November Book Club - Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

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  • jedijudyjedijudy Heaven Host, 8th Day Host
    Hopefully you all will excuse me for not taking part in the discussion! I would have just been repeating a lot of what others said.
    Like Huia, this is not my favorite Jane Austen book. But, I'm so glad I read it (again) and gained a lot of insight from all of you!
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    I don't know that it's anyone's favourite Austen book. The objections to amateur dramatics are difficult for modern readers to sympathise with, and Fanny is I think the protagonist least like Austen herself. (If you like an author you probably like those characters most like the implied author.)
  • I don't know. It might be my favorite (tied with P & P), but that's because I like books that translate me into a whole culture, and I feel like I'm there watching. Mansfield Park does that, even if there's no particular character I identify with. I like to see what makes the various people tick, and how and why their setting results in them making various choices or doing certain odd things.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    edited December 2020
    I already mentioned that MP is my current favorite, which is followed by Persuasion. I haven't reread Austen much in the past few years and find I'm now most drawn the two works that come closest to Tragedy.
  • Sorry to miss this - I was hoping to use this an opportunity to re-read, but my November turned into absolute chaos at work. I still think P&P and Persuasion are my favourites but would be curious to go back to MP.
  • SarasaSarasa Shipmate
    edited December 2020
    I think perhaps which one is a favourite depends on your mood when reading. I remember really loving Persuasion when I read it in my twenties. I re-read it a couple of years ago, and didn't enjoy it nearly as much. I think I liked Mansfield Park better than Emma when I read them both last month, but maybe reading them so close together meant I didn't appreciate Emma quite as much as I should. I do find Mr Knightly having been in love with Emma since she was thirteen slightly creepy.
  • HuiaHuia Shipmate
    Yes, I did too Sarasa. When I was in my 20s it was just the know-it-all older bossy male that irritated me, now it seems a bit like like grooming.
  • I was actually in a somewhat similar situation with Mr. Lamb when we were dating (I was 19, he 37, and definitely both bossy and cranky--though I put that down to cultural differences). We had a helluva lot of fights. But bossiness is not surprising from an older Vietnamese man of his time speaking to a younger woman when he's trying to hide his romantic interest--he cast the whole thing in terms of an older-brother relationship--and older brothers in Vietnam just ARE bossy, because older siblings are closer to being mini-parents than they are to being equals. It's a very hierarchical society.

    As long as I could walk away without repercussions, I figured it was healthy enough. And I made it abundantly clear that if he ever laid a finger on me, it would be Over.

    (I was coming off a crappy pseudo-relationship with a very juvenile fellow student, and so when Mr Lamb floated the trial balloon of us dating, I told him I'd give him three months before I decided whether to kick him to the curb or not. We've been married 32 years, and every so often he asks me if his probation time is up. I tell him I'm still thinking.)
  • HuiaHuia Shipmate
    Nothing like a bit of uncertainty Lamb Chopped :wink:
  • heehee
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    edited December 2020
    Sarasa wrote: »
    I do find Mr Knightly having been in love with Emma since she was thirteen slightly creepy.

    Definitely by current standards, but back then the legal Age of Consent was 12. Significantly, Emma hopes that Mr. Knightley will treat the Westons' daughter the same way he had treated her except for, of course, falling in love with her when she turns 13.

    ETA: I'm now remembering all the jokes we made in High School English when we learned that Edgar Allen Poe married a 13-year-old.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    We've been married 32 years, and every so often he asks me if his probation time is up. I tell him I'm still thinking.)
    "...Miss Crawford made us laugh by her plans of encouragement for her brother. She meant to urge him to persevere in the hope of being loved in time, and of having addresses kindly received at the end of about ten years happy marriage."
    You've beaten what would have been Fanny's record!
  • Sarasa wrote: »
    I do find Mr Knightly having been in love with Emma since she was thirteen slightly creepy.

    I always assumed we were supposed to think that he didn't realise he was falling in love with her for several years - that his interest at the start really was big brotherly.

  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    I agree. We're told Knightley only realised he's in love with Emma at the same time as he realised he was jealous of Frank Churchill.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    All true, but many modern readers wouldn't mind the last sentence of Knightley's paragraph being edited out.
  • I find Edmund slightly creepy, actually. Ok, full disclosure: very creepy. Maybe he starts out with good intentions, being nice to the poor lonely cousin, but he basically forces her into becoming his Ideal Woman - and then forgets all the lofty principles he taught her the minute Mary Crawford comes along. Just as well she took them more seriously than he did, because if she'd fallen off that pedestal he wouldn't have been interested in putting her back.

    Maybe it's because I can't imagine wanting to marry Edmund myself. It would be like marrying your bossy older brother.
  • Austen's men are interesting, as the sexy ones are unreliable and dodgy, and the respectable ones unsexy. OK, there's Darcy, but that's off TV. It would be like marrying your brother. But Bingley and Darcy offer an interesting contrast, some people see them as 18th century and 19th century types. Is Edmund poisoned by evangelicalism?
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    edited December 2020
    I am informed that Wentworth is both sexy and respectable.

    Also Colonel Brandon looks like a cross between Professor Snape and Hans Gruber from Die Hard.
  • Yes, I forgot Wentworth. His love letter is hot, hot, hot. "You pierce my soul ..." Swoon.
  • Jane R wrote: »
    I find Edmund slightly creepy, actually. Ok, full disclosure: very creepy. Maybe he starts out with good intentions, being nice to the poor lonely cousin, but he basically forces her into becoming his Ideal Woman - and then forgets all the lofty principles he taught her the minute Mary Crawford comes along. Just as well she took them more seriously than he did, because if she'd fallen off that pedestal he wouldn't have been interested in putting her back.

    Maybe it's because I can't imagine wanting to marry Edmund myself. It would be like marrying your bossy older brother.

    I'm glad someone else thinks the same about Edmund. Fanny would have been so much better off with Henry Crawford.
  • That's a common view. It's partly connected to Austen's love of triangles, Henry, Fanny, Edmund, then Fanny, Edmund, Mary, and Julia, Henry, Maria, and so on. I suppose adultery explodes everything. Sex is good but has to be fenced off, or its a wilderness, and you might fall into the ha ha and tear your gown.
  • Off topic, at my wife's boarding school, not only was there an old ha ha, but new pupils were thrown into it as a hazing ritual.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    edited December 2020
    Jane R wrote: »
    I find Edmund slightly creepy, actually. Ok, full disclosure: very creepy. Maybe he starts out with good intentions, being nice to the poor lonely cousin, but he basically forces her into becoming his Ideal Woman - and then forgets all the lofty principles he taught her the minute Mary Crawford comes along. Just as well she took them more seriously than he did, because if she'd fallen off that pedestal he wouldn't have been interested in putting her back.

    Maybe it's because I can't imagine wanting to marry Edmund myself. It would be like marrying your bossy older brother.

    I think that interpretation of Edmund's intentions is a little unfair--Mary defends his treatment of Fanny to her brother--but this is indeed another case of "creepy by our standards" overall. The first time I read MP, I wound up agreeing with Mrs. Norris that people raised together falling in love was quasi-incestuous (though Austen herself obviously disagreed in this case).

    Tangent:

    Per changing standards, I remember a review of a Lewis Carroll biography which mentioned that he was a serial adulterer; his earliest biographers tried to cover it up by presenting him as an idolizer of youthful innocence. We know that tactic ultimately backfired big time.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    By the way, I recommend (future Book Club suggestion?) Henry James's The Europeans, which is similar enough to MP that my local Austen group once assigned it for discussion. Two siblings disrupt a local community; besides the Crawford stand-ins, there is a Fanny stand-in and two Edmund stand-ins (can't explain more without spoilers).
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