Please see Styx thread on the Registered Shipmates consultation for the main discussion forums - your views are important, continues until April 4th.

Heaven: 2020 November Book Club - Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

24

Comments

  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    It's hard to hold back when you've already read the book multiple times! I wrote my MA thesis on Mansfield Park.
  • [drools]
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    ooh @ruth that is interesting. I'll post some questions tomorrow so we can get properly stuck in. If you haven't read the book yet, maybe ignore this thread for the next week or so!
  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    Well, it was a long time ago. And I'm re-reading the book, because why not?
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    I'm rereading too, straining to find details I don't remember (about the only thing that counts so far are landscape descriptions).
  • Looked up Woolwich which Mrs Price puts up for consideration for her eldest son when writing to Lady Bertram. Also how far a half guinea went.
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    edited November 2020
    I'm assuming the reference to Woolich was to sponsor William to the Royal Naval Academy. I went walking there last year and there are still a lot of rather nice Georgian building left, though the town of Woolich is a fairly typical run-down South London suburb.
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    Sorry for the double post but I promised some questions. If you haven't finished the book and don't want to know what happens , look away now. Others just scroll down a bit.








    1. What's your opinion of Fanny. I can't think of a character that divides opinion so much, is she as dull as ditch water and a prig to boot, or a strong minded woman of principle?
    2. The whole Mary, Edmund, Fanny, Henry romantic tangle. Do you think Fanny and Edmund made the right choices or should they have married Henry and Mary instead of each other?
    3. A major theme of the book is marriage and the importance, specially for a woman of making a prudent match. Any thoughts on that?
    4. Edmund becomes a clergyman. What do you think of the way religion and the church is portrayed in the book?
    5. There are some great characters in the book Mrs Norris being one of my favourite 'villains' in literature. There are others such as Tom, Maria and Julia Bertram that seem a bit flat. What are your thoughts?
    6. Any thing else you'd like to discuss. For instance Sir Thomas' links to the slave trade?


    Feel free to answer as many or as few as you'd like and add your own.
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    I love how this thread has turned into a discussion about Jane Austen's work generally as well as the book. She's held in such high regard by so many: I've been aware of this all my life - my mum loved her (and I usually liked the books my mum enjoyed), I have a number of friends who love to talk about the books (and their favourite, and why it's their favourite) and at university cough cough years ago there was someone who almost seemed to have the books by heart.

    Watching with interest. :smile:
  • Austen is interesting as she seems to be a popular favourite, but also an academic one too. I guess that tells you something about her talent, as she worked at different levels. Thus, there are the plots to do with marriage and money and villainy, but also great psychological subtlety. A favourite twist of mine is that Emma represses her own sexuality, and naturally enough, spies on other people's, and acts as a pimp.
  • TukaiTukai Shipmate
    Why do most 19-th century classics have to be so long? I've finally finished reading this one right through, but the words/ action ratio is pretty high for my modern taste. I found the 90-minute film 1999 version much more engaging than the book itself, but will turn to Sarasa's questions in a few days time, after a little time for reflection.
  • Lamb ChoppedLamb Chopped Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    IMHO it has to do with the lack of television. If books or your father's Dad-jokes were your options on those long, long evenings, well...
  • I remember introducing a friend to Jane Austen when we were students in the long ago days. I forget which novel she read first, but for her it was too short. She found he was enjoying it so much that she rationed her reading to make it last longer.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    edited November 2020
    For the Slave Trade, which I originally thought wasn't that significant a link, I'll be sharing some interesting information from the London Times Supplement printed on the 200th anniversary of Austen's death.

    Kind of a spoiler, which I've brought up in previous SoF discussions about Austen,
    but it's for Page 1:

    Mrs. Price had to be over 21 and in control of her fortune* when she married (she was of marriageable age when Lady Bertram married, and over 6 years had gone by). Granted, she wound up having a large family, but the dividend from her daughter's share combined with her husband's half-pay would have been nearly 350 pounds a year, which should have been enough to get by.

    * Significantly, Anne Elliot wasn't at the beginning of Persuasion.

  • 1. What's your opinion of Fanny. I can't think of a character that divides opinion so much, is she as dull as ditch water and a prig to boot, or a strong minded woman of principle?

    I'll go for "strong-minded woman of principle," Alex, :cry: but I think she comes off as dull because she is the lens through which we see everything--and so not particularly colorful in herself. She's an observer 90% of the time. I was actually rather surprised when she took her younger sister in hand--not that it was possible, but rather that she so rarely makes a move of any sort herself that it was surprising.

    2. The whole Mary, Edmund, Fanny, Henry romantic tangle. Do you think Fanny and Edmund made the right choices or should they have married Henry and Mary instead of each other?

    They would have loathed Henry and Mary within 24 hours of marriage, if not before, and Henry and Mary certainly would have loathed them. I really can't believe Henry had any interest in Fanny at all, no matter how Austen tries to sell us on it. A man of that sort? Even the "interesting only because unattainable" thing would have worn out very quickly.

    3. A major theme of the book is marriage and the importance, specially for a woman of making a prudent match. Any thoughts on that?

    Glad I didn't live in those days.

    4. Edmund becomes a clergyman. What do you think of the way religion and the church is portrayed in the book?

    I'm bugged by the close wedding between respectability, morality, and Christianity in this book. As far as I can recall, there is no real mention or example of grace. She who sins (not so much he) is doomed forever. And the acting-in-a-theatre thing is a sin against respectability, not morality, but it gets all the gravity of having been found poisoning children. I understand the argument about undesirable intimacy, but it still goes way, way over the top.

    5. There are some great characters in the book Mrs Norris being one of my favourite 'villains' in literature. There are others such as Tom, Maria and Julia Bertram that seem a bit flat. What are your thoughts?

    Mrs. Norris is a great villain because she is so convinced of her own respectability (I don't think she ever gives thought to morality, let alone mercy). I salute Fanny for not putting arsenic in her tea after the first week of listening to her talk. Tom is rather a bore to me, a tedious young man who commits young-man sins and allegedly steadies up in the end (yeah, I believe that).
    Maria is interesting and could be more so, if explored in more depth. She took some extremely drastic steps for a young woman with her upbringing, and the enormity of what she did never seems to come home to her, not even to the extent of massive embarrassment. I'd like to know how she managed to escape the full force of the shame I would have expected her to have internalized, given the society. Lydia Bennett, now, she's easy (yeah, I know what I said). She chatters way too much to take in anything from the outside--social mores, conventional morality, religious teaching, even an understanding that this is not the way things are done locally. But Maria? She is not a complete inattentive prattlebox. So how did she manage to escape what must have been in the very air of her environment, even with the defects her father admits in her upbringing?

    I could like Julia, for her ability to make moral u-turns. There's some sanity there--some humility. Something might come of her someday.

    7. Any thing else you'd like to discuss. For instance, Sir Thomas' links to the slave trade?

    I have gone looking for a moorpark apricot. I have a great desire to see if it is at all worth the fuss Mrs. Norris made about it.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    edited November 2020
    What the hell, I'll start spoiling too:
    And the acting-in-a-theatre thing is a sin against respectability, not morality...I understand the argument about undesirable intimacy, but it still goes way, way over the top.
    In fairness, there were several notorious elopements in Austen's time that were the direct result of amateur theatricals. If the Austens themselves did stop their family theatricals after the summer Eliza de Feullide flirted with both James and Henry (will have to check), I don't think that was a coincidence.
    [Maria] took some extremely drastic steps for a young woman with her upbringing, and the enormity of what she did never seems to come home to her, not even to the extent of massive embarrassment.
    I think her feelings at that point were too self-destructive for embarrassment--her only consolation at the end was that Henry couldn't marry Fanny either.

    Ironically, it was to avoid humiliation that she determined Henry would never know "he had destroyed her happiness" and went ahead with marrying Rushworth. According to one critic, her actions are critically different from Fanny's when Fanny thinks she has lost Edmund forever ("...fix, commit, condemn yourself."). While Fanny ultimately is willing to accept what has happened and hope to find calm at the end, Maria chooses a course of repression she ultimately can't control, losing her false freedom for a situation far worse than her original one.
  • Belisarius wrote: »
    I think her feelings at that point were too self-destructive for embarrassment--her only consolation at the end was that Henry couldn't marry Fanny either.

    Ironically, it was to avoid humiliation that she determined Henry would never know "he had destroyed her happiness" and went ahead with marrying Rushworth.

    I think the point I am groping for hangs on the critical difference between humiliation and shame. Humiliation is an external process; shame is an internal response that is connected with failure to meet standards one has at some level bought into. It seems to me that Maria is wholly alive to the problem of humiliation, but feels no shame--rather like the position Trump appears to be in at the moment. If either can avoid the public humiliation, they will, by hook or by crook; but neither humiliation nor the lack of it seems to have any bearing on their internal judgment of themselves. It's as if a piece had been left out of their personalities.

    And missing that piece, there is no chance of Maria ever experiencing a change of heart, and therefore no chance of her altering her future for the better--at least a permanent better. She is destined to be shut up with Aunt Norris, because she cannot find a way out of her own selfishness and resentment--cannot even conceive of a need to do so.

    And as I said before, I find that a very odd character for a young woman of her background (and exposure to its cultural/moral ideas) to grow up with. Her father must have been right, the whole family just really wasn't paying attention.

    Though Aunt Norris is in fact able to get a tiny bit out of her own self, by focusing on Maria--which is a weird and twisted way to avoid total self-centeredness, but there it is. One could argue that she is therefore just that slight bit healthier than Maria is, not that it does either of them any good.

  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    The narration does state the daughters had learned the theory of religion but not its practice, and the less-spoiled Julia has instances of shame (small ones like when she doesn't volunteer to replace Fanny staying at home instead of Edmund for the Sotherton trip, and a big one when she and Yates desire to be forgiven by Sir Thomas).

    Sir Thomas, though, by his own eventual self-judgment, is not blameless in Maria's fate. He's obviously relieved when Maria declines his offer of breaking the engagement. The LTS theorized from contemporary evidence that, even more than his wealth, Sir Thomas is anxious for Mr. Rushworth's social status--the Rushworths have been gentry since at least Elizabethan times, while Sir Thomas is only the second Baronet, whose father bought his title from slave-trade profits.

    As for when Henry Crawford proposes:
    [Fanny] had hoped that, to a man like her uncle, so discerning, so honourable, so good, the simple acknowledgment of settled dislike on her side would have been sufficient. To her infinite grief she found it was not.
    I'm also in the "It wouldn't work out" camp if Fanny had been bullied into accepting.

  • BTW on Moor Park apricots with pictures https://fps.ucdavis.edu/treedetails.cfm?v=997
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    BTW on Moor Park apricots with pictures https://fps.ucdavis.edu/treedetails.cfm?v=997

    Just coming into apricot season, but neither of us remembers the Moor Park variety on sale here either as fruit or trees.
  • CathscatsCathscats Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    I'm with @Lamb Chopped on thinking Fanny the moral core of the novel but that the novel doesn't gain from being from her viewpoint. But she is also, to me, the Jane Austen heroine who more really acts her age. She is 17 and 18 during the bulk of the action, and when I was that age I would also be as unsure of myself and full of palpitating thoughts as she is. Some of the other heroines, who are not much older, have a lot more savoir faire than I or my friends would have had in the late teens and early twenties! This means that I have long admired them, but with Fanny I can empathise.

    ETA I have often wondered: when Fanny asks her uncle about the slave trade but fails to follow up her question, what line was she pursuing? Was she horrified or simply seeking fact? Did she think it reasonable -(hard to believe, but who knows)? Since the conversation is not recorded but referred to in a conversation between Fanny and Edmund, Jane Austen leaves us guessing. Maybe her business sense told her this was the best approach to take - mustn't offend potential readers!
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Possibly the thing that's difficult for the modern, Western reader to enter into is how shocked and upset everyone (except Mary Crawford) is by Maria's 'crime'.

    It will, of course, have been massively mortifying for Sir Thomas - the proceedings of the divorce bill in Parliament would have been neither brief nor cursory. Doubtless they would have been reported in the press, maybe even made it into satirical cartoons in print shop windows. But the trial by media (which might seem the salient feature to us) is not what JA dwells on. It is the painful individual recalibration of moral insight - except in Fanny, who was Right. And the exposure of its failure in Henry, Mary (albeit they are given a subsequent inkling of what they've missed) Maria and Aunt Norris (who aren't).

    Do we know what other country Maria is exiled to? I fancy Ireland.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    I have often wondered: when Fanny asks her uncle about the slave trade but fails to follow up her question, what line was she pursuing? Was she horrified or simply seeking fact? Did she think it reasonable -(hard to believe, but who knows)? Since the conversation is not recorded but referred to in a conversation between Fanny and Edmund, Jane Austen leaves us guessing. Maybe her business sense told her this was the best approach to take - mustn't offend potential readers!
    I'm guessing Fanny asked a general question, but I think the main emphasis is on her cousins having no acknowledgement of what it was that created their family's fortune. I think Austen also made her anti-slavery stance visible in Emma, when a contemporary reader would know that Mrs. Elton's relations profited in Bristol from the Slave Trade (though Austen lets the understandably embittered Jane Fairfax go overboard in saying the Governess Trade was almost as bad).
    Do we know what other country Maria is exiled to? I fancy Ireland.
    Per Vanity Fair, Boulogne was the traditional refuge for the financially or socially ruined, but the Napoleonic Wars were going on at the time.
    BTW on Moor Park apricots with pictures https://fps.ucdavis.edu/treedetails.cfm?v=997
    Had to chuckle because in the first half-second I interpreted "Chill Requirement" in the "Everybody just chill, man!" sense.

  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Belisarius wrote: »
    Do we know what other country Maria is exiled to? I fancy Ireland.
    Per Vanity Fair, Boulogne was the traditional refuge for the financially or socially ruined, but the Napoleonic Wars were going on at the time.

    Quite, so The Continent is out. The general idea seems to be that she is sent to some other part of England more remote from civilisation. Yorkshire, say.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    Reminds me of The Mayor of Casterbridge--"To the liege subjects of Labour, the England of those days was a continent, and a mile a geographical degree."
  • MiliMili Shipmate
    I'm really enjoying the conversation about the book and all the extra historical information and Apricot links :smile:

    1. What's your opinion of Fanny. I can't think of a character that divides opinion so much, is she as dull as ditch water and a prig to boot, or a strong minded woman of principle?

    As an introvert who has had to overcome social anxiety I liked reading about a character I could relate to. One thing I like about Jane Austen is that all her heroines have different personalities and she has the talent to write main characters who are not based on herself. The themes across her books are quite similar, but the different personalities, flaws and virtues of her heroines makes each book original.

    2. The whole Mary, Edmund, Fanny, Henry romantic tangle. Do you think Fanny and Edmund made the right choices or should they have married Henry and Mary instead of each other?

    Fanny and Edmund made the right choices. Henry would not have stayed faithful to Fanny once married and she would have been miserable. I think he would have been fine as he would be off gallivanting with other women and doing whatever he pleased. Mary would have been bored married to Edmund and resented that he did not choose a profession she admired. They would have very different opinions on how to raise any children, which would likely cause conflict and unhappiness in their marriage.

    3. A major theme of the book is marriage and the importance, specially for a woman of making a prudent match. Any thoughts on that?

    I'm happy to live in a time where marriage is a choice and most people accept single women as equal to wives and mothers. Also a time where divorce is a possibility if necessary.

    4. Edmund becomes a clergyman. What do you think of the way religion and the church is portrayed in the book?

    I think this is the only book where a clergyman is shown in a positive light. Otherwise we have the awkward and annoying Mr. Collins and the snobbish Mr. Elton and his obnoxious wife. Plus Dr. Grant in this book who seems to have given good sermons, but spent the rest of the week complaining about his food and antagonising his cook, servants and wife. He even got punished with an early death from apoplexy!

    As others have said, it is much more about morality than spirituality or theology, however Edmund is portrayed as someone who does have a calling to the clergy and takes his faith seriously, even if he focuses on the practical side of improving society at a local level. A lot of clergymen of the time just saw it as a suitable profession for their class and position in their family.

    6. Any thing else you'd like to discuss. For instance Sir Thomas' links to the slave trade?

    I found the section where Fanny goes back to her parent's home interesting. I hadn't read the book for a while, but have watched the 1999 adaption a few times and the 2007 adaption once and thought perhaps the movie adaptions painted her home as more negative than the book. However on rereading I found it hard to work out where Fanny inherited and/or learnt her character traits. She is much more active and intelligent than her mother and Aunt Bertram and much more upstanding in character than her father. She is also much kinder and empathetic than either parent and much more than Aunt Norris. Perhaps her father would have been more like Fanny if he did not like to drink so much and Aunt Bertram was a kind woman. William and Susan were also more intelligent and motivated to live a better life than their parents. But then you do see children who have very difficult childhoods and still have a natural resilience and drive to succeed and be a positive member of their community.

    I also found Fanny's health interesting, especially in light of the focus on long term symptoms caused by viruses at the moment, with the emergence of long-covid. It is never explained if her inability to exercise or exert herself much has been a lifelong affliction or if she had a childhood illness that affected her health long term. She did not seem to have tuberculosis or another sort of terminal illness. These sorts of long term health effects must have been more common in a time before vaccines, antibiotics and sanitation. If anything the book characters seemed more accepting of Fanny's physical weaknesses than people are today. People, especially women, with chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue are often judged today and seen as faking or being a hypochondriac or it all being in their head. Perhaps there was more understanding in the past, especially for wealthier people who did not need to work to survive.


  • HuiaHuia Shipmate
    Gee D wrote: »
    BTW on Moor Park apricots with pictures https://fps.ucdavis.edu/treedetails.cfm?v=997

    Just coming into apricot season, but neither of us remembers the Moor Park variety on sale here either as fruit or trees.

    Gee D I Googled Moor Park apricots because I remembered eating them here - my mum bottled them. A place called Yaralee Orchard sells them in Australia and an Australian Organic Gardener magazine article says they can be grown in South Australia and south Queensland - in case you want to try them.

    In NZ I think they grow in Central Otago.
  • Lamb ChoppedLamb Chopped Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    Mili wrote: »
    I also found Fanny's health interesting, especially in light of the focus on long term symptoms caused by viruses at the moment, with the emergence of long-covid. It is never explained if her inability to exercise or exert herself much has been a lifelong affliction or if she had a childhood illness that affected her health long term. She did not seem to have tuberculosis or another sort of terminal illness. These sorts of long term health effects must have been more common in a time before vaccines, antibiotics and sanitation. If anything the book characters seemed more accepting of Fanny's physical weaknesses than people are today. People, especially women, with chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue are often judged today and seen as faking or being a hypochondriac or it all being in their head. Perhaps there was more understanding in the past, especially for wealthier people who did not need to work to survive.

    This is really reaching, I suppose, but what they used to call "female complaints" must have been so much more prevalent (being largely incurable) and un-discussable, that ill health in a middle to upper class woman was probably accepted with less probing than today (well, except from the extraordinarily nosy). In Fanny's case, were she real, I would be wondering about anemia.

  • TukaiTukai Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    The whole Mary, Edmund, Fanny, Henry romantic tangle. Do you think Fanny and Edmund made the right choices or should they have married Henry and Mary instead of each other?

    It is my observation that when it comes to marriage, there is no single "right" choice, but there are many potentially good choices that work out well. (Happily the choice made by me and the Marama is one such!). I have also observed over many years that many men who have scattered their affections wide in their early days eventually find someone who will make them a steady and reliable companion for life and marry her. Fanny, with her common sense, steadiness,kindness, and principled priorities in life is clearly such a person. She will certainly make a good wife for Edmund, who shares most of these attributes.

    But unlike others on this thread, I think, she and Henry could also have worked out well together. Although, IMHO, her initial refusal of him was justified, I think the way he pursued her down to Portsmouth and kept up his affections in those unpromising circumstances shows that like my male acquaintances I referred to above, he comes to realise what would be good for him. It is only after she persists in her refusal to have anything to do with him, that he reverts to his previous philandering ways.

    On the other hand, Mary as a lover of fun and money, would clearly not have been content to be the dutiful wife of low-paid clergyman, as she herself makes plain near the end. Edmund is thus well to be rid of her.

    What's your opinion of Fanny?
    While Fanny has many admirable qualities (as I said above), she is so passive that I am surprised to find any 21-st century woman who regards as someone worthy of emulation. Nor do I think many 21-st century men would consider her worth marrying - not least because she is so unobtrusive that few of them would notice her at all. However some may be led to find such a person to be just right for them.
  • MiliMili Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    I don't know if I would describe Fanny as passive. She generally does go along with what her relatives want, but once it comes to her love life she actively makes her own choices against the pressure of her uncle, Edmund, Mary and Henry Crawford. Her uncle could have just left her with her birth family in response to not making a good marriage. I'm not sure if it was made clear to her that the family did not want to marry one of her cousins, but that didn't stop her holding out hope that Edmund would return her love one day.

    Lady Bertram is is the most passive character in the book, but that didn't stop her marrying a wealthy man who liked her looks and perhaps her submissiveness. Fanny is quiet and has sedentary hobbies (mostly reading), but does have interests of her own that are not put on her by others.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Huia, Thanks - I'll look them up. Not sure where we have space for one though!
  • Mili wrote: »
    I don't know if I would describe Fanny as passive. She generally does go along with what her relatives want, but once it comes to her love life she actively makes her own choices against the pressure of her uncle, Edmund, Mary and Henry Crawford. Her uncle could have just left her with her birth family in response to not making a good marriage. I'm not sure if it was made clear to her that the family did not want to marry one of her cousins, but that didn't stop her holding out hope that Edmund would return her love one day.

    Lady Bertram is is the most passive character in the book, but that didn't stop her marrying a wealthy man who liked her looks and perhaps her submissiveness. Fanny is quiet and has sedentary hobbies (mostly reading), but does have interests of her own that are not put on her by others.

    Interesting! It reminds me of a ... less than wonderful episode in my own life, in my first "real" job as an adult (mostly) out of school. Growing up I was socialized to be extremely well-mannered (shut up, you in the corner) and very reserved. I won't go into the reasons, but I learned to say nothing when people older or otherwise senior to me were present, unless it was a) necessary, b) valuable, and c) nobody else was present to say it for me. And in new situations, I walked very carefully indeed--was an observer more than a participant, until I thought I understood the environment.

    The result was that I did a lovely imitation of Fanny, and got hired by a man who, er, wanted that sort of thing in the first female exec in his department. I spent the next three months doing my usual low-profile thing, and then freaked him and everyone else the hell OUT when I gave my opinion on some issue strongly and failed to back down. The sudden (and permanent) shift in my outward behavior was probably a big part of why I didn't survive the layoffs there, three years later.

    Now that I'm older, I realize the role I played in my own difficulties there by not signaling In my current job, I spoke very bluntly to my future manager during hiring, so he would be aware of what he was getting. But yeah, I can see why some people consider Fanny passive, until she's not.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    edited November 2020
    Regarding Fanny's health, her deceased sister (whom she had preferred to Susan, so likely more similar to her) is a clue to her possible fate if she had stayed in Portsmouth.

    Have to clarify my response to Question 2: While Henry and Fanny's marriage wouldn't have been a disaster, it wouldn't have been particularly happy (especially for Fanny) either. Mary foreshadows that when she says to Henry that even if he falls out of her love with Fanny he'll still treat her with respect and liberality.

    ETA:
    One thing I like about Jane Austen is that all her heroines have different personalities and she has the talent to write main characters who are not based on herself. The themes across her books are quite similar, but the different personalities, flaws and virtues of her heroines makes each book original.
    Yes--the cliché "Austen just wrote the same book over and over" is annoying.
  • Noting Mary's views on clergy she states "How can two sermons a week, even supposing them worth hearing, supposing the preacher to have the sense to prefer Blair’s to his own, do all that you speak of?" Blair is Hugh Blair an 18th century Scottish minister who published 5 volumes of sermons.
    Also a synopsis of Lovers' Vows http://www.austen.com/mans/vows/index.htm
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    I'm loving all the comments and digressions, keep them coming. I'll just answer my first two questions and come back to the others later

    1. What's your opinion of Fanny. I can't think of a character that divides opinion so much, is she as dull as ditch water and a prig to boot, or a strong minded woman of principle?
    I'm a fan of Fanny. She is the only one that realises that Lover's Vows isn't a great choice for theatricals, and sticks by her principles, unlike Edmund who talks himself into thinking acting as Mary's lover in the play is acceptable. She is well read, intelligent and thoughtful, though she probably could do with a but more of a sense of fun. I hadn't thought much about her physical health, thinking her headaches, need for a little gentle exercise each day etc. were physical manifestations of her character, but yes she may well have some long term chronic illness.

    2. The whole Mary, Edmund, Fanny, Henry romantic tangle. Do you think Fanny and Edmund made the right choices or should they have married Henry and Mary instead of each other?
    Like @Tukai I think Fanny and Henry could have made a go of marriage, in fact in some ways I think Henry would be better suited to her. It seems to me that Henry is very young, and very influenced by who is with. He soaks up the opinions others, so therefore when he arrives in Mansfield Park he sees his uncle's bringing his mistress to his house as soon as his wife has died as acceptable behaviour. I think when he talks to Fanny about the improvements to his tenant's living conditions that he wants to make he is being genuine. He'll never do it on his own, but if Fanny had married him it might have happened. If anything she would probably tire of him sooner than he tired of her. Mary and Edmund would have been a disaster, but I do wonder how happy Fanny and Edmund would really be. I find Edmund's telling Fanny what she should have done in certain situations really annoying. For instance when he says she should have questioned her uncle Thomas more closely on the slave trade as he would have welcomed more questions. If Edmund thought that why didn't he chip in with a subsidiary question, rather than blaming Fanny for the topic not being discussed.
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    What do folk make of the theatricals? This continues to puzzle me, especially after reading a new book that argues the choice of play is Austen's critique of the flaws in the family. We know that the author loved the theatre, so why does this novel disapprove?
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    edited November 2020
    Here is a synopsis of the play, and an explanation of why Sir Thomas might disapprove. All pretty racy stuff for the time and open to leading to lots of fallings out and undercurrents of feelings among the cast at Mansfield Park. Apart from the nature of the play Sir Thomas probably isn't best pleased that they've re-arranged his study either.
  • That is really helpful. Thanks, @Sarasa.
  • An interesting sideline, that Austen is interested in the theatre of ordinary life, the roles and personae that we all adopt. Fanny is generally seen as authentic, whereas most other characters dissimulate to some extent. The play focuses this. "Maria acted well, too well". I suppose at a deeper level, Austen asks what it means to perform, and are we ever not performing, thus, Fanny observes many of the proprieties of ordinary life, as we all do.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    edited November 2020
    What do folk make of the theatricals? This continues to puzzle me, especially after reading a new book that argues the choice of play is Austen's critique of the flaws in the family. We know that the author loved the theatre, so why does this novel disapprove?
    Like Edmund, I think Austen preferred "good, hardened acting" and grew to mistrust its abuse from those unprepared for the activity (analogous to alcohol? :)).

    I've read about other relationships to Lovers' Vows. One essay explores the idea that Austen is far more approving of Amelia than the characters in MP are; in fact, the writer considers Susan's forthrightness and standing up for herself as a stand-in for Amelia, forcing Fanny to somewhat change her views regarding convention versus morality.
  • TukaiTukai Shipmate
    Belisarius wrote: »
    One thing I like about Jane Austen is that all her heroines have different personalities and she has the talent to write main characters who are not based on herself. The themes across her books are quite similar, but the different personalities, flaws and virtues of her heroines makes each book original.
    Yes--the cliché "Austen just wrote the same book over and over" is annoying.

    I put it to one of my more literary relatives that Austen, like Wodehouse, wrote beautiful prose over a formulaic and not very strong story line. She responded [quite possibly correctly] that it was not formulaic when she wrote; Austen virtually invented the formula.
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    Tukai wrote: »
    I put it to one of my more literary relatives that Austen, like Wodehouse, wrote beautiful prose over a formulaic and not very strong story line. She responded [quite possibly correctly] that it was not formulaic when she wrote; Austen virtually invented the formula.
    I don't think that's true (of Austen or Wodehouse - try summarising a Wodehouse plot) except that they all fall in the same genre. The genre itself wasn't invented by Austen: Fanny Burney's Evelina, written about thirty years earlier reads like an uninspired imitation of Austen.

    What Austen invented was the technique of moving in and out of the viewpoint character's point of view so that we hear how they think or talk of their situation, that is called free indirect style, and used to be credited to male French novelists of the next generation. She doesn't use the technique so much in Mansfield Park as Fanny is a highly reliable viewpoint character, but she occasionally uses it for some of the other characters.

  • It's also a disservice to Austen's genius, which was not in charming plots, but in part, fierce psychological analysis. It's not really handsome man with money meets gormless beauty, is it?
  • An interesting idea is that Fanny is an abused child. Well, she obviously is, as most people treat her badly, but I wonder where Austen got this from, presumably she saw it happen. I don't know if such a character type was established in English fiction, but the image of the abandoned child seems traditional, e.g., Babes in the Wood.

    Some critics also claim that this is the first novel to treat the inner life of a young girl, don't know.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    edited November 2020
    Neglected I would have thought, Mrs Price not being much cop in the mothering line.

    As for first 'inner life' - what about all those letters from fifteen-year-old Pamela?
  • Firenze wrote: »
    Neglected I would have thought, Mrs Price not being much cop in the mothering line.

    As for first 'inner life' - what about all those letters from fifteen-year-old Pamela?

    Would you say Mrs Norris neglects her? More like sadism. Yes, good point about Pamela, but Fanny is 10, so Austen is starting at pre-puberty.
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    Some critics also claim that this is the first novel to treat the inner life of a young girl, don't know.
    Austen is one of the first novelists to treat the inner life of anyone - most of the earlier examples, such as Pamela or The Sorrows of Werther - are epistolary novels and so not entirely inner.

  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    Would you say Mrs Norris neglects her? More like sadism.
    Mrs Norris' main motives in her treatment of Fanny are to avoid paying for Fanny's upkeep and to flatter Mr Bertram and his children. I don't think she ever takes pleasure in cruelty for it's own sake.

  • Dafyd wrote: »
    Would you say Mrs Norris neglects her? More like sadism.
    Mrs Norris' main motives in her treatment of Fanny are to avoid paying for Fanny's upkeep and to flatter Mr Bertram and his children. I don't think she ever takes pleasure in cruelty for it's own sake.

    But she is cruel.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    edited November 2020
    The narration mentions after Henry's proposal:
    Mrs. Norris...was more angry with Fanny for having received such an offer than for refusing it...she disliked Fanny, because she had neglected her; and she would have grudged such an elevation to one whom she had been always trying to depress.

    (William doesn't like her--he agrees with Fanny's views of everyone except for "a more noisy abuse of Aunt Norris.")
Sign In or Register to comment.