Mansfield Park
is in many ways an odd book. I should preface what I am about say by noting that I enjoyed every page during my recent re-reading. I didn't love it with a passion, or find myself racing to the end which I still do with both Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice (though Anne and Elizabeth always get their men so I don't know what I am so worried about). I did just quite simply, enjoy it.
I first read Mansfield Park in my teens, probably when I was 18 or 19. I had read four of Austen's mature works by then, and I found Mansfield P. a bit of a chore in comparison. My age and being bogged down in exams may well have coloured what I thought, hence the re-read. I should also add that I am not going to go on about the slave trade; the arguments on that are well rehearsed by Edward Said and others. Let's face it Austen just doesn't do the big picture.
So, how did I find it this time round? Well, and I am going to assume that you've read the book here so Spoiler Alert, I was less irritated by Fanny Price herself and much more irritated by Fanny's invidious position. Georgette Heyer has a novel called Charity Girl
which illustrates with rather less subtlety (and much more humour) the horrors for the poor child cousin living with her thoughtless family. The notion of 'distinction' appears so cruel to modern eyes: the differences in life expectation of the cousins with expectations, like the Bertrams, and the poor cousin (who has similar genes and the same education and manners but not the dosh or the country pile), is truly distasteful, especially when enforced with such glee by Mrs Norris. As an adult I found some sympathy and admiration for Fanny's self-contained nature, and her ability to by-and-large keep her spirits up in the most lowering circumstances. Whilst the teenage me wanted her to rail and rebel, the adult can see the pointlessness of that, as poor Fanny is trapped in ways more thorough and more frightening that anything we can understand now.
Edmund I found did not wear so well, in the transition from teen-reader to adult reader. Although his kindness and his ability to empathise with the young Fanny when he was just a teenager himself are both endearing features his stupidity in his assessment of Mary Crawford (when he does see right through her on first meeting before losing his marbles) is so crass as to almost be a failure in consistent characterisation.
Mary though I admired, not as a person but in the drawing of her character. I think in many ways she is Austen's most skillfully written, and it was sheer admiration I think, at Austen's light-touch building of personailty that made the book so enjoyable. Mary is so neatly done. She is not cruel, nor in any way awful like Mrs Norris (or Caroline Bingley): she is complex, and self-focused rather than merely selfish. She just does not seem to possess the mental furniture that would let her truly perceive anyone else. Despite all her scheming she plays both Edmund and Fanny wrongly on all counts, quite simply because she does not see them properly. The wonderful final scene between Mary and Edmund, and the necklace scene between Mary and Fanny, are masterpieces of misunderstanding. When E. M. Forster wrote 'only connect' he could have had Mary in mind (and indeed he has some neat things to say about characterisation in Mansfiled Park in Aspects of the Novel
). It is this moral greyness that is so hard to realise on the page. Mary reminds me of Mrs Gaskell at her best: no sense of pantomime baddie. Cynthia and Roger in Wives and Daughters
have much in common with Mary and Edmund.
In the end, it seems to me, that Mansfield Park
is about active kindness. Both Fanny and Edmund, depsite their faults, are actively kind. They seek to understand others and forgive their failings (which is why the criticism of priggishness is often aimed at them), and then to actively do them good, in the sense of seeking their greater happiness, rather than merely moralising (an argument against them being priggish).
Sir Thomas is also kind but his is a detached laconic kindness, lacking in full understanding because he doesn't take the trouble to see people for what they really are. He does not deliberately wash his hands of his family like Mr Bennet, indeed he seeks their general good, but his detachment of personality means that he never truly understands his daughters, nor Mrs Norris nor Fanny, and in trying not to be cruel he fails in any real or active kindness. He fails to stop Maria's marriage because he is not confident enough in his knowledge of his daughter to properly see through her protestations, he has failed to transmit any of his natural understanding of right and wrong to three of his four children, he is cruel to Fanny when she turns down Henry Crawford more out of bewilderment than malice. As a portrait of a failed parent he is far more subtly drawn than Mr Bennet and unlike Mr Bennet (who declares Wickham to be his favourite son-in-law, as though it is still ok to be merely witty after all his family have gone through; not that I don't laugh at that line every time, but it is rather scary) he is redeemed somewhat at the end: the narrative gives him a second chance with Julia and her husband, and in taking pleasure in Fanny and Edmund's happiness, and young Tom's newly steady character, but we're left with the bad taste of Maria as victim condemned to life in a cottage with the awful Mrs Norris, while we note that he is the kind of man who won't inflict an erring daughter on the neighbours, whatever the consequences for her.
As well as the 'only connect' lets give them the imperative 'be kind'. And it is the nature of Mansfield Park's success that you are left with a strong feeling of wishing the characters well, so real is their projected afterlife .
Mansfield Park
is one of Austen's less well loved books, how did you enjoy it and have you, or would you give it a re-read?
Edited to add: there's a very nice piece on Mansfield Park by Anne Stott over on Normblog.
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