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books, compassion, Edmund Bertram, Fanny Price, Jane Austen, kindness, literature, manners, Mansfield Park, Mary C. M. Phillips, Mary Crawford, society
Sixth in a series of posts celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. For more details, open Your Invitation to Mansfield Park.
Mary C.M. Phillips writes about works by her favourite authors, Jane Austen and Edith Wharton, at Caffeine Epiphanies, and she recently co-hosted a discussion of Wharton’s life and works – including my own favourite, The Custom of the Country – at the Malverne Public Library in Malverne, New York. Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, such as Chicken Soup for the Soul, A Cup of Comfort, and Bad Austen: The Worst Stories Jane Never Wrote. Follow her on Twitter @MarycmPhil. I met Mary at the 2012 JASNA AGM in New York and have enjoyed many conversations with her about both Austen and Wharton since then. I’m very happy to introduce her guest post on Mary Crawford’s famous question about Fanny Price, “Pray, is she out, or is she not?”
“I begin now to understand you all, except Miss Price,” said Miss Crawford, as she was walking with the Mr. Bertrams. “Pray, is she out, or is she not? – I am puzzled. – She dined at the Parsonage, with the rest of you, which seemed like being out; and yet she says so little, that I can hardly suppose she is.”
Edmund, to whom this was chiefly addressed, replied, “I believe I know what you mean – but I will not undertake to answer the question. My cousin is grown up. She has the age and sense of a woman, but the outs and not outs are beyond me.”
“And yet, in general, nothing can be more easily ascertained. The distinction is so broad. Manners as well as appearance are, generally speaking, so totally different. Till now, I could not have supposed it possible to be mistaken as to a girl’s being out or not. A girl not out has always the same sort of dress; a close bonnet, for instance, looks very demure, and never says a word. You may smile – but it is so I assure you – and except that it is sometimes carried a little too far, it is all very proper. Girls should be quiet and modest. The most objectionable part is, that the alteration of manners on being introduced into company is frequently too sudden. They sometimes pass in such very little time from reserve to quite the opposite – to confidence! That is the faulty part of the present system. One does not like to see a girl of eighteen or nineteen so immediately up to every thing – and perhaps when one has seen her hardly able to speak the year before. Mr. Bertram, I dare say you have sometimes met with such changes.”
– From Mansfield Park, Chapter 5 (London: Penguin, 1985)
Let us gather up the sunbeams,
Lying all around our path;
Let us keep the wheat and roses,
Casting out the thorns and chaff;
Let us find our sweetest comfort
In the blessings of today,
With a patient hand removing
All the briers from the way.
Then scatter seeds of kindness,
Then scatter seeds of kindness,
For our reaping by and by.
– May Riley Smith
Random acts of kindness may often come from the most unlikely of characters. An ambitious social climber might have a better eye for injustice than even the most sincere clergyman. To some, Mary Crawford, the charming antagonist of Mansfield Park, is considered shallow, immoral and unprincipled. But not to me. In my opinion, Mary Crawford is the radiant beacon that the Bertram family so desperately needs, shining a light on the character of Fanny Price.
“Pray, is she out, or is she not?” asks Mary in Chapter 5. “I am puzzled. She dined at the Parsonage, with the rest of you, which seemed like being out; and yet she says so little, that I can hardly suppose she is.”
Oh those heavenly words! I vividly remember my reaction to Mary’s words when I first read Mansfield Park. “Finally,” I rejoiced. “Someone has at long last taken notice of our poor Fanny. Someone has cast a warm light onto our pathetic heroine who continues to endure in an environment of insensitive frost.” Because, truth-be-told, that entire lot of Bertrams have blinded themselves to their own acts of injustice (and one has to wonder if Sir Thomas’s mysterious Antigua connection has somehow infected the entire family psyche).
Mary’s curious (and innocent) question plants a seed that will one day bear much fruit. Random acts of kindness are rooted in love and love is not meant to wither but to grow and spread and multiply. Mary’s act is one of compassion, like Miss Temple in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre, giving the poor orphan Jane Eyre a meal after a long trip. Miss Temple, unlike others, distinctly recognizes Jane’s suffering and takes immediate action. Just as Jesus cleanses the blind beggar’s eyes (Mark 10:46-52), Mary’s Crawford’s words have a profound cleansing effect on Edmund’s eyes. Until this moment, Edmund has not been able to see clearly. He has seen Fanny as a child. He has seen her as a quasi-family member. He has not, however, seen Fanny as a woman.
Mary’s question, “Pray, is she out, or is she not?”, results in Edmund’s acknowledgment that Fanny must be treated differently. As an adult. With compassion and kindness. Soon after this revelation, Edmund announces that Fanny must also be included in the visit to Sotherton – even if it means he will have to stay behind.
He then helps to arrange Fanny’s coming-out ball – a ball her dearly-loved brother attends, and at which this heroic brother puts all the other men in attendance to shame. This shame, I believe, is what leads Henry Crawford to feel his first pang of inferiority – a feeling that only Fanny’s respect and adoration would be able to cure.
From Mary’s one small seed of kindness (even if planted unintentionally), she awakens an entire family (excluding Mrs. Norris, of course, who is pure evil) and allows Fanny Price to grow into the woman she was always meant to be.
To read more about all the posts in this series, visit An Invitation to Mansfield Park.
Sarah Emsley 
Reblogged this on Caffeine Epiphanies and commented:
Today, I’m writing over at Sarah Emsley’s blog. Please join us as we celebrate 200 years of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park!
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Mary is a complex, fascinating character, so complete that she fits no stereotypes, and always a pleasure to read. This is certainly a very charitable reading of her role in Mansfield Park, and it’s true that Mary has a social decency and a keen eye for situations that the Misses Bertram have not developed (or selfishly choose to ignore, several times).
However, I do think that this interpretation does a bit of injustice to Edmund. Mary does take a proper notice of Fanny, which Edmund sees and fully appreciates to his very end. “But she has always done justice to you,” he tells Fanny, as the only good thing he can say about his last conversation with Mary. But Mary’s role in this first conversation is more ambiguous, I think. She notices Fanny, indeed, but her question and following discussion reveal that she and Tom are caught up in the artificial, rigid social construct of being “out” or “in”. A brilliant conversationalist herself, her main reason for thinking Fanny “in” is her retiring nature: “She dined at the Parsonage… which seemed like being out; and yet she says so little, that I can hardly suppose she is.” This is an unconscious indictment of the whole system of social advancement. Indeed, Tom and Mary have a funny, brilliant conversation about the differences in a girl’s character before and after this arbitrary rite of passage, with Mary coming down on the the side of a stricter enforcement of artificiality. But Edmund refuses to have any part of it, because he knows that Fanny’s essential constancy means that her behavior will not be altered by being “in” or “out”. He says, “I believe I know what you mean, but I will not undertake to answer the question. My cousin is grown up. She has the age and sense of a woman, but the outs and not outs are beyond me.” This strikes me as Edmund taking Fanny more seriously than any other character in the book does.
Mary also says something very revealing: “I do not pretend to set people right, but I do see that they are often wrong.” Mary is astute enough to pick up on the marginalization of Fanny, but she is content to ride Fanny’s pony, even though she knows Fanny needs it. Edmund is much to blame here as well, even more than Mary, but he takes positive steps later to correct this injustice. In fact, the positive steps Mary takes in regards to bringing Fanny more notice — pushing Henry’s necklace on her, for example, or writing on Henry’s behalf — are often double-edged and unwelcome to Fanny. Mary has a kindness that is not anchored by any principles besides doing what she likes.
I also think the text supports the idea that Henry first feels shamed by William’s activity before the ball: he sees the love between Fanny and William on first meeting them (“It was a picture which Henry Crawford had moral taste enough to value” — the word “picture” is very telling here) and is fired up by William’s recounting the hardships and the adventures of his life at sea. He, like Mary with Fanny before him, does William several kindnesses as a result, but again, these kindnesses are not rooted in principle, but in Henry’s pleasure in his ability to bestow horses and the benefit of his connections on those he considers deserving.
Edmund’s promotion of Fanny’s trip to Sotherton has much deeper moral undertones than Mary’s or Henry’s kindnesses because he is actually denying himself, for Fanny’s sake, something he very much wants. Mary and Henry, for all their charming kindnesses, never attain to self-denial. This, in fact, sets Edmund apart from everyone else in the book except Fanny.
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Thanks for your thoughtful comments, MrsDarwin. I agree with you that Mary C.’s kindness isn’t anchored by principles — I think Mary P. is right that it really is random. Great point about Edmund and self-denial, too.
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“Mary has a kindness that is not anchored by any principles besides doing what she likes.” I agree. Mary Crawford isn’t cruel–she doesn’t enjoy inflicting pain for its own sake, and in a world that includes Mrs. Norris, that makes her look pretty kind. And she’s more alert to the feelings of others than almost anyone else in the novel except Edmund: she notices much of what’s happening with Fanny because she’s a noticing kind of person, and in a world that includes the carelessly neglectful Maria, Julia and Tom, that makes her look pretty sensitive. But she isn’t kind and sensitive in an absolute, rather than a relative, sense because everything she does is fundamentally motivated by selfishness. Mary helps and protects and notices Fanny a) when that helps to establish herself in Edmund’s good graces; and b) when it doesn’t require her to surrender her own comfort or pleasure. But when helping Fanny conflicts with helping Mary (or Henry, whose interests largely align with Mary’s), Crawford interests always win out.
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“…the outs and not outs are beyond me.”
This line from Edmund always makes me laugh–it so perfectly captures the male disinterest in the feminine preoccupations; surely Jane, in her household of brothers, had heard one of them express this exact sentiment before. (I had four brothers; I recognize this tone of exasperated detachment!)
Yet once Edmund is made aware by Mary’s questions, he takes action, showing he is not really selfish, just had shown a typical male insularity. And of course, as he well knew, Fanny was not that interested in being ‘brought out’. She could already converse freely with the only two males in her life she was interested in talking to.
Nice post, enjoyed the insights!
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Mansfield Park can be so funny at times — that is indeed a fantastic line about “the outs and not outs.” And yes, it’s society that says it’s important to be out, and Fanny who shows she isn’t really all that interested in that world.
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I enjoyed this post and the comments so far. I’m not in command of enough of the details of the “out/not out” conversation to have a really strong opinion.
I find I partly agree with the post. I can’t go as far as to say that Mary’s “random act of kindness was rooted in love.” It could just as easily be rooted in carelessness. Mary Crawford is a wonderfully ambiguous character, as others have noted, and it’s very satisfying to me that she does Fanny some good without particularly doing this on purpose. It’s perfectly true that good is done in the world by people who aren’t pure or who aren’t particularly paying attention to the impact of their deeds – it just gets scattered.
I can’t say her actions are rooted in real love, however, because as Mrs. Darwin shows, Mary uses Fanny’s horse without giving it a thought. Mary is not the fool that Mrs. Bertram is nor the monster that Aunt Norris is and she is alive to social issues that impact females in a way that Edmund isn’t. So, she brings some much needed light into a fusty, ingrown social arrangement.
I think one of the things we can conclude is that almost any reasonably well-disposed outsider can immediately see the neglect Fanny lives with – but those whose interests are served by it or at least not too dis-served, are blind.
But, while this says something for Mary Crawford, I think Mrs. Darwin gets at the crux of what Austen is pointing us toward: that Mary Crawford never achieves a real generosity that would cost herself something. And this is a strike against her and raises questions about how much “love” she has.
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I like the comparisons you make between Mary C. and Fanny’s aunts. Mary isn’t oblivious or malicious, but I don’t think she’s necessarily motivated by a desire to be kind, either. Her question does lead to further attentions and kindnesses for Fanny, but I agree that she doesn’t do anything that inconveniences her, either.
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Excellent observations! I love that Austen’s characters are complicated enough to discuss on so many levels.
I saw the movie, Belle, the other night and couldn’t help but think of Fanny Price. Accepted, yet not accepted. Family, yet not family.
I guest what bothers me most about the Bertram Family — and I must include Edmund to some extent — is not so much what they do, but what they don’t do.
Fanny is neglected and it’s so intentional. The pug is treated better than Fanny. I think that’s what Austen was trying to convey.
Right from the start, bringing Fanny to Mansfield Park, I believe, was a way in which Mrs. Norris might inflict pain onto her sister. An act of intentional cruelty. Taking away the oldest girl in a large family would devastate any struggling mother. How could the Bertram family be so blind as to not recognize how this would affect a poor family?
I went to a JASNA meeting a couple of years ago to discuss the first chapter of Mansfield Park and after an hour, we had only gotten through the first two pages!
I kid you not!
Oh, MrsDarwin, I love your comment, and I think we could keep this blog going all year! Very good point on Edmund willing to make a sacrifice for Fanny by not going to Sotherton.
So many layers, wonderful character layers that Austen creates for her readers. Just genius. A mixture of Mary Crawford and Fanny Price might just be the perfect heroine.
Thanks so much for your very well-written and thought-provoking comment. Hope to see your comments on future posts. Thanks again for reading. Best, Mary
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I saw Belle a couple of weeks ago and have been wondering if it will get discussed during the Mansfield year posts as some think Mansfield Park may have been named after Lord Mansfield. (it was Lord, right?) Your parallel between Fanny & Belle – accepted, but not accepted – is spot on.
I think the only intentional neglect of Fanny is on the part of Aunt Norris. I don’t mean by this to excuse Mrs. Bertram or Sir Bertram or for that matter Edmund, but they are clearly not actively malicious as Aunt Norris is.
Re: Aunt Norris. I don’t exactly think she consciously took a child to inflict pain on her sister so much as even her occasional feeble acts of kindness are thoroughly shot through with her own self-regard, dictatorial, controlling attitude and sense of her own superiority. I think she loved the idea of condescending to help her sister, the act of condescending being the chief advantage to her.
And, while the coterie at Mansfield Park suggest taking a girl, it’s not like they kidnap her. Fanny’s mother is mentioned as “surprised” that MP wants a girl not a boy, but doesn’t seem otherwise distressed. When Fanny returns as an adult, her mother can barely work up any interest in her.
I do agree with the basic attitude that the folks are Mansfield Park don’t treat Fanny as well as they should – not nearly as well. Don’t disagree with you on that.
And, you’re right. It’s one of the glories of Austen that we can talk and talk and talk about these characters and this situation!
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Have you read Paula Byrne’s book The Real Jane Austen, maidrya? She has a chapter called “The Daughter of Mansfield” that talks about Dido Belle and Fanny Price. And she’s also written a biography of Dido Belle, which was released this spring. I haven’t read it yet, but I ordered it from Jane Austen Books and I’m looking forward to reading it soon.
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I haven’t read The Real Jane Austen – not sure I knew about it. I’ll have to look into that.
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Wonderful comparison with Belle, Mary. Family, but not really family. And you’re certainly right to draw attention to the way Mary C.’s question prompts Edmund to think more carefully about the position Fanny occupies in the family. Thanks again for writing this thought-provoking piece about a key question in the novel!
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My pleasure! There’s a special place in my heart for Fanny Price. I’ve always been drawn to books with fictional orphans (Jane Eyre, Harry Potter, Lucy Snowe). Although Fanny’s not technically an orphan — as her parents are still alive — she has all the heart-tugging qualities of one.
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Mansfield Park is layered that it could take years to discuss all the nuances! And Mary Crawford is such a rich character, she might get at least six of those months. 🙂 And I’m always interested in discussion of Edmund too, because he really sits in the middle of the road for me in terms of Austen’s men. I don’t dislike him — in fact there’s a lot to admire there — but he can be very frustrating, in a very real life way. On the other hand, I’ll take Edmund any day over Edward Ferrars. But I confess I’m really a Henry Tilney partisan. He’s my all-time favorite.
You make a very good point about Mrs. Norris blithely deciding that the oldest Price daughter should come to Mansfield, regardless of the impact on the family. What makes Mrs. Norris so mundanely awful is that I don’t think there’s any deliberate malice in her choice of Fanny. It’s just another project to her. She always has to have some improvement in hand, and uprooting children from their homes, no matter how neglectful the home or beneficial the change, is an appalling way to exercise Mrs. Norris’s spirit of activity. She can’t just do, she has to do in the most officious, self-aggrandizing way possible.
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I hate to get into defending Aunt Norris – God forbid! – however, the idea of taking a child off Mrs. Price’s hands is clearly to give some economic relief and that seems to be how it’s understood by Mrs. Price as well. Her thoughts on the matter, as reported by Austen, are simply that she’s surprised they offer to take a girl instead of a boy. And, as I said above, it’s not like Fanny is kidnapped. Mr. and Mrs. Price could have objected if they felt it would do something terrible to the family.
The negative impact was on Fanny, in terms of the neglect she had to endure. However, Austen clearly seems to want us to understand that, all things considered, Fanny’s benefits in improved education and circumstances at Mansfield Park slightly edge out the neglectful and sometimes cruel treatment she received.
I’m not a real student of early 19th century living conditions, but from my casual acquaintance it seems to me that this is not that unusual a situation. The Prices had more mouths than they could feed. Also, Aunt Norris isn’t the only one in on this: Sir Bertram & Mrs. Bertram agree to the scheme. It never would have happened if Sir Bertram hadn’t footed the bill. And, unlike Aunt Norris, Sir Bertram carefully weighs the responsibility he’s undertaking.
That said, I agree completely that Aunt Norris is all about self-aggrandizement (excellent diagnosis!) in whatever she does, including supposed charitable acts. She is a real monster. It’s a brilliant, vivid portrait of the malice available in so-called respectable society.
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Henry Tilney is definitely a charmer! He may be my 2nd choice, with dashing Captain Wentworth my first.
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Maidrya, I agree about Mrs. Norris intending to bring economic relief to the Prices. A lot of her schemes are beneficial on paper — she’s a born improver. But her improvements are impulsive, just whatever comes into her head as a new project that she can manage, and she doesn’t think through any repercussions. Sir Thomas actually does consider the repercussions and the obligation he’s incurring, and can see that it is a correct obligation, one that he can and should incur. Mrs. Norris just tosses stuff out there to see what will stick. (Whenever I reread the bit where she thinks that William just ought to go see Maria and Rushworth at Brighton, or maybe she’ll ride to Portsmouth with them, I wince, because I know someone who is exactly like this, tossing out whatever idea sounds good at the time with no thought of feasibility or consequences. I think Austen must have known someone like this too, because it’s just too true.)
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Great post!
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Thanks for commenting, Elaine! I’m glad you enjoyed Mary’s post. I’m quite sure we’ll never run out of things to say about Mary Crawford and Fanny Price. Looking forward to the discussions about Henry Crawford when your piece on “moral taste” appears, a couple of months from now.
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How old is Mary? She seems so adult compared to the Bertram sisters and Edmund.
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Good question. I did a quick search and can’t find an age given for Mary C, although it may be somewhere. Maria is 21 when she becomes engaged to Mr. Rushworth, which is a few months before the Crawfords arrive. Fanny is 18.
Mary C definitely seems more sophisticated. She may have a year or two on Maria or maybe it’s all that time she spent in London.
Another thought on Mary C came to me as I was looking for her age. She has a very similar attitude toward matrimony as does Charlotte in P&P. “There is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry…it is a manoeuvering business. I know so many who have married in full expectation and confidence of some one particular advantage in the connexion or accomplishment or good quality in the person, who have found themselves entirely deceived and been obliged to put up with exactly the reverse. What is this but a take in?” Could not Charlotte have said that?
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I don’t know how old Mary is, either, but I think you have an excellent point, maidrya, about the influence of London. I expect it doesn’t matter so much whether she’s 18 or over 20 — it’s that she’s grown up in an environment very different from the one at Mansfield. Actually, I suppose it isn’t just London, it’s also her uncle’s house and the society he keeps. (Stay tuned for Devoney Looser’s guest post on Mary C.’s line about “Rears” and “Vices” in a couple of weeks….)
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Some fantastic comments here! I’ve always thought it ironic that that the Crawfords, who are not known for their morality, are about the only people aside from Edmund who really appreciate Fanny’s good qualities.
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I agree, Ceri. I love how this makes both Mary and Henry Crawford more complex.
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So very happy to see some vindication of Mary Crawford! She is an intelligent observer who enjoys “light and lively” talk about what she sees around her. Her good nature may be careless, but I wonder if it stems from a certain delicacy as well. After all, I’m sure none of us would like to see Mary officiously patronizing Fanny in the manner of the insufferable Mrs. Elton. Mary has seen more of society and is in the habit of watching and judging what happens around her, much like Fanny in a way, except Fanny is obviously more sheltered and does not often comment on what she sees. Fanny and Mary are both the true observers of the society around them. They can see what the others cannot. Mary is not within the Mansfield family, so her power to act on what she sees is limited. Fanny is powerless within the family, so she also cannot act on what she sees. I view these two characters as two very different variations on a type, the type who sees and understands what is happening around her. I so enjoyed this article, and the comments, too!
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You bring up a very good point in Mary and Fanny both being “true observers.” Both are able to recognize beauty and Mary recognizes that quality in Fanny.
Very soon after this particular scene, Mary is joining the Bertram family for dinner and expecting it be a “very flat business” with the absence of Tom.
However, Fanny adds so much to the conversation when she says, “Cut down an avenue! What a pity!” citing Cowper’s poem — and then quoting from the poem. Mary (most likely impressed) recognizes that Fanny is the one at the table who appreciates beauty (in nature and poetry) and Mary, in turn, recognizes and appreciates beauty in the person of Fanny Price.
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Didn’t see anywhere else to put this – in Slate yesterday, there was an article on critique’s Austen got for Mansfield Park! Fanny Knight (I don’t know who that is) wanted more love between Fanny & Edmund. It’s amusing and intriguing how their feedback mirrors much of the conversation that continues to this day.
P & P wins out over MP, but I think that’s understandable, even if not absolutely right. P & P has such a gleam, it’s bound to put even deserving work in the shade.
Here’s link to Slate:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2014/06/18/jane_austen_the_novelist_s_collected_critiques_from_friends_and_family.html
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Fanny Knight was Jane’s niece, her brother Edward’s daughter. Edward had been adopted by rich relatives and had taken their last name, Knight.
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Thanks for the link to Slate, maidrya. I know what you mean — it’s fascinating to see the same opinions of Mansfield Park echoed by today’s readers. No surprise that P&P usually wins. And there’s that perpetual frustration with the absence of the romance between Fanny and Edmund.
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In so many small ways, Mary does Fanny good, drawing her out of her inferior position in the family. The friendship seems so promising initially. Mary opens a door onto the world outside the privileged and tradition-steeped life of the Bertrams. Yet those who venture through that door are corrupted.
To me, Mary is a fascinating conundrum; too modern for the world of rural gentility yet with a generous heart. I often wonder what became of her. She is cast out harshly at the end of Mansfield Park. Both she and her brother are among Austen’s most complex characters and I wonder if an older Jane would have revisited them.
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Yes, I’ve often wondered myself what became of Mary Crawford. I picture her living somewhere in high society; playing her harp, as charming as ever, but never really finding true happiness.
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Yes, Austen doesn’t really pronounce Mary Crawford’s fate, other than “she was long in finding among the dashing representatives, or idle heir-apparents…[someone to] put Edmund Bertram sufficiently out of her head.”
“Long” doesn’t mean never. But, maybe I’m being more hopeful than Austen means.
There is some hint of mercy on Mary in that she does have the “true kindness” of her sister’s heart to count on and some possible rehabilitation of Mary’s character in that she “had had enough of her own friends, enough of vanity, ambition, love and disappointment…”
So…maybe after a long time Mary can find a way to let go of her cynicism and social ambition and embrace a simpler, more authentic set of values. Maybe.
We’ve already said this, but Mary does turn out to be the most fascinating character. It’s clear from Austen that she has a good temperament, she has good understanding – but alas, short on principles or integrity, especially as understood at the time.
There may be other posts in which it will be appropriate to mention this, but as I was re-reading the comments on Aunt Norris and Mary C, one contrast between the two stood out: Mary C, not particularly altruistic, nevertheless does Fanny some good and at least does her justice in understanding her worth. Aunt Norris, forever trumpeting her own altruistic motives, does Fanny nearly daily injury.
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Maybe someday Mary Crawford might even come to appreciate life in the country…. I agree that she’s complex and fascinating, and I like the contrast with Mrs. Norris, who is fascinating partly because she’s consistently unkind.
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