September 5, 2015
I was reading this book while reading The Dark Tower, so I crawled through the first half of it. I've been able to finish it more quickly since finishing the last one. I've now read all of Jane Austen's novels, and I must say that it's my least favorite of her works. While most of her others are considered timeless classics, especially Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park simply doesn't stand the test of time, for a number of reasons.
The biggest issue here is Fanny Price, our protagonist. Inevitably, I find myself comparing all of Austen's heroines to Elizabeth Bennett. Elizabeth is an easy character to root for because she's bold. She stands up for herself and her family, she does what she feels is right without too much regard for societal expectations, and she is smart. Fanny is almost her exact opposite. She's not dumb, but she's otherwise timid, dull, and ultra-virtuous. She's got a stick up her ass, too, and in spite of her sweetness, she's tough to like.
Fanny has rich relations, Lord and Lady Bertram, but her own parents are white trash. Apparently in Austen's time, even white trash families with too many kids can afford a servant or too, negligent though they may be. The Bertrams offer to take 10-year-old Fanny in to give her folks a little financial relief, and the main story finds us a few years later. Fanny isn't mistreated by her extended family in any respect, but there's a distinction between her and her cousins. Her other aunt, Mrs. Norris (I'm pretty sure that Filch's cat from the Harry Potter series was named after her) is a real bitch to Fanny, constantly putting her in her place. Nobody at Mansfield is very fond of aunt Norris, but she's always around.
If I didn't enjoy this particular story, I still have to admire the characterization. Lady Bertram is an interesting character. She's lazy, selfish, but not cruel-hearted. She's not outwardly affectionate to Fanny, but does love her. Lord Bertram is supposed to be this formidable figure, but he isn't half bad, and any neglect of Fanny prior to her coming of age was probably due to her being so quiet and submissive that he just never noticed her while he had four other children to attend to. There isn't a villain in this story, per se, but rather a distinction between the rational and the foolish. But it's Fanny being seen as the rational one here that bothers me...she's just so outdated in her values.
Take the whole play situation. Their cousins and some friends wanted to have a little fun, and while Lord Bertram was abroad they decided to put on a play. Yeah, the fact that Maria was flirting with another man in front of her fiancé was fucked up, but Fanny was a stick in the mud about the whole production right from the start. When Lord Bertram arrived home early and put the kabosh on the plan, it was acknowledged by several involved that Fanny had been right. Urg. Lighten up.
Fanny was right to spurn Henry Crawford's repeated attempts to woo her, but not totally for the right reasons. She saw that he was a player long before he actually noticed her, but he might have gotten through that barrier with his attentions and sincerely decent qualities were it not for one thing. Fanny had long been in love with her cousin Edmund.
Okay, I get that cousins getting married wasn't exactly frowned upon in Austen's time. But throw in the fact that Edmund isn't a great character himself, and it's just bad chemistry all around. It just now strikes me that the boy who slept with his cousin in How I Live Now was named Edmond...another reference? Anyway, Edmund pays Fanny attention when no one else does, and she worships him. But while he's a fuddy duddy himself, he's also easily swayed. Hey, he's a man, and he falls for pretty Mary Crawford. I like her, personally, but she was all wrong for Edmund. She thought he was a good person, but she made fun of the fact that he would soon be a clergyman, and since Tom was the oldest Bertram he'd get the title and estate, Edmund wouldn't make enough money to maintain her lifestyle. I think there's nothing wrong with her recognizing that.
So Fanny and Edmund end up together at the end of this slow drag of a story. I would have liked to have seen growth from Fanny, and it bothers me that the message of the story is that she didn't need to grow. Edmund patronizes her, and will continue to do so for the rest of her life. And she'll love it, and she'll listen to him talk about himself all the time, and happily ever after. Yuck. While I was never a huge fan of Mr. Darcy, I can now appreciate the way he grew as a character and smile at the thought of the challenging marriage he and Elizabeth surely had. I don't believe I'll ever think of Fanny Price again. She might appreciate that anyway; she never much liked attention.
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