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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
You may perhaps like the heroine as she is almost too good for me.
Letter 1815
The comic part of the character I might be equal to, but not the good, the enthusiastic.. . . Letter 1815
If there is anything to be said for my suggestion (New Black-friars June 1978) that Jane Austen was unlikely to have been in sympathy with Fanny Price’s religious attitude, and in fact probably shared Mary Crawford’s cynical view of the Established Church and such overtly Christian institutions as matrimony, it may be wondered why she nevertheless gave Fanny Price and her clerical cousin, Edmund, such central roles in the novel. Obviously, there can be no definitive answer, but the problem becomes less intractable if we give sufficient weight to Jane Austen’s extremely lively sense of humour. There was nothing she enjoyed so much—especially of course in the affectionate intimacy of her correspondence with Cassandra—as laughing at her neighbours and the world, and it was above all this spirit of comedy that informed virtually all her writing prior to Persuasion. If Mansfield Park wears its humour with a difference then no doubt it was the more amusing to tease and confuse her admirers even when these also happened to be a favourite brother.
Henry is going on with Mansfield Park. He admires H. Crawford: mean properly, as a clever pleasant man. I tell you all the good I can, as I know how much you will enjoy it.
Letter 1814
1 The French husband of the first marriage of Henry Austen's first wife! (The Comtesse de Feuillide).
2 This fundamental ambiguity has been noticed by virtually every writer who has considered either Jane Austen or her work. The following selection I hope does something to illustrate this contention. The contradictions lie deep in her temperament. On the whole the balance of evidence suggests that Jane Austen was poised (as in everything else) between two religious viewpoints…. Professor Wright, recognising the fundamental contradictions in her work tries to elevate them into ‘a conception of the total personality’… for me this is an injustice done to her continuous serious moral concern for solution, for some resting point between the two extremes of her nature. (Angus Wilson). Her moral affirmations are always qualified by critical and ironic reservations. (Jane Nardin). The split between formal commitment and imaginative allegiance. (Robert Wright). Secular spirituality… . Typically in Jane Austen's novel the archaic ethos is in love with the consciousness that seeks to subvert it. (Lionel Trilling). Her Toryism carries more weight than her radicalism. (Marilyn Butler). Duty is the key word in Mansfield Park‐its force as a moral absolute of Christianity is slyly questioned in the sententious invocation of Sir Thomas and Edmund Bertram. (B. C. Southam). Society is, for Jane Austen, both the horizon of our possibilities and the arena where we destroy each other… . The mixture of negation and affirmation is the most consistent feature of Mansfield Park. (Avron Fleishman).
3 There is something highly ridiculous in the quantity of exclamation marks which pepper Fanny's utterances.
4 Jane Austen and the War of Ideas. Butler, Marilyn. Oxford 1975. p. 222Google Scholar.
5 Lionel Trilling. Mansfield Park. Essays edited by Ian Watt. p. 133.
6 Sincerity and Authority. Lionel Trilling, p. 78.
7 Denis Donoghue. A View of Mansfield Park. Southam's Critical Essays, p. 46.
8 Those Elegant Decorums. Jane Nardin. p. 97.
9 A Reading of Mansfield Park. Avron Fleishman, p. 49.
10 The Improvement of the Estate. Duckworth, pp. 40‐42.
11 ‘Edmund is always duped by Mary’ Marilyn Butler, p. 236.
12 A less worldly attitude than that of any of the Bertram family. Marvin Mudrick is one of the few critics who consistently does justice to Mary. 'We observe Mary is impatient with dullness, evil and pomposity, but good‐tempered, affectionate, intelligent, kind. After fixing upon a future baronet she is capable of falling in love with a man whose possible fortune is very modest. She is far more alert than Edmund to the insults offered Fanny by the Bertram household. Triumph of Gentility, p. 93.
13 R. F. Brissenden. Freedom and the Family. Bicentenary Essays edited by John Halperin. C.U.P. p. 171.
14 Marvin Mudrick. The Triumph of Gentility, p. 93.
15 Generosity of spirit and an element of sexual generosity are also associated in Joseph Andrews. The equation is probably very much older.
16 The question seems to arise whether Jane Austen was chiefly concerned to maintain the supposedly didactic scheme or to develop the plot in such a way as to preserve the vital elements of uncertainty and suspense. To achieve both ends might only be practicable at the expense of logical consistency and there is no question that most readers have found the vindication of principle and the outcome of the plot curiously unsatisfactory. I am inclined to think that towards the end of the book the difficulty of preserving tension became acute. Tony Tanner has pointed out that the book is the story of a girl who triumphs simply by doing nothing. Fanny owes her success to Henry Crawford's sudden burst of irresponsibility. The logic of the story as it develops during the early part of the Portsmouth visit can only be that Fanny will eventually accept Henry, and Edmund will finally rouse himself to propose to Mary. This is obviously dull and too easily predictable. Unhappily the consequences of preserving tension meant that none of the characters could follow the path marked out by natural development. At the same time a narrowly and pedestrian morality was apparently vindicated by the improbable course of events. That there was a degree of improvisation at this point in the book is suggested by the sudden introduction of a new sister. She could not but think particularly of another sister, a very pretty little girl whom she had left there not much younger when she went into Northampton‐shire, who died a few years afterwards. There had been something remarkably amicable about her. Fanny, in those early days had preferred her to Susan;
17 There are numerous more sophisticated theories involving the Platonic significance of role‐playing and the subversive influence of foreign drama on the aristocracy‐see especially Tony Tanner and Marilyn Butler. I find myself agreeing with Rachel Trickett's view in: Jane Austen's Comedy and the Nineteenth Century in Southam's Critical Essays.
18 See Elizabeth Jenkins and Denis Donoghue. Elizabeth Jenkins thinks that Jane Austen was particularly shocked by adultery. The tone of several of Jane Austen's letters seem to suggest that this is very doubtful.
18 Avrom Fleishman. p. 53.
20 Bridget Brophy has said that Fanny is the only Jane Austen heroine who is allowed to get away with propounding the Gothick view of history seriously. I wonder.
21 The Quiet Thing. Tony Tanner.
22 Especially perhaps Barbara Hardy.
23 ' …‘tho my preference for men and women always inclines me to attend more to the company than the sight’. Letter.
24 What Became of Jane Austen. Kingdey Amis. Essays edited by Ian Watt. p. 144.
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