“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.