Thoughts on Rereading Mansfield Park

(Before I dive into the post proper, I want to apologize for being so scarce in the blogging world of late and being so shamefully remiss in commenting and whatnot. My semester is finally concluded, and I have high hopes of finally getting all caught up on that.)

I just finished rereading Mansfield Park (by Jane Austen, don’t you know; you might have heard of her, she wrote a book or two), and boy. What a ride. I think this might actually be one of my favorites of her books – it is shamefully underrated, in my opinion. Obviously I had Thoughts as I was reading, so I’m going to do a not-super-structured post talking about particular things that stood out to me on this reread.

~ The character interactions and conflicts are just so well set-up in this. Character stuff is one of my favorite things in stories, and this was just so delightful. It was downright engrossing; I had trouble tearing myself away from the story. I also do think her writing style had developed more by the time she wrote this one; not that I’m saying any of her books are bad (or that any of them are less than very good, in fact), but I think MP is probably just plain better written than some of the others.

~ I think this is the most moralistic of Jane Austen’s books (perhaps part of why it’s not one of the most popular). I usually like subtlety in such things, but at the same time I also found it quite refreshing to have such open and forthright discussions about religious and moral questions, in to have our heroes unequivocally championing high principles. Since in some of Jane’s other books she’s poking fun at examples of bad clergymen, I wonder if she wanted to make it clear in MP that she only ridicules those who are bad shepherds of the flock, and not the office itself.

~ I was thinking about a classic Hollywood dream cast as I was reading. I have several ideas…Joan Fontaine would be good as Fanny, I think.

And Rita Hayworth must be Mary Crawford. I got that idea before I started my re-read, and she’s been subtly replacing my mental image ever since (something which very rarely happens to me). I could hear her reciting the lines as I read them.

But more about my Mansfield Park dream cast in another post.

~ SPOILERS Speaking of Mary, I felt like her characterization may have subtly shifted throughout the book…not like a deliberately written character arc, but like Jane Austen just adjusted her character a bit to make her more unlikeable and to make it more clear Edmund shouldn’t have married her. It’s hard for me to reconcile the Mary who was shocked at Mrs. Norris insulting Fanny and spent the whole evening afterwards talking with Fanny and trying to comfort her with the Mary who is slyly intimating that it would be a blessing for everyone if Tom Bertram would just die and leave Edmund as the heir of Mansfield. END SPOILERS

~ Something that rubbed me the wrong way the first time I read Mansfield Park is that I feel like there’s a sort of snobbishness in how Fanny’s home in Portsmouth is presented as compared to Mansfield Park. While part of Fanny’s extreme discomfort at being in Portsmouth is due to her mother and father’s utter indifference to her, a large part of it is simply due to the fact she considers everything very unrefined and coarse and – to be quite blunt – beneath her. It rather felt – to me, anyway – that this was presented as the sort of inevitable way of things – that the poor relations would inevitably be indifferent and vulgar and the rich relations would inevitably be superior and to be preferred (even though many of them were also indifferent to Fanny and morally no superior than the crowd at Portsmouth). And as aforementioned, all that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe I’m just misreading this, though.

~ I liked Edmund much more than I remembered. I think people who dismiss him as boring and stupid and not worthy of Fanny are underrating him. He is a very upright, principled, compassionate sort of fellow who truly cares about Fanny – and while his affection for Miss Crawford sometimes makes him neglect Fanny’s comfort, he’s always appalled and furious with himself when it comes to his attention that he’s done this. And although he would probably deny it, he actually does have a bit of a dry, understated sense of humor that I quite liked.

SPOILERS ‘TILL THE END

That being said, though, Edmund and Fanny’s relationship doesn’t quite sit right with me. Edmund really fills the part of an older brother to Fanny throughout a large portion of her childhood. Jane Austen makes a point of mentioning more than once that Fanny’s opinions, tastes, judgment, &c. are all pretty much directly from Edmund. And while that wouldn’t bother me if their relationship eventually evolved into something which felt more equal…it doesn’t. As it is, it feels like Fanny retains a position of…I don’t know, almost of inferiority, of dependency on Edmund. Her position relative to him feels more like a little sister’s relationship to her older brother than what a husband and wife’s reciprocal dependency and trust in each other should look like. (Not at all to say, by the way, that Fanny is actually inferior to Edmund – she isn’t, especially in the common sense department.)

I think this overall impression is probably aided by the fact that about eighty percent of Edmund’s conversations with Fanny throughout the book are very one-sided unburdenings of his romantic issues onto her. We love you, Edmund, but seriously.

~ I also felt intensely, intensely, frustrated by the Henry Crawford plot this time around. I so wanted Henry to persevere and become the good person that he was starting to become. I absolutely think it was possible for him to really change, ad that it wasn’t inevitable that he fall back into his old ways – in fact, Jane Austen pretty much tells us outright that he would have continued on his good trajectory if he hadn’t allowed himself to fall into the temptation of staying in London to meet Mrs. Rushworth, and furthermore that if Edmund had married Mary, Fanny would have eventually quite willingly married a reformed Henry. And to be quite honest, I emotionally would have preferred the story to end with Fanny marrying a reformed Henry. Henry is despicable in the first half of the book, don’t get me wrong, but I downright like him in the second half of the book. He was able to recognize Fanny’s true worth, for one thing, and having done that, he was really willing to change and to put in real work to make himself worthy of her. His downfall is so heartbreaking to me because Jane Austen makes it clear that it’s not the case that he was just never serious about changing; he was, and he still wanted Fanny and all the truly good things she represented. But one moment of weakness led him back down the wrong path again and caused him to lose his hope of real contentment, and I find that absolutely tragic.

(Of course, if Fanny married Henry, I suppose that would mean that Edmund would marry Mary, and I don’t like that idea anywhere near as much. I don’t see them being happy together for long – I think it’s likely that before too long Edmund would find out how deceived he was as to Mary’s character and become very disillusioned. But it would be really interesting to see them work through their issues together, wouldn’t it? We don’t see anywhere near as much potential for change in Mary as in Henry, but I firmly believe she has it in her if she dug for it hard enough.)

Anyhow, that’s enough rambling from me for one sitting. Have you read Mansfield Park? Any ideas for my dream cast? What are your favorite Jane Austen books?