“Mansfield Park”, by Jane Austen

 

378 pages, The Folio Society

Poor Fanny Price; out of all of Jane Austen’s heroines, poor, poor Fanny is the least respected, perhaps because she is the least forward, the least engaging, the least…pushy? Anyway, in Austen’s third novel, Mansfield Park, we are introduced to Fanny Price and her poor family; her mother married for love but beneath her station, and Fanny’s sailor father is not only disabled, but drinks heavily. In order to alleviate the family’s burden, Fanny goes to live with her wealthy uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram (obviously, Fanny’s mother’s sister married quite well) at their estate, Mansfield Park. All is not well, though, as Fanny is subjected to abuse from Aunt No. 2, Mrs. Norris, the estate busybody who looks after things for the Bertrams. Fanny’s cousins, Maria and Julia Bertram, turn out to be shallow and insensitive to their poor cousin, while the eldest son, Tom, is a drunken ne’er-do-well; that leaves her last cousin, the vicar-to-be Edmund, with whom Fanny at last finds solace. In this hardly-encouraging atmosphere, Fanny grows up shy and deferential, caught as she typically is between members of the Bertram family who view her more as a kind of privilege servant than they do a kinswoman. We see here, then, the English class system in microcosm, as Fanny, despite being related to the Bertrams, is looked down on because of her lowly station in life.

Several years later, when Sir Thomas travels to his plantations on Antigua, two new characters appear: Henry and Mary Crawford, the brother and sister of the local minister’s wife. Both are light-hearted and attractive and quickly make a stir at Mansfield Park, with Henry flirting outrageously with Julia and, especially, with Maria, despite her engagement to the dull-but-rich James Rushworth. Mary, meanwhile, after being rebuffed by Tom (the heir), turns her attentions to Edmund (the spare), though her affections are merely calculating. Meanwhile, Fanny has fallen innocently in love with Edmund (although she does not admit this to herself). During all of this emotional commotion, Yates, one of Tom’s friends, suggests that they put on a play, “Lover’s Vows”, as a means to pass away the time, an idea eagerly endorsed by everyone but Edmund and Fanny, who are terrified by the very idea of acting. The show must go on, however, and Maria and Henry – along with Mary and Edmund, who has been prevailed upon to take a role to avoid bringing in an outsider to play it – get to act some of the saucier scenes with one another (saucy for 1814, at any rate). Fanny, too, is pushed into acting, but is interrupted when Sir Thomas makes a surprise arrival from Antigua. The lord of the manor is displeased by what he sees and puts a stop to everything at once.

In due course Maria marries Rushworth and they, accompanied by Julia, leave for London on honeymoon. Back at Mansfield Park, the Bertrams and Crawfords grow ever-closer, as Edmund comes close to proposing to Mary on several occasions, but with the haughty woman’s condescension and amorality causing him to delay every time; confiding his feelings to Fanny, she finds herself secretly distressed by Edmund’s intentions. Meanwhile, Henry begins to pay court to Fanny, seemingly on a whim but, as the story continues, he finds himself actually falling for her. Over the years, Fanny has become an indispensable companion to her aunt and uncle, despite their mild contempt for her, and on the occasion of her brother William’s visit they give a ball in her honor. Sometime later, Henry uses his connections to get William a promotion in the Royal Navy and, using this supposedly philanthropic action as leverage, he proposes to Fanny, who is mortified and refuses. But Henry is nonplussed and continues his pursuit. Sir Thomas is disappointed that Fanny has refused such an obviously lucrative proposal and, as a result, sends her back to her parents and their hovel. The differences between her cousin’s situation in life and her parent’s is at once obvious and heartbreaking for Fanny, and she begins to question her rejection of Henry Crawford while also debating what an acceptance would actually mean for her. As Jane’s prior novels showed, a woman’s future wellbeing in Regency England was based by and large upon whom she married; in Fanny’s mother’s case it was wretched, and as Mr. Bertram points out, Fanny has every potential to follow her path.

While all of this is going on, Edmund is at last ordained a minister, which does not stop him from debating his relationship with Mary, to Fanny’s dismay. Henry visits Fanny and renews his suit before leaving for his estate. Fanny continues to receive letters from his sister Mary, encouraging her to accept Henry’s proposal. But then the bottom falls out of everything: Tom Bertram falls dangerously ill as a result of his dissolute ways and nearly dies, Henry runs off with the married Maria and Julia, upset over her sister’s rash act, elopes with Yates, Tom’s friend. Fanny is recalled to Mansfield, bringing her younger sister Susan with her. Edmund has finally seen through Mary, who has admitted that she would like to see Tom die so that Edmund could be heir, and who has more or less condoned Henry and Maria's actions. He is heartbroken, but Fanny consoles him. Maria and Henry eventually split, and she goes to the Continent to live with the disgraced Mrs. Norris. Julia and Yates are reconciled to the family, Edmund finally comes to his senses and marries Fanny, and Susan takes her place with the Bertrams. Edmund, Fanny, and the rest of those at Mansfield live happily, while Henry, Mary, and Maria are cast out.

Mansfield Park gets little love from most Austen fans, for the character of Fanny Price is seen to be rather too accommodating and deferential, as compared to Jane’s other strong, female characters. However, by contrasting Fanny with a “typical” Austen heroine – like for instance, Mary – Austen is in fact challenging us to view the differing social classes in Regency England and how such classes inform her work as a whole. It can hardly be an accident that Austen is explicit about Mansfield Park’s wealth’s dependence on the slave trade – a dependence she does not highlight in connection with, for example, Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley. By seeing Mary through Fanny’s eyes, we wonder, too, how Austen’s Elizabeth might appear to someone like Fanny, and whether they, too, get their literary appeal from qualities inherent to their social position. In wanting Fanny to be cleverer, bolder, sexier than she is – in wanting her to be more like Mary, in other words – we become complicit in the world of Mansfield Park, and in the politics of exclusion through which Mansfield thrives. If we construe Mansfield Park as a morality tale, or as a book about Fanny herself, we fundamentally misread Austen’s novel. It’s not called “Fanny Price”, after all. Mansfield Park highlights, as no other Austen novel does, the role that class and privilege play in determining the popular qualities for a heroine’s charm – characteristics that depend on an ability to transgress without consequence. It might be the most quietly subversive of Austen’s novels, weakening the foundations not only of its titular park but of Pemberley, as well.

“Napoleon’s Wars: An International History, 1803-1815”, by Charles Esdaile

 

672 pages, Viking, ISBN-13: 978-0670020300

I bought Napoleon’s Wars: An International History, 1803-1815 by Charles Esdaile when it was first published in 2008 with great expectations, as the Little Corsican was one of my first Historical Loves (shut up) and Charles Esdaile has forgotten more about Napoleon than I will ever know; however, every page I turned was an effort as a book that promised to discuss the era “beyond merely the biography of Napoleon” and to discuss the relationship of the other major rulers of the contextual period…does nothing of the sort. For the most part I didn’t mind Esdaile's reliance on diplomatic history, or even his perpetual anti-Napoleonic stance – not everyone can be a Bonaparte slappy, after all – but Esdaile writes as though he were dictating a lecture, with each sentence chock full of qualifiers (so, so, so many “howevers” and “factors” and “verys”) that I still can’t believe that Viking sent the manuscript to the printers. Hardly a sentence goes by without the author inflicting on his readers language that would be better palced in the 7^th Grade.

The book also seems to spend an inordinate amount of ink on spreading the same old British propaganda smears of Napoleon and other European leaders to justify Albion’s every move (it even goes so far as to defend the British refusal to uphold the terms of the Treaty of Amiens on the grounds that France “forced” her to war, while giving nonsensical and obviously flawed reasons for her to do so logically). This could have been a good book – or as Esdaile would put it, “truly, a very good book” – however, the labored language and sentence constructions get in the way of what the man is trying to say. There are other, better books about Napoleon – for instance, Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts (reviewed on April 13, 2015), or even Napoleon: A Life by Adam Zamoyski (reviewed on March 7, 2019) – so go ahead and skip this dreck.

“Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace”, by Dominic Lieven

 

656 pages, Viking Adult, ISBN-13: 978-0670021574

I guess that Dominic Lieven thought he needed a hook for his book, Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace, and so decided that by linking this colossal blunder on Napoleon’s part to Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece would do the trick…I mean, more books have been written about Napoleon Bonaparte than about anyone else in history, more than Christ, Mohammad, Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great (the last estimate for the number of books written on Napoleon was over 300,000). So I guess he thought he needed to stand out in a crowd, especially since his writing style is very dry and his book reads like a textbook written for a graduate course in Russian History. This last bit is important, as Lieven has apparently written a work for people who already have substantial knowledge of the Napoleonic wars and the Napoleonic era, for the reader is thrust directly into nuanced and rather detailed accounts of Russia’s internal politics, geopolitical machinations and battles. I, for one, was fine with this, seeing as I am familiar with all of this stuff, but the lay reader may find a lot of his facts and conclusions a touch mind-boggling if he is unaware of the context. Forewarned is forearmed.

That’s the bad news; the good news is that Lieven’s interpretation of the war is based on considerable research in Russian archives and extensive analysis of Russian secondary literature not used in most prior English language books. In contrast to most prior accounts that focus on Napoleon and tend to view the Russians as relatively passive reactors to French actions, Lieven emphasizes the actions and foresight of the Russian leaders, particularly the emperor Alexander I. Lieven argues well that the 1812 French invasion was the result of deliberate Russian decisions to pursue a war that would eventually allow formation of a Prussian-Austrian-Russian alliance against Napoleonic France and that the Russians anticipated and sought a war of attrition on their own soil. Lieven is particularly good on the complex role of Russian internal politics, the limits on Alexander's freedom of action, and the considerable limitations of the relatively primitive Russian state. In many ways, the best parts of the book are the accounts of how Alexander and his advisers pursued military reform and the administrative apparatus to logistically support the huge effort required by the decision to pursue war with the French. The descriptions of the remarkable efforts undertaken by the Russian state to defend Russia and then to support a large army that moves across much of Europe provide an outstanding look at the power and limitations of European states in this period.

Lieven takes pains to emphasize that the Russian victory was not due to the weather, disease or bad luck. Even before the first shots were fired, Alexander and his generals planned for a long war that would last past 1812 and eventually extend all the way to France. They realized that fighting alone, “Russia would never have destroyed Napoleon’s empire. For this a European grand alliance was needed. Creating, sustaining and to some extent leading this grand alliance was Alexander I's greatest achievement”. One comes away with a higher opinion of the tsar for his skillful, almost Machiavellian powers of manipulation, as he emerges as so wise and farsighted a ruler that almost the only criticism Lieven will make of him is that the czar lacked confidence in his own judgment. Considering the way he has been neglected or denigrated by other historians, such partisanship is forgivable. In the end, though, it was Alexander’s – and Russia’s – misfortune to have succeeded so completely, for victory over France removed any incentive for reforming Russian autocracy. A good, if complex look at the Russian war effort in the second half of the Napoleonic Age. Overall, a fine effort and much better than similar attempts to cover this period, in that it provides a much more complete picture of the Russian side of the conflict.

“Traveler’s Guide to the Ancient World. Ancient Egypt, Thebes and the Nile Valley”, by Charlotte Booth

 

 

Metro Books, 160 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1435101869

There are several of these “Traveler’s Guide” books out there, each written in the style of a contemporary travel guide as a way of bringing these long-lost cultures to life. I guess it works, if more as a kind of thought-exercise than as serious history. This edition, Ancient Egypt, Thebes and the Nile Valley, follows along with this conceit as it describes the historic city of Thebes and the Nile Valley in the year 1200 BC. Offering advice on everything like a real travel guide – from what to see, where to stay, the local cuisine and shopping for souvenirs for the folks back home – this was, overall, an easy read, and I finished the thing in a single afternoon; as to whether I was wiser or not upon doing so, I don’t really think so, as what can you pack into 160 pages of a fake travel guide?

“Johann Sebastian Bach” (Volumes I-III), by Philipp Spitta

688 pages, Dover Publications, ISBN-13: 978-0486274126 (Volume I), 736 pages, Dover Publications, ISBN-13: 978-0486274133 (Volume II), 432 pages, Dover Publications, ISBN-13: 978-0486274140 (Volume III)

Philipp Spitta was a German music historian and musicologist, and his Johann Sebastian Bach, originally published in 1873, was his best known work; this edition, originally translated by Clara Bell and J. A. Fuller Maitland in 1884, was reissued by Dover Publications in 1952 and, later, in 1992, which is the edition I have. This is a monumental biography of one of the greatest composers of all time (certainly one of the big three – Bach, Mozart, Beethoven – if you ask me. And I know you did) and by monumental I mean Teutonic: thorough, organized, relentless, uncompromising and ruthless…well, maybe not ruthless, but you get the idea. Spitta’s account is a straight-up chronological account of the life of JS that includes a discussion of Bach’s compositions at the time they were composed. No bells or whistles here, just a Life of Bach with one long paragraph after another, with very few divisions or subsections; I mean, really Phil, couldn’t you give me a break or two so I could at least catch my breath? Or take a nap? Or invade Poland?

Still, Spitta had to have done something right, as this 140+ year old book remains the go-to work for Bach biographers to this day. As it should, considering all of the info to be had within: his ancestry, his immediate family, his associations, his employers and the many occasions when his musical genius shown forth for all to see. German that he is, Spitta makes sure to document and record all of this biographical material with quotations from primary sources: JS’s correspondence, family records, diaries, official documents and so much more, besides. But, or course, it is the music that remains the focus of this titanic brick of paper, and Spitta’s analyses of all of Bach’s most important works – Over 500 pieces of music! More than 450 musical excerpts! A 43-page musical supplement! – is, it must be said, penetrating and scholarly, to say nothing of enjoyable. No, really.

“Atlas of Medieval Europe”, edited by Angus Mackay with David Ditchburn

 

288 pages, Routledge, ISBN-13: 978-0415019231

The Atlas of Medieval Europe is…an atlas of medieval Europe. Okay, I’ll elaborate. It is also a terrific historical resource that contains maps and explanations, divided into a number of sections: Early Medieval (from the fall of the western Roman empire to 1100); Central Middle Ages (1100 to 1300) and Late Middle Ages (1300 to 1500), with each section further broken down into Politics, Religion, Government, Society and Economy, and Culture. I counted thirty-seven different scholars (I think) who contributed to the work, so it is rather uneven in its textual presentation and illustration, but then again, this is an atlas, after all, so I found the written word involved with the maps to be the least of my concerns. While straight-up political maps are to be found – my, how the boundaries of nations can change over a couple of centuries; hell, whole nations can disappear over a couple of centuries, too – there are maps showing the most interesting and specific of trends, like the spread of anti-Semitism say, or the raising of provisions for war in England. But therein is a cause for concern, as the maps, too, are of widely varying quality; some are very well done and readable, but others are essentially impossible to interpret, either because of large amounts of detail in a small space, or because of lack of identifiable references, such as rivers and cities with names that can be recognized by the non-specialist modern reader. I have found that other works on this subject are usually very brief in their descriptions and contain a grade school report level of information; The Atlas of Medieval Europe, in contrast, is a comprehensive, adult reference that, despite a few shortcomings, does justice to the complexity of the subject matter.