Mansfield Park, Vol. 2, Chapter 8 – Vol 3., Chapter 2

(For those without volume numbers, that’s chapter 26 through chapter 33.)

Well, at least she picks her battles: Fanny may not be able to get past the ha-ha or figure out which necklace to wear, but at least she stands her ground through the Henry Crawford proposal debacle—even when everybody around her is TERRIBLE about it. At least she has a fire* (finally) to sit and brood over. If only someone would get the poor girl a drink.

* HOWEVER. Sir Thomas! Fire or no fire, is that any way to speak to a lady? Or, like, a human being? Get it together, man! It’s the nineteenth century!

Various and sundry thoughts:

The necklace situation was goofy—she gave it to you, and it’s fine, and jeez, calm down—but I did love the way Jane captured the moment of ridiculous relief when something stressful is resolved without the expected amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Fanny’s “darn, looks like your chain’s too big for my cross” moment was like that split second where you think you’re about to be sent to the principal’s office, but the hall monitor’s after the kid next to you. That’s it? The chain’s too big? Well, then.

So sorry to hear about “…that independence of spirit, which prevails so much in modern days, even in young women, and which in young women is offensive and disgusting beyond all common offence.” Somehow I don’t think Sir Thomas would be that excited about the ladies of Austenacious. Whoops.

And finally, I’ve been holding this in for entirely too long and I think it’s time I let it all out: I suspect whoever cast Billie Piper in that BBC version may ALSO have never read the novel. I love me some Rose Tyler—like, a lot—but that? Is a horrendous idea. TAKE IT BACK.

How’s the reading going, people? Fourteen chapters and counting! And where the heck is Edmund? Come back, Edmund. Unless you’re just going to be stupid and marry Mary, in which case…go away, Edmund.

Among the shrubberies: Mansfield Park, Vol. 1, Chapter 17- Vol. 2, Chapter 7

Eight whole chapters this week, people! We’re basically the Usain Bolts of group Regency read-alongs.

First of all:

– OH NO YOU DID NOT, HENRY CRAWFORD!

Fanny may not be the Austen Nation’s favorite heroine, but going after a lady for sport—especially a lady as prey-like as Fanny, which of course only magnifies her appeal for the huntsman—is not to be tolerated. If there was ever an Austenian “gentleman” who deserved a swift kick in the goolies, I suspect it might be our Mr. Crawford. If only Fanny could get her foot up that high without fainting.

I wonder whether Henry’s fixation on “improving” houses is meant to be a comment on how he views Fanny—so far he’s only into her as a prize, but I wait patiently for the day that he wants to tear out her barnyard (heh) and make her face east, so as to improve her “approach.” Maybe I’m making this up, but my hunt for the mighty metaphor continues. Thoughts, readers?

– Jane carefully points out that Mary puts about five seconds of effort into calling her brother off. I’m still not sure whether this makes her despicable in my mind. Maybe it should, but I’m still not convinced that Mary is bad, per se—I’m more inclined, especially after Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s most recent post, to see her as Personality rather than Character. Maybe she should have used her influence differently, maybe she’s not really ripe for the Sisterhood of the Traveling Minister, but I don’t necessarily think failing to corral her douchey brother is her great moral failing. Jane, I suspect, may have disagreed.

– So, how about that Sir Thomas? Talk about wait until your father gets home! Is “sorry we put on a play in your study and moved the bookshelf” the Regency version of “no, those red Solo cups in the recycling aren’t mine, honest”? Not gonna lie: the fatherly smackdown on the whole Lovers’ Vows situation was a relief. Even Lady Bertram put aside her pug for a moment (a whole moment!) to welcome him home! Aww, ROMANCE.

– And in case I forget, readers, don’t ever let me go on my honeymoon without my emo sister.

– Psych! I don’t HAVE an emo sister, and it doesn’t say anything about weirdo brothers, so. Home free all the way to Brighton!

– (On the other hand, who is the less lucky one here? Is it the disappointed bride who married the rich moron, or the single tag-along sister who gets to laugh at her?)

Talk to me, readers.

Mansfield Park, The Sequel: Cruisapalooza

You all remember that Fanny Price and Edmund walked happily off into the sunset or vicarage (admiring the verdure). Julia had run off with Mr. Yates, Maria was disgraced and living with Aunt Norris, and Fanny’s sister Susan came to live at Mansfield Park. The End.

. . .

Ten years later, Sir Thomas Bertram decided to visit his estates in Bermuda once more. And what happened then? In a most unusual burst of energy, Lady Bertram decided the entire family should go with him. Except Maria and Aunt Norris, of course. Edmund and Fanny packed up their two children, Tom and his wife packed up their four, and Susan simply had to come too, even though by this time she was running the village newspaper. Julia and Mr. Yates managed to get out of it, though, by “renewing their vows” in Gretna Green.

And off they went. . .

Did I mention that Sir Thomas, as a cost-saving measure, bunked Susan in with two of her nephews? Also, that the “staterooms” were more like cabins? Here’s one of Tom Bertram’s wee sons, Mustaschio Man, strutting his stuff before forcing Miss Osborne, er, Susan, to watch Beverly Hills Ninja and Cats and Dogs on TV.

Whoever said “you can’t feel a thing when you’re on a big cruise ship” lied lied lied. While Susan turned green and whimpered as the boat rocked to and fro, the boys got pizza and ice cream. Not gingerbread cakes. No one really eats those, you know. They’re for tourists.

At long last, the Bertrams arrived in Bermuda. While Tom and Edmund tried to convince their father that slavery had been outlawed 200 years earlier, and Bermuda was independent, and he had no more estates, the ladies lounged on the beach. That’s Fanny on the left in the pink bikini. Marriage has really lightened that girl up.

Alas, at dinner things turned ugly. The Bertrams, if you can believe it, got into a huge family row about whose estates they didn’t have, exactly, and whether Fanny and Edmund should build a vicarage on the beach. Fanny’s own sweet little daughter broke her Aunt Susan’s arm. With a fork. Maybe she’s in the . . . oh, first rule.

For the rest of the trip, Susan sported an arm sling made with muslin that she had intended to embroider. It made her look rather like the Nutcracker Prince, but that couldn’t be helped.

Susan did allow Edmund (alias Mr. David Osborne) to escort her up on some rocks to take in the beauty of the sun and surf. After he’d apologized for his daughter’s behavior, of course.

The Bertrams, happy and united once more, visited the City Hall and Art Centre in Bermuda’s capital city, Hamilton. All those pictures of men reminded Lady Bertram that her dear niece Susan really ought to find a rich husband.

As a matter of fact, Susan had her eye on a man mysteriously appearing in her magic mirror.

Then one night, Cary Grant traveled back in time, and they had  An Affair to Remember. Susan decided that despite the indignities of mass family transit, Bermuda was a very beautiful place to visit. “The beaches are spectacular, the sand is soft, clean and lovely, and the water is delightful!” she wrote in the village paper.

Miss Osborne, on the other hand, has been known to sigh and say, “Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories . . . we’ve already missed the spring.”

We’re glad they’re both back home, safe and sound, if devoid of rich husbands and Cary Grant.

Photo credita: All images ©2010 by Christine Osborne. All rights reserved.

Thoughts on Mansfield Park, Part 2: Everything Else

In Thoughts on Mansfield Park, Part 1: Fanny and Mary, I started to talk about this book: Why does it seem so different from Austen’s other books? Why is Fanny so serious? Last week(ish) was about Fanny as a person, and about Mary as a quasi-parallel to Elizabeth Bennet. But now I’m thinking about the novel in general—why does Jane seem so much more serious, and why does it all seem rather forced?

Scholars (such as Marvin Mudrick) seem to see the novel as a penitent rewriting of Pride and Prejudice—the clergyman’s daughter being serious. Mansfield Park was Jane’s first novel after a 10-year hiatus, and while she was writing it, she was seeing Pride and Prejudice through the press, and commented on its “rather too light, and bright, and sparkling” manner, its “playfulness and epigrammatism.” This is more than a little depressing, though published authors will understand Austen’s dislike of re-reading her own work in proofs.

But, rather than think that Austen was now a humorless person, I think that, after 10 years, she was taking herself more seriously as a novelist, and had a deeper sense of observation and storytelling. Mudrick argues that, for the most part, in Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice, Austen doesn’t delve into her characters much. She is content to equate manners with morals: witty people are good, dull or obnoxious people are bad. (Shades of Oscar Wilde: “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”) Even in her early novels, personality and character aren’t the same thing. Just think of Willoughby, Wickham, Isabella Thorpe, even the respectable but self-absorbed Lady Middleton—all these people aren’t what they first seem.

There’s no doubt that Mansfield Park is a turning point, though, and Jane Austen is thinking about all sorts of new things. In Pride and Prejudice, some first impressions are wrong, but it seems like in Mansfield Park, they all are. We’re in the author’s confidence, but the characters (except for Fanny) misjudge each other constantly, and there’s far fewer truly good people. Jane’s gotten much more cynical since we last saw her. Austen told her sister Mansfield Park was to be about “ordination,” that is, one assumes, Edmund’s ordination as a clergyman. This seems to make it revolve around Edmund’s struggles, and the different views about morality and the role of the clergy than anything else. And these views were much in upheaval in Austen’s time. They illuminate the characters, and provide a backdrop. We are meant to judge the characters by their attitude towards serious things (something that changes in Henry Crawford’s transformation) and expect that we will like them accordingly.

Yet in fits and starts there’s something more real about these characters than we’ve seen before. Austen goes into their motives, their psychology even (think of Julia Bertram sulking at Sotherton, a prey to good breeding, but lacking fortitude). In Mansfield Park Austen has also broadened her vision to take in a nature vs. nurture argument that was popular in her day: the beauties of nature and the evils of town, and their opposite effect on people. She tries to explain why Maria Bertram, Sir Thomas, Mary Crawford, and everyone else, are the way they are, based on their upbringing and these outside effects. Really, a startlingly modern idea, but she doesn’t let the real feelings of her characters take her where it might. She still wants to push them around, have the good end happily and the bad unhappily. (“That is what fiction means.” —Wilde again 🙂 ) Sometimes the characters feel real to us, and sometimes they don’t. And that’s the tension of the novel, the weirdness that readers react to.

To me Mansfield Park is an experiment that Austen is trying out before she explores her ideas of good and evil in normal society, opposing forces in normal people, in a more natural, complex, interwoven way in Emma and Persuasion. Both these books have deep themes of people not being what they seem, even to themselves, but the characters and plots seem to evolve quite naturally. I think of Fanny Price as more a precursor for Anne Elliot than anything else. Like Fanny, Anne is a quiet, ignored observer, a serious and feeling character, but Anne has her touches of humor, of worldly knowledge, that Fanny, in her innocence, finds it hard to come by.

But for all that, there’s something raw, something out of control, in Mansfield Park, that I find compelling. And that’s why I come back to it.

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/obenson/ / CC BY-NC 2.0