the first of fruition; it was some time even before her happiness could be said to make her happy, before the disappointment inseparable from the alteration of person had vanished, and she could see in him the same William as before, and talk to him, as her heart had been yearning to do through many a past year. That time, however, did gradually come, forwarded by an affection on his side as warm as her own, and much less encumbered by refinement or self-distrust. (24.17)

Austen makes a really deep point that I doubt if any but a tiny minority would understand in our modern culture of distraction, that the agitation that comes with high expectations being fulfilled is actually stressful, and it is not clear that it should be labeled ‘happiness’. It is so-labeled because of our expectations, and this is the kind of excitement that we associate with romantic ‘love’.

Against this we have familial love.

An advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal. Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connexions can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connexion can justify, if such precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely outlived. Too often, alas! it is so. Fraternal love, sometimes almost everything, is at others worse than nothing. But with William and Fanny Price it was still a sentiment in all its prime and freshness, wounded by no opposition of interest, cooled by no separate attachment, and feeling the influence of time and absence only in its increase. (24.18)

The point about familial love is that it is stable and long-lasting, and gives rise to real happiness (a point emphasised at the end of Sense and Sensibility). It is not that we shouldn’t have romantic love–the excitement of high expectation and so on is good for making things happen–but it must be transmuted into something more stable that will survive the inevitable trials. The true destination of conjugal love should be familial love. (See Howard Cutler in discussion with the Dalai Lama in The Art of Happiness, Chapters 5 and 6, for an excellent discussion of this point.)

[…] “I do not quite know what to make of Miss Fanny. I do not understand her. I could not tell what she would be at yesterday. What is her character? Is she solemn? Is she queer? Is she prudish? Why did she draw back and look so grave at me? I could hardly get her to speak. I never was so long in company with a girl in my life, trying to entertain her, and succeed so ill! Never met with a girl who looked so grave on me! I must try to get the better of this. Her looks say, ‘I will not like you, I am determined not to like you’; and I say she shall.” (24.7)

According to the OED the first reference to the use of the term queer as a homosexual is in 1994 a letter by the Marquess of Queensberry apparently discussing the outcome of the Oscar Wilde case.  Stabler in the Oxford World Classics quite rightly annotates ‘Is she queer’ with ‘Is she eccentric?’, however, especially  given Mary’s reference to ‘Rears and Vices‘ (6.49) it is impossible for me to not suspect that Henry was hinting at a very particular eccentricity.  Should the OED be considering an earlier entry for ‘queer’ in the sense of a homosexual?

And without attempting any farther remonstrance, she left Fanny to her fate, a fate which, had not Fanny’s heart been guarded in a way unsuspected by Miss Crawford, might have been a little harder than she deserved; for although there doubtless are such unconquerable young ladies of eighteen (or one should not read about them) as are never to be persuaded into love against their judgment by all that talent, manner, attention, and flattery can do, I have no inclination to believe Fanny one of them, or to think that with so much tenderness of disposition, and so much taste as belonged to her, she could have escaped heart-whole from the courtship (though the courtship only of a fortnight) of such a man as Crawford, in spite of there being some previous ill opinion of him to be overcome, had not her affection been engaged elsewhere. With all the security which love of another and disesteem of him could give to the peace of mind he was attacking, his continued attentions—continued, but not obtrusive, and adapting themselves more and more to the gentleness and delicacy of her character—obliged her very soon to dislike him less than formerly. She had by no means forgotten the past, and she thought as ill of him as ever; but she felt his powers: he was entertaining; and his manners were so improved, so polite, so seriously and blamelessly polite, that it was impossible not to be civil to him in return. (24.11)

We hear some more of this kind of speculation in the final chapter.

Henry Crawford, ruined by early independence and bad domestic example, indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded vanity a little too long. Once it had, by an opening undesigned and unmerited, led him into the way of happiness. Could he have been satisfied with the conquest of one amiable woman’s affections, could he have found sufficient exultation in overcoming the reluctance, in working himself into the esteem and tenderness of Fanny Price, there would have been every probability of success and felicity for him. His affection had already done something. Her influence over him had already given him some influence over her. Would he have deserved more, there can be no doubt that more would have been obtained, especially when that marriage had taken place, which would have given him the assistance of her conscience in subduing her first inclination, and brought them very often together. Would he have persevered, and uprightly, Fanny must have been his reward, and a reward very voluntarily bestowed, within a reasonable period from Edmund’s marrying Mary. (48.19)

This kind talk is liable to get Austen into trouble with her Romantic critics but it is worth having a closer look at this, we moderns being excellent at reasoning about physical causation—the world out there—but truly rotten when it comes to reasoning about causal processes as they relate to the self, or to people in general, our romantic notions protesting at even considering such thoughts. For example here is Richard Simpson’s dismissal of Austen’s reasoning about how Henry could have made progress with Fanny, and if he had persisted we could have brought about the mythical match between Mary and Edmund and Fanny and Henry that so many have considered the proper resolution of Mansfield Park.

A story is told of a London curate, who, seeing many couples before him, told them to ‘sort themselves,’ and proceeded to marry them. Two pairs found themselves mis-sorted. The curate, not knowing much of canon law, thought the case difficult, and tried to arrange matters as they stood; and the two couples were with little difficulty, and no ill consequences, persuaded to ‘bide as they were.’ In Mansfield Park, Miss Austen tells us that this might easily have been managed. […]

Mansfield Park is another attempt to show that true love is that which is founded on esteem, not on passion, and that passion should rather be the crown of the edifice than its foundation. It exactly contradicts the romantic ideal of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare exhibited the grand passion kindled in the eyes and breaking forth into a conflagration which devoured all former passions, and even life itself. This is the heroic, tragic way of treating love.

— Richard Simpson, North British Review (April 1870)

This is frankly very, very silly, and sadly typical of the kinds of things that are written by our greatest and most intelligent critics. It is silly because it is so manifestly false, as even the most cursory reader must realise if they will just ask themselves some simple questions, such as did ‘esteem’ drive Fanny Price to face down and endure the censure of Sir Thomas Bertram, Lady Bertram, Edmund Bertram and William Price, precisely everyone that she respected and loved, to insist that she would never marry Henry Crawford. For sure she found Crawford’s behaviour towards her cousins repulsive, but Austen make it clear that it was her love of Edmund that was the real road block that had to be cleared, and only once it had been cleared through Edmund’s marriage to Mary could he prove to her that he had reformed himself. It is Fanny Price’s passion for Edmund that drives the novel forward and nothing in it would make sense without it. But like the Bertrams we are easily infatuated by the attractive surfaces of the Crawfords, and this attachment corrupts our judgement, as it corrupts the judgement of Sir Thomas and Edmund—we are made to repeat their mistakes in the (mis)reading. (This is the thesis of In Search of Sense and Sensibility; see especially the chapter on Emma).

Simpson, Shakespeare scholar that he is, understands Romeo and Juliet, but look at the conclusions he draws. Let us transpose this example into an scientific/engineering context and we are reading a great science fiction writer that explains how the design of a nuclear power plant could fail causing the death and destruction on a grand scale, and this critically acclaimed book makes an impressive impact. Would we conclude from this that we must therefore try to re-enact this failure in tribute to our great author? In Romeo and Juliet people start killing themselves; these are the actions of very unhappy people; this is an undesirable outcome—ergo we should try and understand what is going on and minimise the chances of a repetition.

For sure the unhappiness of Romeo and Juliet has many causes, including the misguided actions of their feuding relations, but many factors can frustrate two lovers from consummating a relationship, and it is hardly wise to encourage young people to top themselves when their relationships hit obstacles. Undoubtedly part of the problem comes from a propensity to give Romantic love a mystical, almost metaphysical, status which then gets worshipped like a heathen god, and woe betide anyone who tries to demystify this idolatry.

But this is just what Austen does. While nurturing Fanny Price’s passion throughout the action, she explains where it comes from and how it could be dissipated and replaced. For this to happen Edmund had to be taken out by Mary and Henry had to prove to Fanny that he hadn’t ‘indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded vanity a little too long’, that his attack on Fanny wasn’t the product of ‘idleness and folly’ (24.6). To do this he had to change his habits, but the Crawford advocates have really been following Sir Thomas’s line of reasoning.

Sir Thomas was most cordially anxious for the perfection of Mr. Crawford’s character in that point. He wished him to be a model of constancy; and fancied the best means of effecting it would be by not trying him too long. (35.3)

It is difficult to change a character, even someone as young as Henry Crawford, but as Henry himself acknowledges when he finally gets Fanny to explain her objections to him, that is what he has to do.

“Well,” said Crawford, after a course of rapid questions and reluctant answers; “I am happier than I was, because I now understand more clearly your opinion of me. You think me unsteady: easily swayed by the whim of the moment, easily tempted, easily put aside. With such an opinion, no wonder that. But we shall see. It is not by protestations that I shall endeavour to convince you I am wronged; it is not by telling you that my affections are steady. My conduct shall speak for me; absence, distance, time shall speak for me. They shall prove that, as far as you can be deserved by anybody, I do deserve you. You are infinitely my superior in merit; all that I know. You have qualities which I had not before supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some touches of the angel in you beyond what— not merely beyond what one sees, because one never sees anything like it—but beyond what one fancies might be. But still I am not frightened. It is not by equality of merit that you can be won. That is out of the question. It is he who sees and worships your merit the strongest, who loves you most devotedly, that has the best right to a return. There I build my confidence. By that right I do and will deserve you; and when once convinced that my attachment is what I declare it, I know you too well not to entertain the warmest hopes. Yes, dearest, sweetest Fanny. Nay” (seeing her draw back displeased), “forgive me. Perhaps I have as yet no right; but by what other name can I call you? Do you suppose you are ever present to my imagination under any other? No, it is ‘Fanny’ that I think of all day, and dream of all night. You have given the name such reality of sweetness, that nothing else can now be descriptive of you.” (34.41)

Even this speech, despite the progress he has been making, betrays a fair amount of self-absorption and self-indulgence on Henry’s part that wouldn’t be out of place in a William Collins. But at least William Collins made his declaration to Elizabeth while Henry starts with Sir Thomas. But unlike Darcy, Henry fails to make the reforms after he is refused and contrary to protestations to the contrary this is a realistic development, for Henry really had ‘indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded vanity a little too long’.

Meanwhile, you should be careful about casually throwing around words such as the following in reference to Miss Price: “insignificant”, “moralizing prig”, “feeble”, “dull”, or “nebbish” – not because these are necessarily objectively wrong, but because on AUSTEN-L they are what the U.S. Supreme court has termed “fighting words”.

The problem is Fanny Price shares her cousin’s and uncle’s strict sense of propriety, and indeed is more consistent than either, and she repulses the eligible Henry Crawford’s addresses; and Austen herself acknowledged to Cassandra (letter, 18^th March 1814) that her own brother (Henry) had ‘properly’ admired Henry Crawford as ‘a clever, pleasant man’. By repulsing Henry, Fanny sets in train a chain of events that destroys Maria, ruptures the relationship between Edmund and Mary and the author concedes in the final chapter of the book that, ‘[w]ould he have persevered’ (48.19), after Mary had married Edmund, Henry could have had the Fanny that he so ‘rationally as well as passionately loved’ (48.22) as his reward. Thanks to Fanny’s stubbornness, the two dull, pious cousins, instead of marrying the clever, witty, talented, affluent, urbane and attractive Crawfords, marry each other in a near incestuous marriage. The novel seems to look backwards and inwards, Farrer calling it Austen’s Gran Refiuto (a reference to Inferno section of Dante’s Divine Comedy where he deals with the ‘cowardice of the grand refusal’).

Note that Farrer, like others that reject Mansfield Park’s ethical scheme, pay full tribute to its technical mastery, an important milestone in the development of the novel. So, given that one of Austen’s greatest critics did try to explain why it wasn’t ‘a perverse and wicked book’, that the internet discussions wouldn’t get so heated if everybody was of the same opinion, and that her 19^th century critics didn’t see the novel as so ethically exceptionable, it maybe worth considering whether Austen wasn’t pointing out a gathering force in our modern sensibilities.

While writing the book Austen said two things in her letters that seem particularly significant, neither ostensibly about Mansfield Park. In a letter to Cassandra on the 4^th February 1813 she famously said of Pride and Prejudice ‘The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn specious nonsense, about something’. Characteristically she doesn’t miss the opportunity to make a joke, but given the nature of the dark novel she was writing in which all the lively qualities of her favourite heroine get transposed into the anti-heroine, and the errant sister gets properly disgraced, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that she was concerned that Pride and Prejudice may have given the impression that wit was being promoted at the expense of ethics; for a moralist—and she was a moralist as well as a novelist—having got people’s attention, she seems to have been determined to set the record straight. The second comment was in a letter (18^th November 1814) to her troubled niece Fanny Knight who is having second thoughts about a sterling if a little dull suitor, advising Fanny that ‘Wisdom is better than Wit, & in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side’. This I think is the motif of Mansfield Park.

“It is as a dream, a pleasant dream!” he exclaimed, breaking forth again, after a few minutes’ musing. “I shall always look back on our theatricals with exquisite pleasure. There was such an interest, such an animation, such a spirit diffused. Everybody felt it. We were all alive. There was employment, hope, solicitude, bustle, for every hour of the day. Always some little objection, some little doubt, some little anxiety to be got over. I never was happier.”

With silent indignation Fanny repeated to herself, “Never happier!—never happier than when doing what you must know was not justifiable!—never happier than when behaving so dishonourably and unfeelingly! Oh! what a corrupted mind!” (23.55-6)

This may seem a little harsh, but Henry himself says later when he is courting Fanny “I should be sorry to have my powers of planning judged of by the day at Sotherton. I see things very differently now. Do not think of me as I appeared then.” Because of Fanny’s secret passion for Edmund she is the only person not viewing the Crawfords through the distorting lens of sexual passion, so she has observed Henry the ‘clandestine, insidious, treacherous admirer of Maria Bertram’ (33.6), and it is this trifling with Maria that prompts the proud Maria to decline her father’s offer to rescue her from the disastrous relationship with Rushworth, and we learn later in the last conversation between Fanny and Mary that this was by no means the first time that Henry has done this, who may likewise have propelled others through angry pride into unhappy, mercenary marriages (36.16). And then he couldn’t ‘be satisfied without Fanny Price, without making a small hole in Fanny Price’s heart’, and the perceptive Mary calls it herself.

“Phoo! phoo! This is only because there were no tall women to compare her with, and because she has got a new gown, and you never saw her so well dressed before. She is just what she was in October, believe me. The truth is, that she was the only girl in company for you to notice, and you must have a somebody. I have always thought her pretty—not strikingly pretty—but ‘pretty enough,’ as people say; a sort of beauty that grows on one. Her eyes should be darker, but she has a sweet smile; but as for this wonderful degree of improvement, I am sure it may all be resolved into a better style of dress, and your having nobody else to look at; and therefore, if you do set about a flirtation with her, you never will persuade me that it is in compliment to her beauty, or that it proceeds from anything but your own idleness and folly.” (15.53)

Fanny understands all of this, and she has nailed Mary too, who satisfies herself with a mild remonstrance when she understands Henry’s plans for Fanny (24.10) and is not above lying to and coercing Fanny in support of her brother’s wicked scheme.

It was impossible for her to be insensible of Mr. Crawford’s change of manners. She had long seen it. He evidently tried to please her: he was gallant, he was attentive, he was something like what he had been to her cousins: he wanted, she supposed, to cheat her of her tranquillity as he had cheated them; and whether he might not have some concern in this necklace—she could not be convinced that he had not, for Miss Crawford, complaisant as a sister, was careless as a woman and a friend. (26.23)

So, Fanny has understood Henry and Mary’s character, charming, clever, witty and affluent as they are, that they can be trusted about as far as they can be thrown, and for all the squealing of critics like Farrer and Amis to the contrary, Austen has developed their characters consistently with this particular effect in mind. So why this peculiar reaction? Can it be the prospect of forming ethical judgements that cut against sentiments? Like the Bertrams we find the Crawfords bewitching and have difficulty getting past their pleasing surfaces to the character formed in their corrupt, consumerist metropolitan milieu (which is not to say that every metropolitan milieu is corrupt, though it was undoubtedly Austen’s design to suggest, as Edmund says, that the ‘metropolis’ was not representative of the ‘proportion of virtue to vice throughout the kingdom’ (9.49)).

Austen drives the point home that, while a developed sense of aesthetics may be useful in developing ethics, it is far from sufficient; while Henry may have sense enough to recognise and value integrity when he sees it, Henry’s character is determined by his habits.

It was a picture which Henry Crawford had moral taste enough to value. Fanny’s attractions increased—increased twofold; for the sensibility which beautified her complexion and illumined her countenance was an attraction in itself. He was no longer in doubt of the capabilities of her heart. She had feeling, genuine feeling. It would be something to be loved by such a girl, to excite the first ardours of her young unsophisticated mind! She interested him more than he had foreseen. A fortnight was not enough. His stay became indefinite. (24.20)

[…]

Henry Crawford had too much sense not to feel the worth of good principles in a wife, though he was too little accustomed to serious reflection to know them by their proper name; but when he talked of her having such a steadiness and regularity of conduct, such a high notion of honour, and such an observance of decorum as might warrant any man in the fullest dependence on her faith and integrity, he expressed what was inspired by the knowledge of her being well principled and religious. (30.16)

Mary appreciates Fanny’s qualities as much as her brother and while Fanny may understand the characters of the Crawfords, Mary, as yet, has not the slightest insight into the steel at the centre of Fanny’s character.

“Well, well, I am satisfied. I know now to whom it must relate, and am in no hurry for the rest. Fanny Price! wonderful, quite wonderful! That Mansfield should have done so much for—that you should have found your fate in Mansfield! But you are quite right; you could not have chosen better. There is not a better girl in the world, and you do not want for fortune; and as to her connexions, they are more than good. The Bertrams are undoubtedly some of the first people in this country. She is niece to Sir Thomas Bertram; that will be enough for the world. But go on, go on. Tell me more. What are your plans? Does she know her own happiness?”

“No.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“For—for very little more than opportunity. Mary, she is not like her cousins; but I think I shall not ask in vain.”

“Oh no! you cannot. Were you even less pleasing— supposing her not to love you already (of which, however, I can have little doubt)—you would be safe. The gentleness and gratitude of her disposition would secure her all your own immediately. From my soul I do not think she would marry you without love; that is, if there is a girl in the world capable of being uninfluenced by ambition, I can suppose it her; but ask her to love you, and she will never have the heart to refuse.” (30.11-15)

Mary understands the problem where her brother is concerned yet fools herself that the damage hasn’t already been done.

“That’s right; and in London, of course, a house of your own: no longer with the Admiral. My dearest Henry, the advantage to you of getting away from the Admiral before your manners are hurt by the contagion of his, before you have contracted any of his foolish opinions, or learned to sit over your dinner as if it were the best blessing of life! You are not sensible of the gain, for your regard for him has blinded you; but, in my estimation, your marrying early may be the saving of you. To have seen you grow like the Admiral in word or deed, look or gesture, would have broken my heart.”

“Well, well, we do not think quite alike here. The Admiral has his faults, but he is a very good man, and has been more than a father to me. Few fathers would have let me have my own way half so much. You must not prejudice Fanny against him. I must have them love one another.” (30.27-8)

Henry, unable even to remember her dancing while her cousins were present (25.62), seems entirely unaware of his own past neglect of Fanny and (naturally enough) remains utterly insensitive to her real needs in his infatuation.

“I care neither what they say nor what they feel. They will now see what sort of woman it is that can attach me, that can attach a man of sense. I wish the discovery may do them any good. And they will now see their cousin treated as she ought to be, and I wish they may be heartily ashamed of their own abominable neglect and unkindness. They will be angry,” he added, after a moment’s silence, and in a cooler tone; “Mrs. Rushworth will be very angry. It will be a bitter pill to her; that is, like other bitter pills, it will have two moments’ ill flavour, and then be swallowed and forgotten; for I am not such a coxcomb as to suppose her feelings more lasting than other women’s, though I was the object of them. Yes, Mary, my Fanny will feel a difference indeed: a daily, hourly difference, in the behaviour of every being who approaches her; and it will be the completion of my happiness to know that I am the doer of it, that I am the person to give the consequence so justly her due. Now she is dependent, helpless, friendless, neglected, forgotten.”

“Nay, Henry, not by all; not forgotten by all; not friendless or forgotten. Her cousin Edmund never forgets her.”

“Edmund! True, I believe he is, generally speaking, kind to her, and so is Sir Thomas in his way; but it is the way of a rich, superior, long-worded, arbitrary uncle. What can Sir Thomas and Edmund together do, what do they do for her happiness, comfort, honour, and dignity in the world, to what I shall do?” (30.33-5)

“This is pretty, very pretty,” said Fanny, looking around her as they were thus sitting together one day; “every time I come into this shrubbery I am more struck with its growth and beauty. […] How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!” And following the latter train of thought, she soon afterwards added: “If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.”

Miss Crawford, untouched and inattentive, had nothing to say; and Fanny, perceiving it, brought back her own mind to what she thought must interest.

“It may seem impertinent in me to praise, but I must admire the taste Mrs. Grant has shewn in all this. There is such a quiet simplicity in the plan of the walk! Not too much attempted!”

“Yes,” replied Miss Crawford carelessly, “it does very well for a place of this sort. One does not think of extent here; and between ourselves, till I came to Mansfield, I had not imagined a country parson ever aspired to a shrubbery, or anything of the kind.”

“I am so glad to see the evergreens thrive!” said Fanny, in reply. “My uncle’s gardener always says the soil here is better than his own, and so it appears from the growth of the laurels and evergreens in general. The evergreen! How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen! […] You will think me rhapsodising; but when I am out of doors, especially when I am sitting out of doors, I am very apt to get into this sort of wondering strain. One cannot fix one’s eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.”

“To say the truth,” replied Miss Crawford, “I am something like the famous Doge at the court of Lewis XIV.; and may declare that I see no wonder in this shrubbery equal to seeing myself in it. If anybody had told me a year ago that this place would be my home, that I should be spending month after month here, as I have done, I certainly should not have believed them. I have now been here nearly five months; and, moreover, the quietest five months I ever passed.” (22.12-7)

While Fanny’s idealism is reflected is her reflections on the miraculousness of memory, her rhapsodies on nature and complements the Grants, inattentive Mary disdains country parsons, wonders at herself being in the country at all by way of recalling Voltaire’s Doge (from La Siècle de Louis XIV (1751)). (Note, to this day materialists cannot come up with a credible account for animal memory—see Sheldrake’s The Presence of the Past, Ch. 9).

Mary’s preoccupation with status and wealth runs throughout, quite explicitly in an exchange with her sister in Edmund and Fanny’s presence.

“The sweets of housekeeping in a country village!” said Miss Crawford archly. “Commend me to the nurseryman and the poulterer.”

“My dear child, commend Dr. Grant to the deanery of Westminster or St. Paul’s, and I should be as glad of your nurseryman and poulterer as you could be. But we have no such people in Mansfield. What would you have me do?”

“Oh! you can do nothing but what you do already: be plagued very often, and never lose your temper.”

“Thank you; but there is no escaping these little vexations, Mary, live where we may; and when you are settled in town and I come to see you, I dare say I shall find you with yours, in spite of the nurseryman and the poulterer, perhaps on their very account. Their remoteness and unpunctuality, or their exorbitant charges and frauds, will be drawing forth bitter lamentations.”

“I mean to be too rich to lament or to feel anything of the sort. A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it.” (22.33-7)

Though Mary is frustrated at Edmund’s lack of ambition (as she sees it) she exposes her consumerist philosophy, and this preoccupation with wealth and status drives her resentment of Edmund’s vocation. Edmund’s wilful refusal to look beyond pleasing appearances to address uncomfortable realities reflects his father’s failings; and Mary is doing likewise, perhaps assuming she will be able to ‘bend’ his ‘sturdy spirit’ (36.9). The capacity for the upright and principled Sir Thomas and Edmund to delude themselves in the pursuit of pleasing narratives is a persistent theme of the novel, their most egregious mistake being their complete failure to comprehend Fanny’s rejection of Henry Crawford until his elopement with Maria.

With solemn kindness Sir Thomas addressed her: told her his fears, inquired into her wishes, entreated her to be open and sincere, and assured her that every inconvenience should be braved, and the connexion entirely given up, if she felt herself unhappy in the prospect of it. He would act for her and release her. Maria had a moment’s struggle as she listened, and only a moment’s: when her father ceased, she was able to give her answer immediately, decidedly, and with no apparent agitation. She thanked him for his great attention, his paternal kindness, but he was quite mistaken in supposing she had the smallest desire of breaking through her engagement, or was sensible of any change of opinion or inclination since her forming it. She had the highest esteem for Mr. Rushworth’s character and disposition, and could not have a doubt of her happiness with him.

Sir Thomas was satisfied; too glad to be satisfied, perhaps, to urge the matter quite so far as his judgment might have dictated to others. […] Such and such-like were the reasonings of Sir Thomas, happy to escape the embarrassing evils of a rupture, the wonder, the reflections, the reproach that must attend it; happy to secure a marriage which would bring him such an addition of respectability and influence, and very happy to think anything of his daughter’s disposition that was most favourable for the purpose.

To her the conference closed as satisfactorily as to him. She was in a state of mind to be glad that she had secured her fate beyond recall: that she had pledged herself anew to Sotherton; that she was safe from the possibility of giving Crawford the triumph of governing her actions, and destroying her prospects; and retired in proud resolve, determined only to behave more cautiously to Mr. Rushworth in future, that her father might not be again suspecting her.

Had Sir Thomas applied to his daughter within the first three or four days after Henry Crawford’s leaving Mansfield, before her feelings were at all tranquillised, before she had given up every hope of him, or absolutely resolved on enduring his rival, her answer might have been different; but after another three or four days, when there was no return, no letter, no message, no symptom of a softened heart, no hope of advantage from separation, her mind became cool enough to seek all the comfort that pride and self revenge could give.

Henry Crawford had destroyed her happiness, but he should not know that he had done it; he should not destroy her credit, her appearance, her prosperity, too. He should not have to think of her as pining in the retirement of Mansfield for him, rejecting Sotherton and London, independence and splendour, for his sake. Independence was more needful than ever; the want of it at Mansfield more sensibly felt. She was less and less able to endure the restraint which her father imposed. The liberty which his absence had given was now become absolutely necessary. She must escape from him and Mansfield as soon as possible, and find consolation in fortune and consequence, bustle and the world, for a wounded spirit. Her mind was quite determined, and varied not.

To such feelings delay, even the delay of much preparation, would have been an evil, and Mr. Rushworth could hardly be more impatient for the marriage than herself. In all the important preparations of the mind she was complete: being prepared for matrimony by an hatred of home, restraint, and tranquillity; by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry. The rest might wait. The preparations of new carriages and furniture might wait for London and spring, when her own taste could have fairer play. (21.22-7)

This searing portrait of romantic love could hardly be missed, but the reeling reader (or at least this reader) is in danger of missing the import of the following, for Austen hasn’t finished.

The principals being all agreed in this respect, it soon appeared that a very few weeks would be sufficient for such arrangements as must precede the wedding.

Mrs. Rushworth was quite ready to retire, and make way for the fortunate young woman whom her dear son had selected; and very early in November removed herself, her maid, her footman, and her chariot, with true dowager propriety, to Bath, there to parade over the wonders of Sotherton in her evening parties; enjoying them as thoroughly, perhaps, in the animation of a card-table, as she had ever done on the spot; and before the middle of the same month the ceremony had taken place which gave Sotherton another mistress.

It was a very proper wedding. The bride was elegantly dressed; the two bridesmaids were duly inferior; her father gave her away; her mother stood with salts in her hand, expecting to be agitated; her aunt tried to cry; and the service was impressively read by Dr. Grant. Nothing could be objected to when it came under the discussion of the neighbourhood, except that the carriage which conveyed the bride and bridegroom and Julia from the church-door to Sotherton was the same chaise which Mr. Rushworth had used for a twelvemonth before. In everything else the etiquette of the day might stand the strictest investigation. (21.28-30)

There is a crass strand of criticism that emphasises Austen’s preoccupation with aesthetics, proprieties and decorum, to the exclusion of deeper psychological issues. Such criticism ignores a great deal of irony, for while aesthetics are important, there is hardly a writer more merciless in criticising the pursuit of mere surface appearances. That the ‘etiquette of the day might stand the strictest investigation’ stands in stark and bitter contrast to Maria’s devastated heart.

It was done, and they were gone. Sir Thomas felt as an anxious father must feel, and was indeed experiencing much of the agitation which his wife had been apprehensive of for herself, but had fortunately escaped. Mrs. Norris, most happy to assist in the duties of the day, by spending it at the Park to support her sister’s spirits, and drinking the health of Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth in a supernumerary glass or two, was all joyous delight; for she had made the match; she had done everything; and no one would have supposed, from her confident triumph, that she had ever heard of conjugal infelicity in her life, or could have the smallest insight into the disposition of the niece who had been brought up under her eye. (21.31)

None of the three really knows what is happening with Maria, but Sir Thomas should know that something is wrong. Instead he chooses the path of least resistance, to push the inconvenient problems out of sight and to engage everyone in the theatrics forbidden to his children.

Mr. Yates was beginning now to understand Sir Thomas’s intentions, though as far as ever from understanding their source. He and his friend had been out with their guns the chief of the morning, and Tom had taken the opportunity of explaining, with proper apologies for his father’s particularity, what was to be expected. Mr. Yates felt it as acutely as might be supposed. To be a second time disappointed in the same way was an instance of very severe ill-luck; and his indignation was such, that had it not been for delicacy towards his friend, and his friend’s youngest sister, he believed he should certainly attack the baronet on the absurdity of his proceedings, and argue him into a little more rationality. He believed this very stoutly while he was in Mansfield Wood, and all the way home; but there was a something in Sir Thomas, when they sat round the same table, which made Mr. Yates think it wiser to let him pursue his own way, and feel the folly of it without opposition. He had known many disagreeable fathers before, and often been struck with the inconveniences they occasioned, but never, in the whole course of his life, had he seen one of that class so unintelligibly moral, so infamously tyrannical as Sir Thomas. He was not a man to be endured but for his children’s sake, and he might be thankful to his fair daughter Julia that Mr. Yates did yet mean to stay a few days longer under his roof. (20.10)

I had previously enjoyed the comedy but missed how this passage strikes at the heart of theme of the novel. Sir Thomas’s future son in law surely has the right idea in getting Sir Thomas to engage with his children on their theatrical project, to be more rational, rather than relying on ‘the advice of absolute power’ (28.33). Instead we see Mr Yeats following the same pattern of his future in-laws, and so Sir Thomas does ‘pursue his own way, and feel the folly of it without opposition’.

Sir Thomas’s return made a striking change in the ways of the family, independent of Lovers’ Vows. Under his government, Mansfield was an altered place. Some members of their society sent away, and the spirits of many others saddened—it was all sameness and gloom compared with the past—a sombre family party rarely enlivened. There was little intercourse with the Parsonage. Sir Thomas, drawing back from intimacies in general, was particularly disinclined, at this time, for any engagements but in one quarter. The Rushworths were the only addition to his own domestic circle which he could solicit.

Edmund did not wonder that such should be his father’s feelings, nor could he regret anything but the exclusion of the Grants. “But they,” he observed to Fanny, “have a claim. They seem to belong to us; they seem to be part of ourselves. I could wish my father were more sensible of their very great attention to my mother and sisters while he was away. I am afraid they may feel themselves neglected. But the truth is, that my father hardly knows them. They had not been here a twelvemonth when he left England. If he knew them better, he would value their society as it deserves; for they are in fact exactly the sort of people he would like. We are sometimes a little in want of animation among ourselves: my sisters seem out of spirits, and Tom is certainly not at his ease. Dr. and Mrs. Grant would enliven us, and make our evenings pass away with more enjoyment even to my father.” (21.2)

Edmund also identifies a problem. Fanny, no admirer of the Crawfords is quite happy to see them shut out of course and sees more clearly (21.3) that the novelty lay in the liveliness while Sir Thomas was away rather than the dullness on his return. There can be no getting away from the suggestion that while the Crawfords, Tom, Maria and Julia may have been spoiled by over-indulgence, Sir Thomas’s imposed austerity is disastrous for the Bertrams, and equally misses the point. The occupiers of the vicarage offer a more balanced alternative, as will its future occupiers (if Edmund’s early management of Fanny and Fanny’s management of Susan at Portsmouth are any guides).

It was a busy morning with him. Conversation with any of them occupied but a small part of it. He had to reinstate himself in all the wonted concerns of his Mansfield life: to see his steward and his bailiff; to examine and compute, and, in the intervals of business, to walk into his stables and his gardens, and nearest plantations; but active and methodical, he had not only done all this before he resumed his seat as master of the house at dinner, he had also set the carpenter to work in pulling down what had been so lately put up in the billiard-room, and given the scene-painter his dismissal long enough to justify the pleasing belief of his being then at least as far off as Northampton. The scene-painter was gone, having spoilt only the floor of one room, ruined all the coachman’s sponges, and made five of the under-servants idle and dissatisfied; and Sir Thomas was in hopes that another day or two would suffice to wipe away every outward memento of what had been, even to the destruction of every unbound copy of Lovers’ Vows in the house, for he was burning all that met his eye. (20.9)

It never struck me before how pointed this passage is. Sir Thomas has returned to discover that he doesn’t really know his children and he responds by clearing away every symptom so that he can forget it as quickly as possible.

What struck me with equal force recently was Alistair Duckworth’s comments on this.

Whatever failings Sir Thomas will reveal in other acts during the novel, his response on discovering the theatre is exemplary. He immediately sets about returning Mansfield to its “proper state” (20.2).

— Alistair M. Duckworth, The Improvement of the Estate, p. 56

Although Ipretty sympathetic to Duckworth’s commentary, here I think he makes a revealing misstep. Without a doubt Austen appreciated the value of ‘order’, but an order based on something real. To set about restoring the appearance of order at Mansfield without attending to the causes of the disorder reflects too vividly Sir Thomas’s own reproaches at the end of the novel for this to be so exemplary:

Here had been grievous mismanagement; but, bad as it was, he gradually grew to feel that it had not been the most direful mistake in his plan of education. Something must have been wanting within, or time would have worn away much of its ill effect. (48.8).

]]> https://mansfieldpark.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/sir-thomas-attends-to-business-ch-20/feed/ 2 Chris Dornan https://mansfieldpark.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/lady-bertram-ch-20/ https://mansfieldpark.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/lady-bertram-ch-20/#respond Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:42:15 +0000 http://mansfieldpark.wordpress.com/?p=8 Austen seemed derive as much amusement from Lady Bertram’s indolence and inertness as Mrs Norris’s hyper-activity and interference. While more educated people tend to adopt more impersonal ways of speaking, Lady Bertram takes this to extravagant lengths, sometimes almost rendering herself a non-entity in her speech, apparently vacating herself entirely.

By not one of the circle was he listened to with such unbroken, unalloyed enjoyment as by his wife, who was really extremely happy to see him, and whose feelings were so warmed by his sudden arrival as to place her nearer agitation than she had been for the last twenty years. She had been almost fluttered for a few minutes, and still remained so sensibly animated as to put away her work, move Pug from her side, and give all her attention and all the rest of her sofa to her husband. She had no anxieties for anybody to cloud her pleasure: her own time had been irreproachably spent during his absence: she had done a great deal of carpet-work, and made many yards of fringe; and she would have answered as freely for the good conduct and useful pursuits of all the young people as for her own. It was so agreeable to her to see him again, and hear him talk, to have her ear amused and her whole comprehension filled by his narratives, that she began particularly to feel how dreadfully she must have missed him, and how impossible it would have been for her to bear a lengthened absence. (19.9)

This will be emphasised later when her almost mortally ill son arrives while she is writing a letter to Fanny.

Her aunt did not neglect her: she wrote again and again; they were receiving frequent accounts from Edmund, and these accounts were as regularly transmitted to Fanny, in the same diffuse style, and the same medley of trusts, hopes, and fears, all following and producing each other at haphazard. It was a sort of playing at being frightened. The sufferings which Lady Bertram did not see had little power over her fancy; and she wrote very comfortably about agitation, and anxiety, and poor invalids, till Tom was actually conveyed to Mansfield, and her own eyes had beheld his altered appearance. Then a letter which she had been previously preparing for Fanny was finished in a different style, in the language of real feeling and alarm; then she wrote as she might have spoken. “He is just come, my dear Fanny, and is taken upstairs; and I am so shocked to see him, that I do not know what to do. I am sure he has been very ill. Poor Tom! I am quite grieved for him, and very much frightened, and so is Sir Thomas; and how glad I should be if you were here to comfort me. But Sir Thomas hopes he will be better to-morrow, and says we must consider his journey.” (44.12)

It is often assumed that Austen herself embodies the kind of dispassionate and detached discipline that we see in Lady Bertram but she often, as here, is critical of such excesses. The following, reminiscent of some passages in her letters, gets Austen into deep trouble with unsympathetic modern readers.

“What shall I do, Sir Thomas? Whist and speculation; which will amuse me most?”

Sir Thomas, after a moment’s thought, recommended speculation. He was a whist player himself, and perhaps might feel that it would not much amuse him to have her for a partner. (25.5)

How we have become so sensitive, and so sentimental! Lady Bertram would destroy any amusement for her partner in a game of whist, but our feeling are quite aligned with Fanny towards the ‘aunt she loved best’ (32.11), and she does command the respect of all.

There was nothing more to be said, or that could be said to any purpose, till Sir Thomas were present; but the subject involving, as it did, her own evening’s comfort for the morrow, was so much uppermost in Lady Bertram’s mind, that half an hour afterwards, on his looking in for a minute in his way from his plantation to his dressing-room, she called him back again, when he had almost closed the door, with “Sir Thomas, stop a moment—I have something to say to you.”

Her tone of calm languor, for she never took the trouble of raising her voice, was always heard and attended to; and Sir Thomas came back. (23.11)

Lady Bertram isn’t held accountable for the catastrophe any more than she was for the theatricals, though her indolence contributes in a negative sense just as surely as Sir Thomas’s towards the forming of Maria’s character and disgrace. The problem is that Lady Bertram’s abilities are such that she seems to be making good use of them thanks to her kindly disposition and good breeding. Judgement only really makes sense where for those with suitably sharp faculties are concerned: Fanny, Edmund, Maria, Julia, Tom, Sir Thomas and the Crawfords. It is the misuse of sharp faculties that are in the spotlight.

Edmund’s first object the next morning was to see his father alone, and give him a fair statement of the whole acting scheme, defending his own share in it as far only as he could then, in a soberer moment, feel his motives to deserve, and acknowledging, with perfect ingenuousness, that his concession had been attended with such partial good as to make his judgment in it very doubtful. (20.1)

Edmund’s dilemma as to whether he should join in the theatricals is almost perfectly balanced so that his integrity hinges entirely on his motivation. If the reason he had given to Fanny (16.4-27) were his motivation for taking part (and there was a good case for him taking part despite his principled opposition to the scheme) then he could have proceeded with a clear conscience. But as he says himself ‘If you [Fanny] are against me, I ought to distrust myself’.

Fanny’s opposition to Edmund taking part is equally doubtful, of course, being contaminated by her jealousy of Mary, but in judging that Edmund was being inconsistent, she, Tom, Maria and Edmund himself were quite right, as was Mary:

Say what you would, Fanny, it should be that; for I never knew such exquisite happiness in any other. His sturdy spirit to bend as it did! Oh! it was sweet beyond expression. (36.9)

The ethical question rests on the state of mind, which can require careful deliberation.