review of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park
May. 1st, 2007 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingI'd been meaning to read Mansfield Park for a few years now, both because I like Jane Austen exceedingly, and because I wanted to be able to say that I'd read all six of her novels. Now I have. *grin*
There are no real spoilers in the following review/reaction, but I thought I'd cut it for courtesy.
It's certainly an interesting book -- I can see why a lot of people don't like it, and why other people think it's her masterpiece. It's much quieter than Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility, but that's an observation, not a criticism. I confess I do think Fanny Price can be a bit of a drip, but she's still a rounded character, a real person. She remains true to herself and her ideals all the way through the book, and at her key personal sticking point, she doesn't knuckle under, no matter how much she might want to.
I like the way Austen draws careful moral distinctions, and the way she contrasts Mansfield Park with 'high society' in London. I like that Mary and Henry Crawford aren't necessarily bad people, but that their thoughts and actions are shaped by the environment in which they grew up. The way Edmund and Mary, or Henry and Fanny, run up against subtle but profound differences in their basic assumptions about the world fascinates me.
Finally, I like that while I started the book thinking "Oh, of course Fanny and Edmund will end up married," by about halfway through I was beginning to strongly second-guess myself. And, you know, Edmund Bertram can be a bit of a self-righteous bore and walk all over Fanny without quite realizing it, whereas Henry Crawford is charming, intelligent, and capable, and he genuinely does love Fanny. (Okay, to be scrupulously fair, Henry walks all over Fanny a couple times in his own right. People walking all over Fanny is kind of a running theme.) Anyway, until the very last few chapters, I couldn't make up my mind which of them I wanted to 'win,' especially because I kind of like Edmund and Mary together as well, and clearly Henry can't marry her. *grin* I like that uncertainty; it rings very true to life.
On a mostly unrelated point, I cannot for the life of me figure out why Sir Thomas Bertram is not miserably unhappy in his marriage. Clearly he's getting something out of that relationship (aside from sex; this is Austen so we pretend sex is not a factor), but he and Lady Bertram seem as bad a mismatch as Mr. and Mrs. Bennett. In Pride and Prejudice, you get the clear sense that Mr. Bennett knows he married badly and, aside from his children, wishes he could go back and fix the error. I don't get any such sense from Sir Thomas, even though he seems, on the face of things, the sort of man who'd want more of an equal in his wife (or at least a helpmeet instead of such a complacent marshmallow). It's a small mystery, but it nags at me.
There are no real spoilers in the following review/reaction, but I thought I'd cut it for courtesy.
It's certainly an interesting book -- I can see why a lot of people don't like it, and why other people think it's her masterpiece. It's much quieter than Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility, but that's an observation, not a criticism. I confess I do think Fanny Price can be a bit of a drip, but she's still a rounded character, a real person. She remains true to herself and her ideals all the way through the book, and at her key personal sticking point, she doesn't knuckle under, no matter how much she might want to.
I like the way Austen draws careful moral distinctions, and the way she contrasts Mansfield Park with 'high society' in London. I like that Mary and Henry Crawford aren't necessarily bad people, but that their thoughts and actions are shaped by the environment in which they grew up. The way Edmund and Mary, or Henry and Fanny, run up against subtle but profound differences in their basic assumptions about the world fascinates me.
Finally, I like that while I started the book thinking "Oh, of course Fanny and Edmund will end up married," by about halfway through I was beginning to strongly second-guess myself. And, you know, Edmund Bertram can be a bit of a self-righteous bore and walk all over Fanny without quite realizing it, whereas Henry Crawford is charming, intelligent, and capable, and he genuinely does love Fanny. (Okay, to be scrupulously fair, Henry walks all over Fanny a couple times in his own right. People walking all over Fanny is kind of a running theme.) Anyway, until the very last few chapters, I couldn't make up my mind which of them I wanted to 'win,' especially because I kind of like Edmund and Mary together as well, and clearly Henry can't marry her. *grin* I like that uncertainty; it rings very true to life.
On a mostly unrelated point, I cannot for the life of me figure out why Sir Thomas Bertram is not miserably unhappy in his marriage. Clearly he's getting something out of that relationship (aside from sex; this is Austen so we pretend sex is not a factor), but he and Lady Bertram seem as bad a mismatch as Mr. and Mrs. Bennett. In Pride and Prejudice, you get the clear sense that Mr. Bennett knows he married badly and, aside from his children, wishes he could go back and fix the error. I don't get any such sense from Sir Thomas, even though he seems, on the face of things, the sort of man who'd want more of an equal in his wife (or at least a helpmeet instead of such a complacent marshmallow). It's a small mystery, but it nags at me.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-01 10:01 pm (UTC)And Pride and Promiscuity will supply you with a Crawfordcest scene, if you so desire. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 08:41 pm (UTC)I definitely liked Mansfield Park -- Austen's language is lovely, as always, and my inner sociologist is absolutely fascinated by things like the way Austen shows Mary's lack of moral center -- but I still like Emma best.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-28 03:41 pm (UTC)From: rpowell.livejournal.com, IP Address: (170.97.167.69)
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Why did Edmund marry Fanny? Why? Austen made it clear why he had rejected Mary Crawford (even if I don't agree with those reasons). But she practically glossed over Edmund's decision to marry Fanny. Austen never revealed the details, leading to that decision.
As for Mary Crawford's lack of moral center, I can say the same about Fanny Price. Fanny makes a pretense of being morally upright and firm. But her moral center, like Edmund's, is always being undermined by her hypocrisy. Neither seemed to mind judging characters like the Crawfords for their flaws. But both seemed incapable of acknowledging their own flaws, or each other's.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-28 03:42 pm (UTC)From: edenfalling, IP Address: (74.106.22.49)
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It has been over four years since I read Mansfield Park, so I cannot provide any details in this response. Sorry. However, I do not recall being in the least unconvinced by Edmund's realization that he wanted to marry Fanny, so clearly the book works for some readers on that count, though it failed to work for you.
As for hypocrisy, I do not recall Fanny thinking that she and Edmund had no flaws, nor do I recall Edmund thinking that he and Fanny were flawless. In fact, what I remember of Fanny is a person who is not at all confident in herself and who is sure she has lots of room to improve in many, many ways. She and Edmund do think that they do better than the Crawfords on certain points that they consider important, but as I recall, they are right about that. It's just that the Crawfords do not consider those same points important, and therefore do not care about them as much. (I do admit that the horrors of theater seem utterly ridiculous to modern eyes -- really, why was acting considered bad? -- but if you take it as a given that people in that time considered it evil, you can slip into something of a period mindset. Austen is, in a way, reporting on the moral conventions and understandings of her time, and if nothing else, one can appreciate the book as a sort of sociological study, even if one disagrees with those moral conclusions.)
Anyway, clearly your impression of Fanny and Edmund differs from mine. That is fair and more than fair. One of the beauties of stories is the way we all get different things out of them. :-)