Yesterday, I finished reading Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Shockingly, it took me over a month to read it! I don’t know what’s got into me, I’m being so slow at the moment – not good for an English student who has to read two novels a week…
Here are my thoughts on it.
I actually really enjoyed it. I get the sense that it’s one of the less popular of Austen’s novels, but I think it’s up there somewhere near the top for me. I think my favourite is Northanger Abbey – I love the satirical nature to it; and when I read it the first time, I was 17 (the same age as Catherine) and studying the Gothic genre at school. It was very pertinent to me at the time, and I liked Catherine as a heroine because she was not perfect, and she made stupid mistakes.
It might perhaps seem that my attachment to Fanny Price in Mansfieldis strange, if I say that I like Catherine because she isn’t perfect: I think most readers would agree that of all Austen’s heroines, Fanny is the closest to being perfect of them all. Except perhaps Anne Elliot; but she was persuaded against her own judgement in former years, and Fanny never is.
Nevertheless, I really, really like Fanny. I think she’s quite underrated as a heroine. Because of our modern times, and our altered perceptions of women, I think she is considered particularly weak. I’m not going to argue that she’s a resolutely strong character: on the contrary, she is excessively timid and nervous, to the point where even I got annoyed sometimes. But what sticks with me is her refusal to marry Henry Crawford. For her time, that would have been an incredibly daring thing to do. She goes against her uncle – the patriarch, who is used to having his orders obeyed – her aunts, her friend Mary, and even Edmund. What also needs to be considered in this context is her timidity: being a person who only wishes to please and help others, the emotional turmoil in upsetting all these people must have been awful for her, which makes her refusal to go back on her decision all the more admirable.
From some of the critical analysis I’ve read this week - I’m doing the novel for one of my modules, and have had to read loads in preparation for writing my essay on it – I’ve seen some views saying that Fanny is very much a silent character. She is an observer and a thinker rather than an active protagonist. Whilst this is interesting in a main character – the plot often seems to move around her, and for most of the book she is the one constant in an ever-changing social scene – there are some passages which contradict this. When she thinks to herself, she can be incredibly passionate. Her soliloquies betray the emotion which her countenance does not. There’s a bit where she mentally lectures Henry Crawford for his enthusiasm about the play, which she judges to be wrong, and her voice is so clear in her head, so unrestrained, that it’s far more effective than dialogue would have been. It shows the reader that, whilst the others don’t perceive her to be at all sensitive, she is in fact more passionate than even Maria and Julia seem to be. The only difference is that she is the real lady, and is hiding her true feelings.
I like the comparisons between Fanny, Maria and Julia. Even though Fanny is the discarded cousin, the charity case, she rises to greater esteem in the eyes of the others by the end, and evens the social gap by marrying Edmund. It’s a shame that this was her only means of becoming their equal. She’s undoubtedly intelligent, as the discourses on education and literature frequently betray, but this serves nothing for women of the early 19th century. In fact, this is partly what my essay’s going to be about: the importance of women’s education in this text and one by Mary Wollstonecraft called Maria: or The Wrongs of Woman. But I won’t get into that now. I’ll just say that I think the relationship between class and education with women is surprising. To me, it almost seems like in terms of education, women are classless, as they are all taught that they must marry. That is their only goal in life, no matter what class they’re from. However, Fanny’s particular situation means that she’s been taught only to serve and think of others, and no one regards her as enough of a human being to actually think about her marrying. Maybe that’s why she’s the only female brought up in the house who actually turns out well.
But I’m rambling. I’m sorry, I think there were some generous splashing of verbal vomit in there somewhere. I’m basically trying to say that I’m a Fanny Price fangirl, and I think she deserves much more credit than a lot of people give her. If Mansfield Park had been given a modern-day setting, Fanny would be kicking ass right now.
