Mansfield Park

1814, 2003 Oxford World's Classic edition
Jane Austen
Mansfield Park
Original price unknown, bought used for $6.00
A bit scruffy paperback
B


This is often regarded as Austen's weakest major novel with the least appealing heroine and I'm afraid I have to agree.  In my previous edition, Marvin Mudrick talked about how smug Fanny Price seemed, and Patricia Rozema chose to adapt the novel for screen despite seriously disliking Fanny.  She decided to give young Fanny the writing skills and even the juvenilia of Jane Austen.  And she took away Fanny's introversion and primness.


Certainly, it was a shock to me in my early 20s to come from Pride and Prejudice to a novel where a witty young woman is the romantic rival, while the sickly girl is the heroine.  But Fanny is no Anne De Bourgh.  Not only is she healthier, but she's not an heiress with almost no personality or intelligence.  Fanny is more insightful than anyone she knows, even people she looks up to like, Sir Thomas and Edmund.  She is, however, a poor relation, as she is reminded daily, particularly by her poisonous aunt, Mrs. Norris.  (Yes, this is where J. K. Rowling got the name of Filch's cat, although as far as I know the "Ravenshaws" did not influence the "Ravenclaws.")  Fanny is told that her opinions don't matter, and so she has trouble voicing them.

I don't dislike Fanny but I can't say I like her much.  Even Anne Elliot seems like she'd be more fun to hang out with (as well as the Austen heroine to have around during emergencies).  Still, I don't like seeing people push Fanny around.  (And, yes, it took several readings before I could see Fanny's name without snickering, especially with lines like Crawford "began to reckon upon some happy intercourse with Fanny.")  When Sir Thomas and the others (except for once, Mrs. Norris) pressure her into marrying Henry Crawford, I get really angry, especially at Edmund, who should know better but is too blinded by his infatuation with Henry's sister Mary.  Even if Fanny weren't the best judge of character (she would've seen right through Wickham and Willoughby), she should be allowed to say no in a matter that most concerns her and will impact the rest of her life.  And she does say no, repeatedly, which just makes everyone insist that Crawford must prove his "constancy."

Sadly, this everyone includes Austen.  I know that, as always, the ending is written in a dry, ironic tone (with a delightful reference to A Midsummer Nights Dream's Puck, re Sir Thomas), but the narrator does say that if Henry had "persevered, and uprightly, Fanny must have been his reward," if Edmund had married Mary.  So does this mean that no doesn't mean no?  Or would Fanny decide that marriage to a (hopefully reformed) well-off-if-not-in-the-league-of-Rushworth rake beats either oppression by Mrs. Norris or poverty in Portsmouth?  After all, Charlotte Lucas would've leaped at the chance to marry Rushworth, and might've even considered Crawford.  True, Maria Bertram's meal-ticket marriage is a disaster from beginning to end.  (I think this is the only Austen novel with divorce, although Lesley Castle happily played with it.)  But Fanny could probably make a go of such a marriage if she couldn't have Edmund, and maybe she'd even learn to whole-heartedly love her husband, like Marianne Dashwood does with Col. Brandon.  The thing is, Marianne's original objections to Brandon are that he's too old and boring.  She finds out that he has a very interesting, romantic past, and the age difference matters less as time goes on.  Fanny's objections to Henry Crawford are moral ones. Would he ever reform enough to suit her?  Considering he runs off with a woman just because she's bruised his ego, the answer would have to be no.  If Maria didn't tempt him, someone else would.

Rozema's 1999 movie literally made me tear my hair out in the theater.  (It seemed a less disruptive reaction than screaming.)  Having seen so many fine Austen adaptations in the previous four years, I knew going in that this one would be less faithful, despite the full title being Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, but I didn't know how unfaithful.  A couple years ago I watched a bunch of Austen movies and TV series, and I reluctantly included this one.  I even listened to the director's commentary, trying to figure out what she was thinking.  I still don't think the movie works even on its own terms, but I don't hate it as much now.  That said, the TV versions from 1983 and 2007 also miss the point of both the novel and the heroine.  The former gives her movie-Jan-Brady voices in the head, while the latter makes Fanny into a tomboy.  

What works in this novel?  The "fools" are best, Lady Bertram and Mr. Rushworth.  (It wasn't until I got this edition that I even noticed that Pug, Lady B's lapdog, changes sex to the point that "he" might have a litter.)  She is hilariously lazy and calm, except during moments of extreme crisis.  He is like Mr. Collins in that he's boring but respectable, though instead of being a rising clergyman, he's a rich man, and his main fault is vanity rather than ambition.

The wordplay, including with the play, is some of Austen's best.  From the "Rears and Vices" pun (at the least risque, at the most crude) to the use of the terms "liberty" and "freedom," Austen wants us to think about how words are used, in this novel, and in the larger world.  The slave ships off the coast of England in Rozema's movie are typical of her lurid exaggeration, but it is legitimate to say that slavery as the foundation of some of British wealth (including possibly Sir Thomas's) is there in the background of the original story.  In the next novel, Jane Fairfax will compare being a governess to being a slave, and while it's impossible to say that they were the same condition in degree, they definitely were on the same scale.  Wollstonecraft had already pointed out that becoming a governess was the most respectable option for a talented single girl of the middle class, and yet, as Charlotte Bronte was to show in Jane Eyre (coming up hopefully later this month), governesses were treated as less than human.  In this novel, Yates says of the Cottager's Wife in their amateur theatrical, it's a nothing role suitable only for a governess or similar.  So of course, Fanny, who's sort of an unpaid servant, is expected to take it.  Worst of all, Fanny is expected to be grateful to everyone for being taken in as a poor relation, although it wasn't her choice.


She does come to see Mansfield Park as "home," particularly after a trip back to Portsmouth, but it feels similar to the choice between living with Mrs. Norris and marrying Crawford, i.e. not much of a choice.  After Mrs. Norris leaves and little sister Susan stays, Mansfield Park is more pleasant.  Fanny does love her forbidding uncle and languid aunt.  And more importantly, she loves Edmund, whose brotherly regard for her turns to romance after he's disillusioned by Mary.  The cousin marriage is off-putting to some modern readers but doesn't particularly stand out in 19th-century literature.  I can't say I was rooting for or against Fanny & Edmund.  I didn't want her to end up with Henry because of her strong dislike and disapproval, but I thought that Edmund & Mary had a sort of Darcy & Lizzy opposites attraction.  Unfortunately, Mary doesn't bring out the best in Edmund, as Lizzy does in Darcy.  Mary makes Edmund wittier and more outgoing, but she doesn't value what he values.  Edmund generally brings out the best in Fanny, and the narrator assures us that "the happiness of the married cousins must appear as secure as earthly happiness can be."  In a novel full of mismatched and/or miserable couples (the Bertrams, the Prices, the Grants, and the Rushworths, and how happy do you imagine Mr. Norris was?), that's not saying much, but an appearance of a happy ending is all Austen can offer this time.