Review: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Fanny Price is brought up by her wealthy relations, the Bertrams, at Mansfield Park.  She accepts her status as a dependant and becomes an observer of the drama that ensues when the Crawford siblings arrive in the neighbourhood.

Published: 1814
Pages: 372 (Oxford World's Classics, 2008)
Times Read: 2
First Read: March 2005
Read This Time: 6/8/12 - 11/8/12
Part of: Austen in August

First line: "About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income."

Review: As I said in my sign up post for Austen in August, I've only read Mansfield Park once and that was a long time ago (seven years, oh dear).  I'd labelled it boring and less fun than Jane Austen's other works, and if I had dipped in it was to reread the last three chapters of the book when everything goes all eighteenth-century melodrama.  This, as I discovered in this reread, was silly of me as Mansfield Park is brilliant.  I don't think it's going to replace Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion in my affections, but I'm definitely going to stop thinking of it as Jane Austen's 'failure' (because, frankly, such a thing doesn't exist).

Not that I didn't find fault with elements of the book - for me, the biggest problem was Fanny as the heroine.  It's not because she's an intensely moral character or a quiet one, because I'd say both Elinor Dashwood and Anne Eliot are these things as well, but because for a large part of the novel she's a passive observer.  I know that this is the point - and that she's been brought up to believe she has less part in family life than her cousins - but it's hard to enjoy that as a reader.  Even though I could understand what Austen was doing, especially with the 'staging' of the play sections and Fanny's role as 'audience' to the romantic drama, I still found myself urging Fanny to do something.  Fortunately, when she does it is awesome and steel-cored.

What struck me most while rereading, though, was how the Crawfords were failed versions of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy*.  Mary Crawford has all of Elizabeth's playfulness, charm and wit, but none of her sense of duty or proprierty.  And Henry Crawford nearly manages a Darcy-style transformation into a proper landowning gentleman, only to fail because he doesn't have the right foundation of character to sustain this.  It's almost as if Austen is playing around with her own work to make her point about the need for "principle, active principle" (364) and an understanding of the correct way to behave.  The world of Mansfield Park is a lot harsher and colder than that of Pride and Prejudice, which may be why I struggled with it first time.  It's certainly Jane Austen at her most disconcerting.

Nothing in Mansfield Park feels safe or secure for very long.  The house may stand as a symbol of home for Fanny, and be the picture of well-bred society in the early nineteenth-century, but everything about it feels off somehow, as the presence of Mrs Norris demonstrates from the start.  The arrival of the Crawfords merely exaggerates everything that was already bad, and when Fanny returns to Portsmouth her recollections of the house are coloured by the poverty in which her parents live.  Everyone's perceptions and ideals are shown to be incorrect in some way throughout the novel, even Edmund's.  Only Fanny has a clear sighted view of people's characters, and the sense to recognise where her own feelings may colour her perception.  This may be yet another of my problems with the novel: Fanny has nothing to learn, there is no major change in her character or views as there is with Elizabeth or Emma - again, this is true of Elinor and Anne, but they're older and more believable as such paragons.

I think it's going to take a while for me to sift through all my thoughts on Mansfield Park.  I certainly enjoyed rereading it, and there were moments when Austen's snark and irony really shone through - especially when dealing with Mrs Norris, particularly in the interaction with the butler - but there's something not quite right about Mansfield Park that throws me off.  It could be that this was Austen's intention, to demonstrate how even the wealthiest and therefore 'ideal' families can fail, but this makes the novel uncomfortable to read.  I'm certainly glad I reread it, and will do so again in the future, but I think it's a jarring shift from Pride and Prejudice and is making me appreciate the relative sunniness of Emma that much more.

* In their characters rather than their relationship to each other, obviously.  Thank you, film adaptation, for throwing that 'surmise' out there at the end.

Austen in August: Plans

Austen in August is being hosted by Roof Beam Reader - the sign up post is here.  Basically, an excuse for me to reread Jane Austen (not that one of those is usually needed).

I have read all of Austen before, including the unfinished books and the Juvenilia (some of which is bizarre and some infuriatingly good - she was fifteen!), so I'm going to have to set myself a target of which books to reread.  I think I'm going to go with:

- Mansfield Park - I have only read this all the way through once.  I've read bits and pieces again - particularly the parts in Portsmouth and what follows - but I found it boring when I first read it (though that was seven years ago).  I think it's about time I reread and reassessed. 

- Emma - It's been a while since I reread Emma, and I do love it.  And I've just tried to find a clip from the 2009 BBC adaptation of Mrs Elton appearing on a donkey and I cannot.  That is one of the best parts of the book.  Well, that and all the rest of the book.

- Persuasion - This often sits in the place of "my favourite Jane Austen", until I think about Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey, and then I have to decide that I don't have a favourite Austen.  But Persuasion is wonderful, and probably the most thoughtful Austen; it's certainly the most melancholy yet hopeful.  Think I'll save this to the last and read it as a treat.

Yes, I think those three are enough to be going on with - though this is also a chance for me to persuade my flatmate that we need to rewatch the 2005 Pride and Prejudice yet again (I think we've watched it three times in the last year alone).

Eighteenth Century: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen - Part 1

This post will cover chapters 1-5.  Link to previous part: introduction.

Chapter One
In which: we are introduced to our heroine, Catherine Morland, and told of her childhood and adolescence.  We then learn that she is going to Bath to keep Mrs Allen, wife of the wealthiest man in the village, company.

Thoughts: even in the first chapter Austen is setting up what's she about to do, stating all the ways in which Catherine is nothing like a traditional heroine.  Catherine is a normal girl, who somehow manages to have "neither a bad heart nor a bad temper" despite shirking her lessons and being a bit lazy.  That she is not thoroughly beautiful, unable to "learn or understand anything before she was taught", and has no special talents for drawing or music show that she is hardly fitted to be a heroine.  Still, we should be prepared for that from the very first line: "[n]o one who had seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine".

Stats:
Times Catherine is wrong - 0
Times Catherine is right - 0
Times want to hit John Thorpe - 0 (he hasn't shown up yet, yay)
Times want to pounce Henry Tilney - 0 (he hasn't shown up yet, boo)

Name checks of other literature - 'The Beggar's Petition' by Thomas Moss; 'The Hare and Many Friends' by John Gay; and excerpts from Pope, Gray, James Thomson, and Shakespeare.

Gothic convention is turned on its head - the whole thing is one big overturning of conventional heroines.  Everything Catherine fails to do, heroines of gothic and sentimental fiction manage easily.  Catherine is much more fun.

Favourite line(s): pretty much the whole thing, it's impossible to pick just one bit out of Austen's ridicule.

Chapter Two
In which: Catherine is sent off to Bath by her sensible parents in the care of an amiable woman who isn't going to lock her in a tower.  She attends her first ball, can hardly move in the crowd, and is considered pretty by two strange young men who have no bearing on the story but do at least make her feel better.

Thoughts: the chapter continues where the other left off, lampooning Gothic and sentimental fiction as the Morlands have no intimation that Catherine is going to be abducted by a "mischievous" baron or believe that giving her unlimited access to a bank account is a good idea.  Once she gets to Bath it falls more firmly into a 'typical' Austen novel, with all the sights of the season and a painful character portrait of Mrs Allen, who is no more help than to repeat "I wish you could dance, my dear - I wish you could get a partner".

Stats:
Times Catherine is wrong - 0

Times Catherine is right - 1 (she at least has more sense than Mrs Allen)

Times want to hit John Thorpe - 0

Times want to pounce Henry Tilney - 0 (next chapter for Tilney, huzzah)

Name checks of other literature - nothing specific

Gothic convention is turned on its head - again, most of the chapter deals with this, as Catherine's parents are perfectly sensible and Mrs Allen perfectly amiable.  The ball itself is the time for Catherine the be noticed by all and sundry and declared startlingly beautiful, but all she gets is two men pronouncing her to be "a pretty girl".  Not particularly heroic but at least she hasn't been kidnapped and dragged across country by a ruffian baron.

Favourite line(s): "her mind [was] about as ignorant and unformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is".

Chapter Three

In which: Catherine goes to the Lower Rooms and this time gets a partner - Henry Tilney!  His general awesomeness shows through as he talks utter nonsense at her, talks muslins with Mrs Allen, and is set up as the potential hero of the book.

Thoughts: as is probably pretty obvious, Henry Tilney is my favourite Austen hero (yes, even over Darcy).  I can't help it, he cracks me up, he's clever, and I always imagine him bouncing about like a drugged up Energizer bunny.  What's not to like?  In more serious analysis, the chapter doesn't carry on as might be expected in the first meeting between hero and heroine: there's neither instant love or hatred, they're just pratting about.  And Catherine finds him strange.  Still, there's hope for something more.

Stats:

Times Catherine is wrong - 0

Times Catherine is right - 0

Times want to hit John Thorpe - 0 (think he's about to rock up)

Times want to pounce Henry Tilney - about 50

Name checks of other literature - reference to Samuel Richardson's comment that "no young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared".  

Gothic convention is turned on its head - Henry Tilney isn't a typical hero, as he isn't described as being a marble cupcake adonis, nor does he stick to 'heroic' topics of conversation.  If Catherine was kidnapped he'd probably chatter the kidnappers into submission.  And the notion of the heroine dreaming of the hero is debunked in the last paragraph.

Favourite line(s): too many to choose, pretty much everything Tilney says, though a definite fondness for his description of women's letter writing: "a general deficiency of subject, a total inattention to stops, and a very frequent ignorance of grammar".

Chapter Four

In which: Catherine, and the reader, are introduced to the Thorpe family, who are going to cause no end of trouble.  The eldest daughter, Isabella, quickly becomes fast friends with Catherine, and knows her older brother.

Thoughts: the Thorpes are here, which means we're about to get Catherine's head being turned by *whispers it* novels and all sorts of shenanigans involving vulgar behaviour, broken engagements, lying, and a fat oaf who needs a kick in the teeth.  For now, though, there is no intimation of what is to follow and Catherine is merely happy to have a friend - and the reader is happy to be spared the full details of Mrs Thorpe's history, which involves lawyers.

Stats:

Times Catherine is wrong - 1/2 (she completely forgot her brother had been to stay with the Thorpes over Christmas)

Times Catherine is right - 1/2 (she did at least remember without too much prodding)

Times want to hit John Thorpe - 0 (he gets nearer)

Times want to pounce Henry Tilney - 0 (mentioned but no appearance)

Name checks of other literature - nothing specific (we're getting to the reading list).  

Gothic convention is turned on its head - none.  The problems the Thorpes will introduce aren't even hinted at, and are more mundane even when they do occur.

Favourite line(s): "friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love". 

Chapter Five

In which: Catherine and Isabella's friendship deepens rapidly, Isabella drops hints about her own romance while encouraging Catherine's fancy for Henry Tilney, and Austen defends the novel in a paragraph of awesome.

Thoughts: this chapter is, like the previous one, rather short, but it contains one of my favourite bits of the entire book: Austen's defence of the novel, in which she holds the medium up as being "performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them".  The whole thing is fantastic, and can be read as female novels vs. male quotations/magazines.  That Austen herself sends up a lot of the novels she defends throughout the course of Northanger Abbey doesn't mean she is being insincere here, as she also states that novels "have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world".

Stats:

Times Catherine is wrong - 1 (ask Isabella why she's sighing, Cathy, go on)

Times Catherine is right - 0

Times want to hit John Thorpe - 0

Times want to pounce Henry Tilney - 0 (still no 'onscreen' appearance, blast it)

Name checks of other literature - Camilla and Cecilia by France Burney; Belinda by Maria Edgeworth; The Spectator; and references to Milton, Pope, Prior and Sterne being included in collections of quotations.   

Gothic convention is turned on its head - nothing in this chapter.

Favourite line(s): "I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding".

Eighteenth Century: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen - Introduction

I'm starting with Northanger Abbey because it always seems like the earliest/youngest of Jane Austen's novels, even though it wasn't.  Although published posthumously in 1818, it was started in 1798 - which was two years after the first version of Pride and Prejudice, and three after the original Sense and Sensibility.  Despite this, it feels as if it pre-dates those, possibly as a result of being kept by a bastard publisher for thirteen years (1803-1816) and only revised in the last months of her life.  Those are the serious, thought out, almost academic reasons for starting here, but there is also 1) it's a short book; 2) I really like it; 3) Henry Tilney; and 4) I did an essay and a chapter in my MA diss on this book so it has a special place in my heart.  I just like it (so there).

Not that this is going to be a particularly well thought out or even academic series of blog entires.  I might stray into that territory, but this is really not meant to be viewed as anything beyond an Austen fangirl pratting about (and procrastinating over her own writing; Jane would so approve).  And in lieu of that, I'm going to be keeping track of certain things in each chapter - it could be a drinking game except I think the first one could lead to alcohol poisoning.

- Catherine gets something wrong
- Every time I want to hit John Thorpe
- Every time I want to pounce Henry Tilney
- All name checks of other novels
- Gothic convention is turned on its head
- Catherine gets something right

As can possibly be told from the above, I've read this book a few times, so there will be spoilers in the posts.  I'm going to be working from Project Gutenburg's copy of the novel, because, while I own a hard copy, I hate going from book to screen and back again; it's just a kerfuffle.  Am pretty sure that's how I destroyed my original copy of the book while doing my dissertation.

A full list of these posts can be found either on the 18th Century page above or using the C18: Northanger Abbey tag.