Mansfield
Park – Jane Austen
Ten-year-old Fannie Price leaves her large family in a squalid household
in Portsmouth to go live with rich relatives in the country hamlet of Mansfield.
Though with the good things of the world at their fingertips, her affluenza-ridden relatives are a motley crew of the stupid, lazy, thoughtless and vain. As Fannie
grows into adolescence, she hears daily the reasons why, as the last and least among
them, she ought to be grateful for being allowed to stay in such comfy
circumstances. She sleeps in an unheated attic and is provided with meagre
rations. It is no wonder she is weak, sickly, and fragile. She is also prone to
high emotional reactivity and social anxiety (shyness, speechlessness, uneasiness)
when confronted with stressors in the form of thrusts and jabs from her cruel selfish
family members.
Fannie is patronized – in the multiple senses of the word - by her
cousin Edmund who is about six years older than her. Bound for the clergy, he
is solemn and tries to urge her on the right path, in other words, getting reconciled
to her mediocre station in life. She keeps Dr.
Johnson’s Idler essays in her room.
Her reading of such moral texts has equipped her with a way of approaching problems with impartiality, wisdom, bravery. And
kindness, since Dr. Johnson said, “Kindness is in our power even if fondness is
not.”
Thanks to Edmund’s earnest
instruction and her own reading, Fannie develops self-command, a handy
orientation in any station in life and one sorely lacking among Austen’s cast of characters. Fannie never complains because she knows it will only draw derision
and shock at her temerity. As for consideration for others, Fannie is fair,
polite and gentle with everybody, even those that don’t deserve impartiality
and return gentleness with thoughtlessness. When she is not faint or overcome
with the heebie-jeebies, Fannie bases her decisions on rationality, not
prejudice or pride.
Part of me wonders how
much good integrity does the powerless though at least they don’t do as much
harm as the powerful with no integrity. But count me a fan of Fannie – there are
plenty worse orientations than accepting stern realities you can’t change (other
people, money, property, your health, etc.) and cultivating control over what is
indeed in your power to command (your attitude toward everything). Fannie, after all, is only 18 years old in
most of the book, so we can’t expect her road to self-knowledge, rational
self-control, and common sense to be without potholes. But through her reading
and thinking and her relationship with Edmund, she’s able to deal with the
peevishness, jealousy, and disharmony that plague the inner worlds and
relationships of her cousins and the Crawfords.
Still, as laughable
as ninnyish Edmund and Fanny are for their sincerity and depth, Austen makes
the reader feel that they are much more likely to face life’s inevitable troubles
with bravery and resilience than Henry or Mary Crawford or Fanny’s cousins
Maria or Julia. In short, I’m totally with Austen being all judgey about Julia’s lacks being the cause of Julia’s
inability to be content:
…the want of that
higher species of self-command, that just consideration of others, that
knowledge of her own heart, that principle of right, which had not formed any
essential part of her education, made her miserable…
So like a parent. “If you
want to be happy, work on your own self-control, respect for people,
self-knowledge, and wisdom.” Austen makes her moral points through the moral
well-being - or, frequently, lack of moral fortitude - of her characters. Edmund,
being a human being, stumbles – letting down both the horse and Fannie by
letting flighty Mary ride the horse too hard for too long; letting himself down
by agreeing to be in their play, the construction of scenery for which leads to
the tearing up of his father’s favorite room; encouraging Fannie to marry the
worthless Henry Crawford. The heir Tom experiences the salutary effects of a drunken
accident and illness, coming out the other side of a long convalescence a more
sober and steady heir (see Sense
and Sensibility for illness changing Marianne Dashwood). Sir Thomas
survives daughter troubles, a lucky thing since he was as neglectful a father
as Mr. Bennett in Pride and
Prejudice.
This is well-worth
reading. It gives much to think about, in terms of living a flourishing life, a
life worth living, but it is not heavy like Middlemarch.
In fact, the comic characters of indolent Lady Bertram and busybody Mrs. Norris
are excellently drawn. Austen uses half-a-dozen deaths to move the action
along. She also unleashes wonderful surprises, like an enchanter should. I’ve
been worried lately about reading too superficially and read this novel
primarily to immerse myself in reading. This novel fit the bill – I read in long sections, deeply I presume to think, over the course of about five days. Plus, I look forward
to re-reading it. What higher praise?
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