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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
It is a matter of commonplace that Mansfield Park is Jane Austen’s most controversial novel—perhaps even, in some ways a failure. Fanny Price who occupies the central position in mediating what is widely thought to be Jane Austen’s point of view, is, in fact, almost completely antipathetic to the attitude to life revealed by Jane’s correspondence with her sister, Cassandra; while Mary Crawford—having won our approval by her good natured intelligence and vivacity—is cast aside, not merely as a threat to Fanny’s romance—what Angus Wilson has called ‘the dusty union’, but as a comprehensive danger to the very foundations of the Mansfield estate, and by extension, to the stability of the whole fabric of society at a critical period of revolutionary ferment. It is also largely agreed that Jane Austen’s supposed intention of writing a novel on the theme of ordination—with all that this implies of a conservative political philosophy—led her to abandon the ironic mode and even compelled her to impose an arbitrary didactic conclusion upon the plot so that virtue might be almost as glibly and sentimentally rewarded as in Pamela.
Ironically, much of the misunderstanding and confusion seems to have arisen because it has been believed that Jane Austen wrote her novel under the influence of Evangelical Christianity with all that this implies of regeneration and enthusiasm and disapproval of the smartly decadent values of fashionable London society. This critical response sees Mansfield Park as Jane Austen’s response to the issues of her time—a response in which the religious affirmations of the debate in the chapel at Sotherton and Edmund’s impending commitment to the duties of Thornton Lacey are balanced by secular responsibilities to the management of the estate. In this thematic reading Jane Austen assumes the mantle of Edmund Burke; and clearly, the coherence of such a reading has much to recommend it.
1 Jane Austen and the War of Ideas. Butler, Marflyn. Oxford 1975. pp. 248‐249. 262Google Scholar
2 See discussion, The Double Life of Jane Austen. Hodge, Jane Aiken. Hodder and Stoughton 1972Google Scholar. Also A Jane Austen Companion p. 102 by F. B. Pinion; Jane Austen and the War of Ideas, by Marilyn Butler, p. 236.
3 Disparaging remarks such as: ‘I do not like the Evangelicals’ 1808 and (1816). ‘We do not much like Mr Cooper's new Sermons‐they are fuller of Regeneration and Conversion than ever‐with the addition of his zeal in the cause of the Bible Society.’
4 Marilyn Butler, Lionel Trilling and others support the Christian view: Jane Aiken Hodge writes a little strangely, (p. 138) The Double Life of Jane Austen: Mansfield Park is her Pilgrim's Progress, with Edmund and Fanny, the Christian hero and heroine, fighting their way through temptation towards a not very clearly defined goal.
5 Jane Austen and the Moralists, by Gilbert Ryle, from Critical Essays by B. C. Southam, p. 117. Similar views are to be found in Jane Austen's Novels, A Study in Structure by Andrew H. Wright p. 28 1953; and The Double Life of Jane Austen p. 14 ‘her characters make moral decisions in the same kind of climate of unknowing.’
6 Elizabeth Jenkins wrote some time earlier (1938): ‘It is the tradition of her family that though she was very devout, she so much distrusted the exploiting of religious feeling that she was almost exaggerated in her reserve about her own.’Jane Austen p. 132. On the other hand Mrs Oliphant reviewing the Austen Leigh Memoirs says that the amiable tolerance of Jane Austen's attitude has ‘none of the sweetness which proceeds from the highest Christian graces‐it is not charity.’
7 The Language of Jane Austen, by Norman Page. Basil Blackwell 1972. p. 88. 264
8 Letter 40. Dated Monday 21 January 1805.
9 ‘What vile creatures her parsons are’. Newman. See Avrom Fleishman p. 88 Note 5.
10 The Language of Jane Austen, Norman Page, p. 89. F. B. Pinion's comment which seems to me particularly sound is also worth comparing: ‘Jane Austen's antipathy to mercenary heartless people was almost obsessional.’
11 See also Letter 81 of 3 July 1813 about a clergyman's marriage.
12 The point appears to have been first noted by Jane Aiken Hodge in The Double Life of Jane Austen p. 148. 265
13 Letters 24 January 1813 and 14 September 1804.
14 Letter Friday 29 January 1813.
15 Letter 24 May 1813 and 13 April 1811 ‘my preference for Men and Women’ in relation to shrubbery.
16 Learning Experience and Change, by Robert Garis. Ed. B. C. Southam Critical Essays p. 69.
17 In drawing comparisons between Jane Austen, Mary Crawford and Elizabeth Ben‐net some notice may be taken of Jane Austen's letter of 4 February 1813 in which she speaks of Pride and Prejudice as ‘rather too light, and bright and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not of solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story’. As this was written at the same time as Mansfield Park it is of some moment whether Jane Austen was happily joking or making a genuine critical observation. If she was serious then it becomes more difficult to approximate Miss Austen to her heroine‐but if‐as I suppose‐she was in a mood of mocking high spirits‐then her sheer delight and playfulness bring her closer than ever to both Elizabeth Bennett and Mary Crawford. (See also Marilyn Butler p. 202).
18 Open University Booklet A 302. No. 31‐32. pp. 9,10.
19 A Reading of Mansfield Park, by Avrom Fleishman, p. 22. Marilyn Butler says that Mary Crawford fails to see either the social or private utility of religion.
20 Independent evidence exists, of course, in the works of Henry Fielding; Cowper and Eighteeeflth Centruy diarists.
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