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books, Fanny Price, Fiction, Jane Austen, literature, Lynn Shepherd, Mansfield Park, Mansfield Park 200th anniversary, plot
Thirty-fifth in a series of posts celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. For more details, open Your Invitation to Mansfield Park.
Today’s guest post is by Lynn Shepherd, award-winning author of Murder at Mansfield Park and three subsequent literary mysteries, The Solitary House, A Fatal Likeness, and The Pierced Heart, inspired respectively by Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, the lives of the Shelleys, and Bram Stoker’s Gothic classic Dracula. All four of her novels have received Kirkus stars. You can visit her website and follow her on Twitter @Lynn_Shepherd.
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.
My Fanny, indeed, at this very time, I have the satisfaction of knowing, must have been happy in spite of everything. She must have been a happy creature in spite of all that she felt, or thought she felt, for the distress of those around her. She had sources of delight that must force their way. She was returned to Mansfield Park, she was useful, she was beloved; she was safe from Mr. Crawford; and when Sir Thomas came back she had every proof that could be given in his then melancholy state of spirits, of his perfect approbation and increased regard; and happy as all this must make her, she would still have been happy without any of it, for Edmund was no longer the dupe of Miss Crawford.
***
Henry Crawford, ruined by early independence and bad domestic example, indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded vanity a little too long. Once it had, by an opening undesigned and unmerited, led him into the way of happiness. Could he have been satisfied with the conquest of one amiable woman’s affections, could he have found sufficient exultation in overcoming the reluctance, in working himself into the esteem and tenderness of Fanny Price, there would have been every probability of success and felicity for him. His affection had already done something. Her influence over him had already given him some influence over her. Would he have deserved more, there can be no doubt that more would have been obtained, especially when that marriage had taken place, which would have given him the assistance of her conscience in subduing her first inclination, and brought them very often together. Would he have persevered, and uprightly, Fanny must have been his reward, and a reward very voluntarily bestowed, within a reasonable period from Edmund’s marrying Mary.
– From Mansfield Park, Chapter 48 (www.mollands.net)
I first read Mansfield Park for my school leaving exams, so this is a novel that has been with me for the best part of 30 years. I’d read Pride and Prejudice before that, and I remember thinking, even then, that Mansfield Park was a very different animal. Pinning down exactly why it was so different was rather more puzzling. Mansfield Park does, after all, have the same “boy-meets-girl” love story at its heart, and the usual obstacles to the fulfilment of that love, whether social or self-imposed. So why do we find Mansfield Park so hard to like? As I have blogged elsewhere, the real problem with Mansfield Park is not its story, but its heroine. As Lionel Trilling famously opined, “Nobody, I believe, has ever found it possible to like the heroine of Mansfield Park.” And since even Austen’s mother found Miss Price “insipid,” this is not entirely down to a modern prejudice against heroines who sit on the sofa rather than get up and go. Nor is the hero much help – since Edmund has “formed her mind and gained her affections” she now, as Austen admits, “think[s] like him,” so we can hardly blame Fanny if she comes over as her cousin’s mini-me. But the result is rather a case of the bland leading the bland: as Kingsley Amis said (in one of my favourite quotes about the novel), “to invite Mr and Mrs Edmund Bertram round for the evening would not be lightly undertaken.”
So where am I going with this, and how does it relate to the two passages I have chosen?
The short answer is that I think Austen knows. Knows her aim to write a more serious novel has not quite come off, knows that her heroine is hard to like, and knows – most importantly – that she has wrenched the trajectory of her own plot to ensure Fanny gets her man.
You can see this, in the first of the two passages, in her reference to her heroine as “my Fanny.” No other heroine of hers is ever accorded the honour of the possessive pronoun, not even Elizabeth Bennet. And then, in the second passage, we have perhaps the most flagrant authorial mea culpa ever written. What’s fascinating about this paragraph is its adoption of the conditional tense: what would have happened. In other words, Edmund marrying Mary, and Fanny marrying Henry Crawford. Because that, after all, is the natural conclusion towards which the whole novel was tending. Despite Austen’s concerted campaign to weigh the scales against Mary Crawford, Edmund was most definitely in love with her, not Fanny, and even Austen admits that Henry Crawford had done enough to win over the punctilious Miss Price in the end. The momentum towards this ending is so strong, in fact, that only a juggernaut can stop it. And that’s what Austen is forced to supply. A deus ex machina plot device that is frankly unworthy of her: a completely implausible and (for Crawford) emotionally illogical elopement, which all takes place hugger-mugger out of view of the reader, because – I believe – even Jane Austen doesn’t think she can present those scenes to us and expect us to believe them.
And this is followed, shortly after, by the passage in which Jane Austen waves a magic wand and asks us to accept that the man who has only 20 pages ago referred to Fanny as his “only sister” has undergone a complete volte-face and fallen in love with her. “I only intreat every body to believe that [it was] exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier.” Sorry, Jane, I love you dearly, but even I don’t buy that one.
These two passages are like the ghost of another novel, which was struggling to get out, and suffocated by its author for reasons of her own (and I have speculated about that, too). That ghost novel would have been much more like Pride & Prejudice – much more “light and sparkling,” and with another heroine entirely. That ghost first took shape when I was 18, and haunted me for years after. So much so, in fact, that I was eventually inspired to sit down and try to write that book myself. The result? Murder at Mansfield Park. And the rest, as they say, is history….
To read more about all the posts in this series, visit An Invitation to Mansfield Park. Coming soon: guest posts by Elisabeth Lenckos, Sheryl Craig, and Ryder Kessler. This week, in honour of Jane Austen’s birthday, there’s one post per day.
Subscribe by email or follow the blog so you don’t miss these fabulous contributions to the Mansfield Park party! Or follow along by connecting with me on Facebook, Twitter (@Sarah_Emsley), or Pinterest.
Sarah Emsley 
At last! Someone reads this as I do. Thank you! Leslie
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Great minds! 🙂 It’s surprising how many of us there are out there!
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“What’s fascinating about this paragraph is its adoption of the conditional tense: what would have happened. In other words, Edmund marrying Mary, and Fanny marrying Henry Crawford. Because that, after all, is the natural conclusion towards which the whole novel was tending.”
Actually, no, if you think so, you don’t get the book and I’m afraid that you don’t really get Jane Austen either.
“Despite Austen’s concerted campaign to weigh the scales against Mary Crawford, Edmund was most definitely in love with her, not Fanny, and even Austen admits that Henry Crawford had done enough to win over the punctilious Miss Price in the end. The momentum towards this ending is so strong, in fact, that only a juggernaut can stop it. And that’s what Austen is forced to supply.”
Edmund is indeed in love with Mary, but love is blind and he fails to see Mary’s true character but keeps justifying her actions. I can see that lots of people like and prefer Mary and criticise Jane Austen for “punishing” a character so similar to Elizabeth Bennet, but their similarities are superficial. Charming, vivacious and witty indeed, Mary is however selfish, egoistic, insensitive, amoral, frivolous, shallow, mercenary, self-indulgent, insincere, manipulative… That’s where she differs from Jane Austen’s heroines such as Marianne Dashwood, Emma Woodhouse, Elizabeth Bennet…, each has flaws but all of them mean well.
About Henry, he cannot win over Fanny, because her attitude has always been clear “I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman’s feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.” She does acknowledge his intellect and some improvement, but knows him too well to trust him.
“A deus ex machina plot device that is frankly unworthy of her: a completely implausible and (for Crawford) emotionally illogical elopement, which all takes place hugger-mugger out of view of the reader, because – I believe – even Jane Austen doesn’t think she can present those scenes to us and expect us to believe them.”
There’s nothing surprising about the elopement- it’s neither implausible nor emotionally illogical. Don’t forget that at the beginning of Mansfield Park he flirts with Maria and Julia at the same time. Even if the elopement with Maria doesn’t take place, Henry is likely to do something as bad, because that’s how he is, and people don’t change. He’s attracted to Fanny only because, unlike most women, she resists him and doesn’t care about him, and as it happens in life, the more determined she is in her refusal, the more curious and attracted he gets, and he does change his manners and, I would say, tactics, but he doesn’t become a different man. He’s the same type as George Wickham, William Elliot, etc.
“And this is followed, shortly after, by the passage in which Jane Austen waves a magic wand and asks us to accept that the man who has only 20 pages ago referred to Fanny as his “only sister” has undergone a complete volte-face and fallen in love with her. “I only intreat every body to believe that [it was] exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier.” Sorry, Jane, I love you dearly, but even I don’t buy that one.”
You don’t, but I do, and I’m not alone. A similar thing happens in Emma. There are different kinds of love, and this is 1 of them. Their love is a settle-down thing.
“So why do we find Mansfield Park so hard to like? As I have blogged elsewhere, the real problem with Mansfield Park is not its story, but its heroine.”
It’s my favourite Austen novel. In fact it’s the book that “converted” me. The best thing Jane Austen does here is that she shatters the bad boy ideal, and shatters the illusion some women have that unreliable men who toy with women’s feelings can change and become better- that rarely happens. Jane Austen’s attitude and views on men, love and relationships have always been clear, throughout all of her novels.
And why does she call Fanny “my Fanny”? I believe there are 2 main reasons. 1st, she is like Fanny at least in the sense that she “cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman’s feelings”. It is too careless to dismiss the whole novel by saying that Jane Austen simply distrusts charming guys. 2nd, she knows well that there are lots of people who dislike Fanny (who is extremely different from Elizabeth Bennet, whom everyone loves) and prefer Mary (after all she makes us see her from Edmund’s point of view, makes us complicit). Mansfield Park is her greatest and most complex novel in terms of characterisation and psychology, and often misunderstood. You’re just mistaken.
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Lynn, I never previously understood what the premise of your book was, it sounds VERY interesting, I am going to read it!
I gather that yours is a sequel to MP, in which we hear of what happens long after the action of MP, is that so? My idea of the “shadow story” of Mansfield Park focuses on the action of MP in real time, but it sounds like we are on the same page, if you are making Mary Crawford a heroine!!! Check out some of my recent blog posts about Mary, which relate to the presentation I made at the JASNA AGM in October, and just reprised here in Portland 2 weeks ago:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/09/mary-crawford-paraphrases-doge-and.html
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/11/mary-wollstonecrawfords-palpable-verbal.html
Let me know what you think!
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
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At long last a post I can agree with! 🙂 I think you’re right, why would JA “entreat” us “to believe” that Edmund’s become “anxious to marry Fanny”? She’s not even convinced herself, otherwise she would have written a proposal scene that would have left us with no doubt.
The “truth” is in the previous chapter: ‘Mr. Bertram,’ said she. I looked back. ‘Mr. Bertram,’ said she, with a smile; but it was a smile ill-suited to the conversation that had passed, a saucy playful smile, seeming to invite in order to subdue me; at least it appeared so to me. I resisted; it was the impulse of the moment to resist, and still walked on. I have since, sometimes, for a moment, regretted that I did not go back.”
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Hello Lynn, and thank you for a very interesting post. But there are a couple of points I’d like to raise:
“In other words, Edmund marrying Mary, and Fanny marrying Henry Crawford. Because that, after all, is the natural conclusion towards which the whole novel was tending.”
I don’t know I’d entirely go along with that. Yes, Edmund is clearly attracted to Mary, but they are not kindred spirits: Edmund is introspective, and despite not fully understanding himself for much of the novel, is capable of self-reflection; Mary, on the other hand, isn’t. This is why “Mansfield Park” could *not* have been like “Pride and Prejudice”: Elizabeth Bennet and Mary Crawford seem to me very dissimilar characters. Elizabeth, for all her wit and sparkle, is capable of self-reflection: Mary isn’t. (Howard Jacobson argues this point persuasively here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/10077004/Hay-Festival-2013-Howard-Jacobson-on-the-wonders-of-Austen.html . )
It further seems to me that Fanny is capable of depth of feeling, and also of depth of thought, and that Mary is capable of neither. There is about Fanny a Wordsworthian romanticism, but Mary seems utterly incapable of responding to it. (I argue this point here: https://argumentativeoldgit.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/mansfield-park-by-jane-austen/ )
“…even Austen admits that Henry Crawford had done enough to win over the punctilious Miss Price in the end.”
Once again, I’m not sure that he does. Austen, as you yourself observe, writes in a conditional tense: “Could he have been satisfied…”, “could he have found…” etc. The “if” is implied: *If* he could have been satisfied, *if* he could have found … But the point is, he couldn’t. Henry has never in his life needed to exercise self-restraint, and he is unused to it; so, when the opportunity of an affair with Maria presented itself, it was beyond his powers to resist. He clearly *hadn’t* done enough to win over Fanny.
Neither am I sure that “deus ex machina” is the correct term to describe the turn the plot takes towards the end. “Deus ex machina” refers to a god-like figure with authority who uses that authority arbitrarily to put everything back in order. It may refer, by extension, to a plot device that arbitrarily puts everything back into order. You are, clearly, using the term in the latter sense. But everything *isn’t* put back into order by the end: there’s happiness for Fanny and for Edmund, yes, but everyone else’s life is in tatters. It’s a very ambiguous ending. And further, there is nothing at all arbitrary about the plot development that leads to this: quite the contrary – the adulterous affair between Maria and Henry has been foreshadowed throughout the novel.
And neither does Edmund undergo “a complete volte-face”: he has always loved Fanny – as is made quite clear in the episode where he buys Fanny the neckchain – but hadn’t truly understood his own feelings. Not understanding one’s own feelings is a typically Austenite theme: Catherine Morland, Mariane Dashwood, Elizabeth and Darcy, Emma Woodhouse (and arguably) George Knightley … none of these people truly understand their own feelings until near the end. Edmund quite clearly belongs to this category. The final scene between Edmund and Mary – where he sees her for the immoral vulgarian that she is – is superb: it is not possible for Edmund to continue loving Mary once his eyes are opened.
For me, “Mansfield Park” is a comedy, but it’s a very sombre comedy – a very different kind of novel, I think, from the bright and sparkling “Pride and Prejudice”.
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Thanks so much to the Howard Jacobson link. He is brilliant on Austen!
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Sorry to disagree, but with a man such as Henry Crawford, a flirt with few if any moral standards, it is almost inevitable that he gets involved in a scandalous relationship with someone. I, personally, am glad that it is not Fanny Price. The only question in my mind whenever I read the novel is whether it will be Julia or Maria that he compromises. Although, admittedly, Maria is a much easier target, as her morals would not bear close examination either.
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This was a very interesting and thought-provoking post. It addresses something I believe I’ve commented on in other posts in this Mansfield Park anniversary series.
I agree with the post in that to me, Tom Crawford’s love for Fanny and conversion of heart and mind is presented very convincingly. And, the narrator basically tells us that his attraction to Fanny is sincere. Perhaps his character hasn’t become fixed in this new mode of virtue, but what started as his attempt to ensnare Fanny has resulted in his own ensnarement. I’m not sure Austen says exactly that, but something close to it. We are invited to think that he is for real.
However, Crawford’s subsequent fall from grace isn’t presented convincingly. It’s told very quickly and, as this post points out, from a distance. It’s all summary and reporting – we do no first-hand witnessing of little events, such as when Crawford reads Shakespeare and Fanny is delighted, despite herself. It’s very hard, under this circumstance, not to see Crawford’s re-version as a convenient plot device. And I, for one, even though I’m inclined to bow to Austen’s stated authorial intentions, find it unsatisfactory.
I also agree with the post that there’s something not quite logical about the elopement from Crawford’s point of view. That he wants to seduce, Maria, that I believe. But, why should he run away with her? Yes, the truth of the infidelity will get back to Fanny and ruin his chance there, but why should he oblige himself to someone he doesn’t love? If his old morals are back in place, this seems to be the last thing he’d do. It is very hard to see what he gains by an elopement and the old Tom Crawford was all about what he’d gain.
So, there is this sense that the novel has been wrenched towards the author’s desired ending. I don’t think I have that feeling with any other of Austen’s novels.
I don’t think, however, that there’s a “bright and sparkling Pride & Prejudice ghost” hiding in the background. Although your argument, Ms. Shepherd, is interesting and I mean to read your novel!
I don’t know if I can make the case compellingly, but I think that instead MP is, at its heart, a tragedy. But, a tragedy decked out in Austen’s standard boy-meets-girl costume and plot line. Which makes for an odd sort of reading experience. We are looking for Pride and Prejudice and we get King Lear.
The tragedy is, primarily, Sir Bertram’s and, in a larger sense, the tragedy of Mansfield Park and a way of life itself. Of course, Austen never took a male, especially an older, long-married, head of household male, as her protagonist. So, we see it through the eyes of the “good daughter,” Cordelia, I mean Fanny!
I know I’m not the first person to suggest this and I certainly don’t mean that the novel parallels Lear in every point. But, if the novel is about the downfall of a family, to me, the various plot points start to fall into place – even if they are not executed completely convincingly.
Thinking of MP in this way gives me a much greater appreciation for the novel. I’m not looking for the pairing of Elizabeth and Darcy – or any of Austen’s other pairings – as the novel’s main goal. The novel’s main goal, in this case, is to meditate on the dangers to a virtuous way of life: 1) the absentee negligence of Sir Bertram (and, in a different way, Lady Bertram) and 2) the selfish ambitions of the Crawfords, the Bertram girls and Aunt Norris.
Fanny and Edmund are almost incidental. After the other characters have destroyed themselves with their falsehood and chicanery, the two virtuous cousins pick up the pieces. (Well, Tom Bertram gets to be reformed.) This makes for a dull romance.
However, I don’t think that Austen could have countenanced anything except affirming the virtuous rural way of life and shunning the falseness of worldly society. So, I’m not sure what happened…if, in spite of herself she was having so much fun writing Tom Crawford that she couldn’t help but find ways to turn him into a worthy suitor? Then, after he got away from her, she had to wrench it back? (I like Ms. Shepherd’s characterization of this as an authorial “mea culpa.”) In this sense, maybe there’s this “ghost of Pride and Prejudice” – Austen can’t help herself!
The moral is: these two characters have been ruined by corrupt society and they will, in turn, ruin whatever they touch. They despoil the landscape. It’s a bit heavy-handed, but it seems to me that’s where Austen is determined to drive and the romance must fit itself in as it can. That’s why, I don’t think, at its core, that this is a romance. It just looks like one.
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It’s the difference between really loving and being “in love.” Henry Crawford was “in love” with Fanny, but nevertheless could not resist what he perceived as a challenge, so he ran away with Maria. Edmund already genuinely loved Fanny, but didn’t fall “in love” with her until Mary made the mistake of saying Maria’s only mistake was getting caught. Once he was shocked out of being in love with Mary, Edmund could realize that he loved Fanny. Austen is deeply cynical in this novel about the idea of being “in love” as opposed to the kind of love that builds slowly.
The novel is about peer pressure as much as anything else.
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