An opinion on Mansfield Park
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?)
A second opinion on Mansfield Park
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
A second opinion on Mansfield Park, part 2
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.
