An opinion on Mansfield Park

[Sarie]

This place looks almost devoid of discussion, but I think this novel possibly deserves the most attention of all of Austen's books.

I've heard lots of people talk about how they hate Edmund and Fanny and like Henry the best, and possibly Austen wrote the book so well that they were deceived by all the acting that Henry and Mary Crawford do.

What is missed is the fact that right choice of vocation (which means calling, or to simplify, career) in the case of Edmund, or the right choice of spouse (in the case of Fanny and Edmund) will not necessarily be glamorous.

Throughout the novel Mary Crawford contrasts fashionable London with life in the country and fashionable life with the life of a country clergyman, trying to convince Edmund to give up his unfashionable calling. Of course, Edmund holds out for virtue against fashion and seems to have gotten a bad rep among readers of this book for being boring. He and Fanny are too boring. Of course they're boring; it's usually boring to do what's right, after all.

Hmm. If doing what is right means sticking to your principles (ruining the party by refusing to act, because you know the owner of the house wouldn't like it...etc.) and going directly against what is fashionable and fun, what would you do?

Austen wants the reader to make a good decision, and I think how much you like the book will depend on what decision you would make. (ie; would YOU marry Henry Crawford?)

[Newcomer]

This place looks almost devoid of discussion, but I think this novel possibly deserves the most attention of all of Austen's books.


You might try http://www.pemberley.com/index.html as they have more activity on Mansfield Park.

[Niamh]

I thought that because both Edmund and Fanny didnt sway to the games of Henry and Mary that it showed a strength of character and theat they were not weak, something that Austen seems to work on as almost every other character has a serious fault of weakness.

[Newcomer]

Sarie writes “I think this novel possibly deserves the most attention of all of Austen's books.” Many academic critics would agree (1), but the more common response is, ”but Mansfield Park got on my nerves a little, i bet we could build a flood with Fanny's tears.”, and even some critics have characterized Mansfield Park as “Silent suffering...."Unnatural and overdrawn" “. There is no escaping that Fanny is mousy. She is not 'bright and sparkling' as has been said of Elizabeth and marriage is not central as is in the majority of Austen's novels. So what is the theme of Mansfield Park? One or several?
There is a gap of eleven years between the first three novels and Mansfield Park. Has Austen lost the power of characterization that has been compared to Shakespeare's? Emma and Persuasion testify otherwise. So why is Fanny so mousy? Contrary to our expectations Austen made her so and her theme in Mansfield Park is not the romance of marriage but something more complex. Fanny has to be gray and somewhat dull. When Serie says “He and Fanny are too boring. Of course they're boring; it's usually boring to do what's right, after all.”, she is only partially right. Edmund and Fanny are not central to the novel.
A good example why this is so, is the 1999 BBC film adaptation of Mansfield Park by Patricia Rozema. Fanny becomes a heroine, she is intellectually precocious, she defends the novel against Sir Thomas Bertram's criticism of her reading, and with an ending where she write and publishes, implying a Jane Austen. But in the process of the necessary freedom of translating prose to a visual medium, such a change in Fanny's character is devastating to the Mansfield's theme. The trick of turning a sows ear into a silk purse is a 20th. century magic, not of Austen's time.

Footnote

(1) – for those who would like to pursue the subject, some references:
Jane Austen : bicentenary essays, edited by John Halperin. (The two voices of Fanny Price.--Hardy, B. The objects in Mansfield Park.--Halperin)

The Improvement of the Estate – A Study of Jane Austen's Novels, Alistair M. Duckworth, (Mansfield Park: Jane Austen's Grounds of Being.)

Jane Austen : Sense and sensibility, Pride and prejudice, and Mansfield Park : a casebook, edited by B. C. Southam.

Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom.

Mansfield Park / Jane Austen ; edited by James Kinsley

The Opposing Self - nine essays in criticism., Lionel Thrilling's essay Mansfield Park

[Newcomer]

If we detect a thematic shift in Mansfield Park, that there appears an autumnal sense of loss in the last three novels, that the social dance of marriage is no longer the overarching theme then how can we characterize the theme of Mansfield Park? Is there a simple definition? A. Duckworth in The Improvement of the Estate has a chapter labeled Mansfield Park: Jane Austen's Grounds of Being. It's an apt idea if it can be shown that the concept of an Estate is the principal theme in the novel.

Austen explicitly states the theme in her titles: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility. Why do we ignore the obvious? That does not mean that there is necessarily a single theme, there may well be sub dominant ones. With Emma and Persuasion the same psychological shorthand is offered but with Mansfield Park we have a problem. How can a building or an estate express character? The obvious answer is by the characters of it's inhabitants. But the less obvious answer and the more provocative one is – that of the authoress herself.

As her letters show, for Austen accuracy of description was very important in the development of the plot. Example, letter 394 - “Lime will not do. Lyme is towards 40 miles from Dawlish & would not be talked of there. - I have put Starcross instead. If you prefer Exeter, that must always be safe.” And in letter 395 - “ Yes – Russel Square is a very proper distance from Berkley St. - We are reading the last book – They must be two days going from Dawlish to Bath; They are nearly 100 miles apart.”. In Mansfield Park descriptions of architecture or of the picturesque are not Austen's aims. Austen's prose on the visual aspect of Mansfield Park is minimal as compared with that of Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice. Example: P&P chp. 43 - “The park was very large, and contained great variety of ground. They entered it in one of its lowest points, and drove for some time through a beautiful wood, stretching over a wide extent.” ..... “Pemberley House, situated on the opposite side of a valley, into which the road, with some abruptness, wound. It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills; -- and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal, nor falsely adorned. “ and “Elizabeth, after slightly surveying it, went to a window to enjoy its prospect. The hill, crowned with wood, from which they had descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance, was a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was good; and she looked on the whole scene -- the river, the trees scattered on its banks, and the winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it -- with delight. “. Compare it with the description of Mansfield Park. Chp. 2 - “The grandeur of the house astonished, but could not console her. The rooms were too large for her to move in with ease:.” In chapter 6, the description of “Sotherton is an old place, and a place of some grandeur”..... ”house was build in Elizabeth's time, and is a large, regular, brick building – heavy, but respectable looking” ,. The contrast in descriptive language can not be greater. Clearly Austen aim in Mansfield Park is neither descriptive of the estate nor of the physiological impact that the place has as a central element in the theme of the novel.

If Austen is not concerned with description of the house or grounds in Mansfield Park, then what is the purpose of all the talk of 'improvements' by her characters? Example: (1) - "Every generation has its improvements," said Miss Crawford, with a smile, to Edmund.”, and (2) - "It wants improvement, ma'am, beyond anything. I never saw a place that wanted so much improvement in my life; and it is so forlorn that I do not know what can be done with it." .... "No wonder that Mr. Rushworth should think so at present," said Mrs. Grant to Mrs. Norris, with a smile; "but depend upon it, Sotherton will have _every_ improvement in time which his heart can desire." .... "It is ill placed. It stands in one of the lowest spots of the park; in that respect, unfavourable for improvement. But the woods are fine, and there is a stream, which, I dare say, might be made a good deal of. Mr. Rushworth is quite right, I think, in meaning to give it a modern dress, and I have no doubt that it will be all done extremely well."

Here Austen is more elliptical than usual. Through the idle chatter of secondary characters Austen is touching on the underlaying social contract of her day and of her own beliefs. The Englishness of a particular class of her day. The philosophical underpinnings are not abstruse, the social contract is not necessarily that of John Locke but more contemporary, that of the political debate of Burke and the diametrically opposite political ideology of William Goodwin. Burke writes: “A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. Besides, the people of England well know, that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation;. Goodwin on the other hand stressed that a government was the perpetual enemy of change. Charles Fox put it thus: “improvements were not to be confounded with innovations; the meaning of which was always odious, and conveyed an idea of alterations for the worse.”

This debate was not academic, the French Revolution (1789–1799) was but a decade old when Mansfield Park was written between 1812 and 1814. The abolition of the absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and the resentment of manorialism (seigneurialism) by peasants and the wage-earners of the incipient industrial class and the excesses of the French Revolution fueled the debate between Burke and Goodwin.

“If the Estate is symbolic of the entire inherited culture, the Mansfield house plays a similar role in the novel.” (1). Therefore the principal character is not Fanny and Edward but as paradoxical as it sounds the estate of Mansfield Park and within the idea of the social contract, we get a privileged view of Austen's own philosophy that underlay the plots from Pride and Prejudice to Persuasion.


Footnotes
(1)– Chapter 9, Mansfield Park.
(2)– Chapter 6, Mansfield Park
(3)– The Improvement of the Estate, by Alistair M. Duckworth.

[Janie_Bennett]

I confess that when I got to part two of Newcomer's comments, I stopped reading because I'm in a time crunch, but my comments relate only to the first quarter/third of the novel anyway. I am reading it right now.

I think it's admirable to defend Fanny against the perception of her being mousy and/or boring, but it is hard to read any Jane Austen heroine in such a way when compared to her other novels. I've only read P&P, Persuasion & S&S so far, but all of these women (even Anne & Elinor who were more conservative) were strong. Anne may have been a bit of a flake in her youth, but she turned out to be a great character.

If you pretended that Fanny was a real person today, would you be friends with her? She borders on unlikable because she's so pathetic. She never gets jealous when Edmund makes remarks of preference for Mary Crawford, and she never defends herself. She reminds me of a puppy- cute, obedient, controlled, helpless.

I sincerely hope I change my mind by the end of the book.

[BloomingRose]

Mansfield Park was not one of those books I loved from the very beginning. To me, it was kind of boring and also obvious the fact that Edmund and Fanny were going to end up together. You're right when you say that Austen tried to show that the 'right choice of vocation in the case of Edmund, or the right choice of spouse (in the case of Fanny and Edmund) will not necessarily be glamorous', and that's what I find interesting about this particular story.
As regards the ending, I think most of us would have said 'Don't marry Edmund; he's really boring' but once again, the author tries to convince us that it was the best choice. The same happens with Little Women; you would expect Jo and Laurie to end up together, but then Laurie marries Amy. A lot of readers felt Jo hadn't taken the right decision, but then Alcott - the writer - tells us Jo and Laurie had very similar characters and blah blah, and you finally see that maybe she's right - because what she says is quite reasonable - but you keep on thinking the ending could have been different. That's the exact same feeling I have towards 'Mansfield Park'.

[Jassy Melson]

I am currently reading Mansfield Park. I don't find it boring at all. I love Austen's subtle satire, and her ability to round out her characters and make them full-fledged living breathing human beings. I think Jane Austen is one of the great novelists. She is definitely in the top ten of all time.

[Egmond Codfried]

This place looks almost devoid of discussion, but I think this novel possibly deserves the most attention of all of Austen's books.

I've heard lots of people talk about how they hate Edmund and Fanny and like Henry the best, and possibly Austen wrote the book so well that they were deceived by all the acting that Henry and Mary Crawford do.

What is missed is the fact that right choice of vocation (which means calling, or to simplify, career) in the case of Edmund, or the right choice of spouse (in the case of Fanny and Edmund) will not necessarily be glamorous.

Throughout the novel Mary Crawford contrasts fashionable London with life in the country and fashionable life with the life of a country clergyman, trying to convince Edmund to give up his unfashionable calling. Of course, Edmund holds out for virtue against fashion and seems to have gotten a bad rep among readers of this book for being boring. He and Fanny are too boring. Of course they're boring; it's usually boring to do what's right, after all.

Hmm. If doing what is right means sticking to your principles (ruining the party by refusing to act, because you know the owner of the house wouldn't like it...etc.) and going directly against what is fashionable and fun, what would you do?

Austen wants the reader to make a good decision, and I think how much you like the book will depend on what decision you would make. (ie; would YOU marry Henry Crawford?)

To be honest, I have been struggling with Henry and Mary Crawford. For sure Henry is a sinner, but not so awfull. In a way he was 'married' to Miss Bertram before she married Rushworth, because he is so damn rich. and she ended that charade just after six month's.

What I do not like about him is him accusing Maria Bertram for his own transgression. It's like Adam saying that Eve seduced him in eating the apple. But Austen is as always on both sides of the argument, and makes light of this 'terrible 'event by having Mary Crawford saying that they will marry, gives some great ball's and dinners, and all will be forgotten.

Mansfield Park is evangelical in style but does not mention god. When Crawford tries to get Fanny to love him, its like a priest trying to convert a person. Or in her case, the devil trying to entice Jesus.

Untill her coming out ball Fanny represents a house-slave, who has no say about her own life, her comings and goings. The way she is pushed into accepting Crawford suggest that marriage is another kind of slavery or a commercial exchange.

I was troubled that Fanny had lady-like airs at her mothers house and did not lift a finger to clean out the mess.

[Andrew Hilliker]

Sorry, I couldn't stand Henry or his sister, Mary. They were simply gold digging hustlers, con artists. Fun and exciting? Depends on your tastes. But are Fanny and Edmund high principled? They both choose to live as dependents. It is unclear to me what she has done to deserve living off of the backs of sweating slaves. She could have stayed home in Portsmouth and made her way on her own steam and determination. Fanny and Edmund are more moral and understand how the system requires them to behave, but they are moral only in a limited context. Is Jane Austen really totally approving of her main characters?

[Ecurb]

Henry and Mary Crawford are certainly not "gold digging hustlers". Henry is rich -- yet he proposes to impoverished Fanny Price. Mary is richer than Edmund, who, as a second son, will not inherit and must earn his bread as a clergyman.

Nobody knows for sure why Jane Austen sends Sir Thomas off to Antigua to look after his plantations (which doubtless ran on slave labor). Is she comparing Fanny Price's situation to that of the slaves?

Personally, I think Mary Crawford has a more humane and moral response to Henry and Maria's affair than Edmund does. Edmund accuses Mary of failing to feel "modest loathings" about the affair, as if the worldly Miss Crawford should faint in horror at the very idea. Indeed, in his last interview with his almost-fiance, he is disgusted by her attempt to help her brother (and his sister) and ends the meeting thus (as he later reports to Fanny):


Hers (Mary Crawford's) are faults of principle, Fanny; of blunted delicacy and a corrupted, vitiated mind. Perhaps it is best for me, since it leaves me so little to regret. Not so, however. Gladly would I submit to all the increased pain of losing her, rather than have to think of her as I do. I told her so.”

Is this a generous, forgiving attitude? Did Edmund really have to end his last interview with Mary by telling her he could not think well of her?

The novel is called "Mansfield Park" and, to Fanny, the bucolic Mansfield is a beloved Eden. The standard novel theme involves the hero going out into the world to seek his or her fortune; Fanny wants to seek her fortune by striving mightily to stay at home (at least at her home for the past 10 years). Understandably, she has the psychological profile of an abandoned child.

But Mansfield is not Eden. It is funded (in part, at least) by slave labor, and ruled by autocrats (Sir Thomas) and dipsomaniacs (Tom). To our modern sensibilities, adultery is a trivial sin compared to slavery, and Mansfield Park was written at a time when the slave trade had recently been banned in Britain (1807), and within a couple of decades (1833) all slavery in the Empire would be banned. So it seems unlikely that Austen would choose to tar Sir Thomas and Mansfield with money built on slavery without some reason for doing so. But I'm not sure what the exact reason is.

[Danik 2016]

Interesting your focus on slave labour as the source of the wealth of the owners of Mannsfield Park.

[Ecurb]

Slavery is, I believe, mentioned only once in the novel, when Edmund talks to Fanny about Fanny asking Sir Thomas about the slave trade. However, Sir Thomas' business interests in Antigua were almost certainly slave plantations, and the issue of slavery was controversial in the England of 1814. So it is unlikely it was a mere coincidence. I have no idea what percentage of Sir Thomas' wealth was based on his Antigua plantations. Sir Thomas probably had enough income without them to live comfortably. Also, the religious tenor of the book (Edmund is ordained; Fanny and Edmund tend to moralize) reminds the reader that the abolition movement was spearheaded by clergymen.

[Danik 2016]

Sorry, Ecurb, I thought I had deleted the comment above.
What I wanted to say is that Jane Austen, who was so ironically conscious about the links between the social condition of the English, particularly the social condition of English women, and money, might not have the same
awareness about slavery inasmuch as the slaves lived in a distant country and where not part of English daily life. They were seldom mentioned, it seems, in conversations, specially if women were present. Only the wealth they produced, made itself present.

[Ecurb]

That's possible, Danik, but unlikely. The evidence that Austen was aware of the slavery and was on the side of abolition includes:

1) Slavery was a major political issue in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The slave trade was abolished in 1807 (although slavery itself was allowed in the colonies until 1833). Indeed it is possible that the "inadequate returns" from Sir Thomas' Antigua plantation were the result of a labor shortage. The slaves could no longer be replaced by new shipments. (Mansfield Park was published in 1814)

2) Sugar plantations in the West Indies provided a large percentage of Britain's wealth in 1800 -- more than the rest of the overseas Empire put together.

3) Jane Austen's first cousins (on her father's side) settled in the West Indies. Austen's younger brother Charles married the daughter of a former attorney general of Barbados. Austen's father, the Reverend George Austen, was a trustee of an Antigua plantation, owned by her brother's Godfather. One brother, Sir Francis Austen, once commanded a British naval vessel that intercepted a slave ship in the Caribbean, although, because it was Portuguese, he could not enforce the abolition on the slave trade. He wrote letters home expressing his disgust with the slave trade and with slavery. It is unlikely that given all of these family connections, Austen would have been ignorant about slavery.

4) Cassandra Austen destroyed many of Jane's letters, but in one surviving letter she expresses regard for Thomas Clarkson, a famous abolitionist. William Cowper was one of Jane's (and her father's, and Marianne Dashwood's) favorite poets. He was also an abolitionist.

5) Some scholars have suggested that the title "Mansfield Park" may be connected to the famous Somersett Case, in which Lord Mansfield was the judge, and which decided that a slave who escaped his master while in England could not be removed from England back to the plantations. Whether Austen meant the title of her novel to suggest that the bucolic "Park" was dependent on slave labor is unclear -- but it's the kind of hint she liked to play with.


ON the other hand, the Bertrams prefer not to discuss slavery. Here's the passage from the book, fanny speaking to Edmund:


"Did you not hear me ask him about the slave trade last night?"

"I did -- and was in hopes the question would have been followed by others. It would have pleased your uncle to be inquired of further."

"And I longed to do it -- but there was such dead silence."

Timid Fanny thinks she would have been putting herself forward by asking about the slave trade while Sir Thomas' own children showed no interest. Perhaps, though, the children were reticent because they preferred to remain in ignorance, or thought such discussion improper.




The Negro's Complaint - Poem by William Cowper


Forc'd from home and all its pleasures,
Afric's coast I left forlorn;
To increase a stranger's treasures,
O'er the raging billows borne;
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But though theirs they have enroll'd me
Minds are never to be sold.
Still in thought as free as ever,
What are England's rights, I ask,
Me from my delights to sever,
Me to torture, me to task?
Fleecy locks and black complexion
Cannot forfeit nature's claim;
Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same.
Why did all-creating Nature
Make the plant for which we toil?
Sighs must fan it, tears must water,
Sweat of ours must dress the soil.
Think, ye masters iron-hearted,
Lolling at your jovial boards;
Think, how many backs have smarted
For the sweets your cane affords.
Is there, as ye sometimes tell us,
Is there one who reigns on high?
Has he bid you buy and sell us,
Speaking from his throne, the sky?
Ask him, if your knotted scourges,
Fetters, blood-extorting screws,
Are the means that duty urges
Agents of his will to use?
Strewing yonder sea with wrecks,
Wasting towns, plantations, meadows,
Are the voice with which he speaks.
He, foreseeing what vexations
Afric's sons should undergo,
Fix'd their tyrants' habitations
Where his whirlwinds answer — No.
By our blood in Afric wasted,
Ere our necks receiv'd the chain;
By the mis'ries which we tasted,
Crossing in your barks the main;
By our suff'rings since ye brought us
To the man-degrading mart;
All sustain'd by patience, taught us
Only by a broken heart:
Deem our nation brutes no longer
Till some reason ye shall find
Worthier of regard and stronger
Than the colour of our kind.
Slaves of gold! whose sordid dealings
Tarnish all your boasted pow'rs,
Prove that you have human feelings,
Ere you proudly question ours.

[Jackson Richardson]

Mansfield Park is evangelical in style but does not mention god.
.

That's because it's English! Going on about religion too much is bad form.

Jane's favourite author, Samuel Johnson wrote Rasselas, a highly moral fable, with clear religious tendencies, but God is only referred to as "the Being whom I dare not name".

[Danik 2016]

That's possible, Danik, but unlikely. The evidence that Austen was aware of the slavery and was on the side of abolition includes:

1) Slavery was a major political issue in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The slave trade was abolished in 1807 (although slavery itself was allowed in the colonies until 1833). Indeed it is possible that the "inadequate returns" from Sir Thomas' Antigua plantation were the result of a labor shortage. The slaves could no longer be replaced by new shipments. (Mansfield Park was published in 1814)

2) Sugar plantations in the West Indies provided a large percentage of Britain's wealth in 1800 -- more than the rest of the overseas Empire put together.

3) Jane Austen's first cousins (on her father's side) settled in the West Indies. Austen's younger brother Charles married the daughter of a former attorney general of Barbados. Austen's father, the Reverend George Austen, was a trustee of an Antigua plantation, owned by her brother's Godfather. One brother, Sir Francis Austen, once commanded a British naval vessel that intercepted a slave ship in the Caribbean, although, because it was Portuguese, he could not enforce the abolition on the slave trade. He wrote letters home expressing his disgust with the slave trade and with slavery. It is unlikely that given all of these family connections, Austen would have been ignorant about slavery.

4) Cassandra Austen destroyed many of Jane's letters, but in one surviving letter she expresses regard for Thomas Clarkson, a famous abolitionist. William Cowper was one of Jane's (and her father's, and Marianne Dashwood's) favorite poets. He was also an abolitionist.

5) Some scholars have suggested that the title "Mansfield Park" may be connected to the famous Somersett Case, in which Lord Mansfield was the judge, and which decided that a slave who escaped his master while in England could not be removed from England back to the plantations. Whether Austen meant the title of her novel to suggest that the bucolic "Park" was dependent on slave labor is unclear -- but it's the kind of hint she liked to play with.


ON the other hand, the Bertrams prefer not to discuss slavery. Here's the passage from the book, fanny speaking to Edmund:



Timid Fanny thinks she would have been putting herself forward by asking about the slave trade while Sir Thomas' own children showed no interest. Perhaps, though, the children were reticent because they preferred to remain in ignorance, or thought such discussion improper.
Thanks for all this information, Ecurb. Sorry that your quotations did'n get quoted with the rest.I just had a look at internet and the question of slavery in Mansfield Park is in fact a largely discussed issue.
https://consideringausten.wordpress.com/austen-and-antigua-slavery-in-her-time/
However it seems to me that the focus in the novel is not directly on slavery itself but on how the social classes in England relate to it and specially how they silence about it. It's rather a subliminar approach, but then so much in Jane Austen is subliminar.