Free
Will to Pervert Goodness:
The
Problem of Evil in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park
By Edea A. Baldwin
Submitted to Dr. Ralph C. Wood in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for REL 4300
Baylor University
Waco, TX
November 28, 2001
Introduction
When readers and critics discuss
novelist Jane Austen, or “Our Dear Jane,” as the most popular Austen website[1]
refers to her, the problem of evil rarely enters the conversation. Though written in an environment of
political unrest, Austen’s six completed novels deal only with wealthy young
men and women who attend balls, “take turns” in their drawing rooms, and come
to know themselves. Austen crafted her
novels with precision and irony, filling them with heroes, villains, and fools
who reveal themselves in clever dialogue narrated with merciless honesty. Most of her novels are, as she wrote of Pride
and Prejudice, “light & bright & sparkling.”[2]
In the spring of 1814, however, a
young lady might have picked up a new novel “by the author of Pride and
Prejudice.” She might have expected
to meet another heroine like Elizabeth Bennet, who in two hundred years would
be regarded as one of the most beloved characters in fiction. She may have anticipated laughing at another
ridiculous clergyman like Mr. Collins, frowning at another villain like Mr.
Wickham, or daydreaming about another hero like Mr. Darcy. Thinking of Pride and Prejudice,
which had been published the year before and was still quite vivid in her mind,
she might purchase this new book with the expectation of finding the same
lively dialogue that moved as quickly and gracefully as a country dance.
This lady might arrive back at her
town house and start reading. She would
find a witty first line—not an overtly funny one like that of Pride and
Prejudice, but one that might make her smirk. And like the opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice, this
sentence was about money. Reading
further, however, the young lady would gradually begin to wonder if this book
were indeed “by the author of Pride and Prejudice.” Did the same ironic pen that produced Mr.
Collins also bring to life Edmund Bertram, this stodgy clergyman who appeared
to be the hero of the book? How could
the creator of Elizabeth Bennet also introduce this insipid girl—apparently the
heroine—Fanny Price? By the time she
reached the end of the book, the lady might wish for the easy enjoyment of the
previous novel, for this one left her baffled.
She couldn’t decide if the good characters were good, or if the bad
characters were bad.
In place of Lydia Bennet, a silly
flirt who inspired no sympathy, there was Mary Crawford. The young lady would not have used the term
“three-dimensional” when thinking of Mary’s character, but she might have wondered
how a character could leave her so confused.
Mary was much like Elizabeth Bennet, yet the author had given her a bad
end. Henry Crawford was nothing like
the cad George Wickham—yet he, too, was made a villain. Henry might have troubled the young lady
especially, as she had read the book with every expectation of his redemption,
only to find a rather unbelievable twist in the last few chapters. As for the “hero” and “heroine,” she might
not have had much use for them. They
did not interest her; in fact, they rather annoyed her. Edmund Bertram and Fanny Price were not
characters that she would like to meet.
The
Problem of Mansfield Park
Many readers since 1814 have closed Mansfield
Park with a dissatisfied frown and a feeling that they have been cheated,
though some of the first readers praised the morality of the book. Austen collected opinions of Mansfield
Park and recorded the following comments—the fact that she saved some of
these remarks attests to her sense of humor:
Mr. Cooke called it “the most
sensible Novel he had ever read” . . . Mrs. Augusta
Bramstone—owned that she thought S&S. and P&P. downright nonsense, but expected to like MP. better
. . . Mr. Egerton the Publisher— praised
it for it’s (sic) Morality, & for being so equal a Composition . . . Mrs. Lefroy—liked it, but thought it a
mere Novel.[3]
However,
some of Austen’s friends and relatives had different things to say. Her brother Edward objected that Edmund was
too “cold & formal,” and that Henry’s elopement was “unnatural”; her niece
Fanny Knight was “not satisfied with the end,” and her mother “thought Fanny
insipid.”[4] Austen herself, four months before she died,
wrote to Fanny Knight, “Pictures of perfection as you know make me sick &
wicked.”[5] Was she thinking of Fanny Price and Edmund
Bertram?
Jane Austen certainly never wrote
another book like it, but Mansfield Park was an important step for her
for several reasons. It was the first
novel that she wrote as a mature woman.
As she wrote Mansfield Park, she was enjoying the immense
popularity of the novel of her youth, Pride and Prejudice. She had just left the city of Bath, which
she hated, and had come to live in the country with her mother and sister in a
cottage that belonged to her wealthy brother.
Furthermore, Austen had not written for more than ten years, excepting a
very brief (and very dark) fragment called The Watsons. Scholars have long speculated on this “dry”
period, most concluding that she was too unhappy to write. She missed her old home at Steventon
parsonage, and her beloved father died.
When she began Mansfield Park ten years after composing her
youthful novels, Austen was also long past the age of expecting that she might
marry. While a hopeful and giddy young
woman penned the ridiculous Love and Freindship (sic), the wicked Lady
Susan, and the dashing Mr. Darcy, a very different woman created Fanny Price
and Edmund Bertram. Margaret Drabble
writes,
[Mansfield Park’s] narrator
makes some very brave and difficult choices . . . she is deliberately flying against the tide of her own
rising popularity . . . she is
consciously tackling an almost impossible artistic problem. She could
have repeated her first “bright and sparkling” success . . . In creating Fanny Price she knows that
she herself, like her stubborn heroine refusing
to join in the play, will be unpopular.[6]
Austen would soon lighten her tone
and produce what is arguably her greatest novel, Emma, but in Mansfield
Park, she is at her darkest and most confusing. After spending her childhood among people who were always putting
on private theatricals, she condemns her own characters for doing the
same. After bringing to life her most
popular heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, she condemns Mary Crawford for being very
much like Elizabeth. Some readers
question whether the ending is, in fact, a “happy” one. Finally, in the pages of Mansfield Park,
Austen most closely approached the problem of evil, though she clothed her dark
subjects, as she always did, with comedy.
She had dealt with adultery before, in both Sense and Sensibility
and Pride and Prejudice, but never the adultery of a married person,
much less a married woman. [7] She would never deal with the subject
again. In Mansfield Park, Austen
places obscure references to slavery, providing a field day for later
“post-colonial” scholars.[8] Austen ventures even to put a very dirty
joke into the mouth of Mary Crawford, a pun about “rears and vices” in the
Navy. What was Jane Austen trying to
accomplish with Mansfield Park, and did she succeed? Mansfield Park is the firmest
available statement of Austen’s theology:
While she agrees with Augustine on the nature of evil as a “nothing”
that perverts and feeds on the good, Austen makes clear her belief in free will
over determinism.
Austen’s
Religious Background Reflected in Mansfield
Park
Before Austen’s theology in Mansfield
Park can be addressed, important points of her religious background must be
understood. Modern scholars do not
speak of Austen’s spirituality or religious beliefs, as if they are embarrassed
that she was a Christian. They smile at
her brother’s eager assurance that “She was thoroughly religious and devout;
fearful of giving offence to God . . . her opinions accorded strictly with
those of our Established Church.”[9] Austen scholars do not dwell very much on
the religious remarks in her letters, nor her few prayers, which are usually
published with her unfinished novels and juvenilia. However, to ignore Austen’s spirituality and the few hints given of
her theology is to miss some of the most important themes in her novels—none so
much as Mansfield Park, her most “moral” and exasperating work:
It is, quite simply, the problem of
good and evil. Mansfield Park is
her Pilgrim’s Progress,
with Edmund and Fanny, the Christian hero and heroine,
fighting their way through temptation towards a not very clearly defined goal. There is no Celestial City for them.[10]
Though it may be nothing more than a
simple coincidence, the novel prominently features all of the “seven deadly
sins”: lust (Henry and Maria’s affair), greed (Maria, Mary, Mrs. Norris), sloth
(Lady Bertram), gluttony (Dr. Grant), vanity (Maria, Julia, Henry, Rushworth,
Yates), envy (Maria, Julia, even Fanny), and wrath (Mrs. Norris). Granted, specific appearances of the word
“evil” refer more often than not to a postponed ball or a dull conversation, as
in this humorous example:
Mr. Rushworth wished he had brought
the key; he had been very near thinking
whether he should not bring the key; he was determined he would never come without the key
again; but still this did not remove the present
evil.[11]
Austen was the daughter of a country
clergyman, but she did not put all clergymen up on pedestals. There is at least one clergyman in each of
her six major novels, and some would argue that not one of them represents his
calling well.[12] While she was writing Mansfield Park,
Austen wrote to her sister: “Now I will try to write of something else;—it
shall be a complete change of subject—Ordination.”[13] In general, Austen presents the position of
the clergyman as an occupational option for gentlemen, rather than a serious
calling. Austen knew full well that
people disapproved of her portrayals of clergymen: “[Mr. Sherer] was displeased
with my picture of clergymen,” and a lady “thought it wrong, in times like
these, to draw such clergymen as Mr. Collins and Mr. Elton.”[14] What can be said of Austen’s mostly negative
portrayals of clergymen? Without much
knowledge of Austen’s life, one might jump on the psychological bandwagon and
theorize that Austen was releasing negative emotions toward her father. This, however, is simply not the case. Austen adored her father, who supported her
literary efforts. It was he who
provided her with expensive ink and paper from the time she was twelve. He gave her free access to his library,
which included “shocking” literature of the day, such as Tom Jones and Sir
Charles Grandison. He never
discouraged her from writing what she wanted to write, which was admirable for
an eighteenth-century clergyman whose teen-aged daughter was creating wicked,
even violent, comedies and adulterous heroines like Lady Susan Vernon. George Austen was the one who first tried to
publish his daughter’s writing, sending to a publisher the manuscript of First
Impressions, which would later become Pride and Prejudice. He was truly “an exceptional father to his
exceptional daughter.”[15] Austen created faulty clergymen because she
was a realist, and she knew that no clergyman is better than the people around
him.
In many ways, Austen was a Stoic,
much like her heroines Elinor Dashwood and Anne Elliot. She would have applauded the idea that “Men
are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things.”[16] Most of her fools are caricatures of
excess—consider Nancy Steele, Charlotte Palmer, William Collins, Mr. Rushworth,
Mrs. Elton, Miss Bates, John and Isabella Thorpe, and Mary Musgrove.
As a member of the Church of England, Austen would have opposed
Calvin’s teaching and affirmed “salvation by a combination of true faith and
good works, free will and divine grace.”[17] In fact, her novels do “lack the sense of
inevitability or determinism found in both reformist novels and many
didactically religious novels of the period.”[18] In Mansfield Park, a shy girl with a
drunken father and a lazy, irresponsible mother comes to replace Sir Thomas
Bertram’s natural daughters, so that his “object of almost every day was to see
her.”[19] Fanny’s rise to a position of relative power
stems soley from her own integrity and virtue.
As for Henry and Mary Crawford, Austen never lets the reader doubt that
their downfall was a result of their choices.
Austen’s strong belief in free will will be addressed further below as
part of the main discussion of her view of evil.
Recently, scholars have explored
Austen’s changing views of the Evangelical movement. She writes quite frankly to Cassandra in 1809, “I do not like the
Evangelicals,”[20] but five
years later, she sends some love advice to her niece:
As to there being any objection from
his Goodness, from the danger of his becoming
even Evangelical, I cannot admit that.
I am by no means convinced
that we ought not all to be Evangelicals, & am at least persuaded that they who are so from
Reason & Feeling, must be happiest and
safest. . . . Don’t be frightened by the idea of his acting more strictly up to the precepts of the New Testament than
others.[21]
The
Evangelical movement had its beginnings in the early eighteenth century, when
John Wesley started a campaign against laxity in the church. Of the 10,533 livings in England in 1827, at
least 6,000 clergymen did not actually live in their parishes, leaving the
spiritual care of the people to curates (one is reminded of the criticism of Northanger
Abbey’s Henry Tilney).[22] Wesley’s message, originally for the poorer
classes, gradually filtered up to the middle class, where it took the form of
the Evangelical movement, whose members remained with the Church of England.[23] The Evangelicals leaned toward Calvinism,
and disapproved of frivolity; their distaste of anything sexual would take firm
root in the Victorian mindset. Their
counterparts in later literature are grim, including Angel Clare in Tess of
the D’Urbervilles and the Murdstones in David Copperfield. Clare and Murdstone are preceded in
literature by a more positive Evangelical portrait, Jane Austen’s own Edmund
Bertram of Mansfield Park.
Austen apparently agrees with the
Evangelicals that clergymen should be more involved with the people of their
parishes—specifically, that they should make their residences in the parishes
they serve. Edmund states, “I have no
idea but of residence,” and his father agrees:
A parish has wants and claims which
can be known only by a clergyman constantly
resident . . . He knows that human nature needs more lessons than a weekly
sermon can convey, and that if he does not live among his parishioners and prove himself by constant attention their well-wisher and friend, he does very little either for
their good or his own.[24]
While
Edmund does have right feelings about the serious duty of a clergyman, he also
represents to modern readers the original criticism of the Evangelical
movement. Edmund is too quick to judge
everyone, from his own sisters to his guests, and he comes across as an
insufferable prude.
One more brief background discussion
is necessary before the problem of evil in Mansfield Park can be examined. Austen’s opinion of slavery is not exactly a religious belief,
but fits better under this category for the purpose of this presentation. Though Austen never stated directly that she
was opposed to slavery, there are several subtle hints in her novels that she
was no supporter of the institution. In
Emma, Mr. Elton marries an Augusta Hawkins of Bristol. Bristol, in Austen’s period, was a slave
port, and Hawkins was the name of a notorious slave trader. In her novel fragment Sanditon, left
unfinished when she died, Austen introduces one of the first ethnic characters
in English literature, a mulatto woman named Miss Lambe. Finally—and most pertinent to this
discussion—some scholars suggest that Austen named her third novel for the
Mansfield Decision, named for the Lord Chief Justice who nullified the property
rights of slave-owners to their slaves living in England. Far more fascinating, the story of the Earl
of Mansfield strongly parallels Mansfield Park. In the 1780s, the Earl adopted his
great-niece Elizabeth Murray, as well as her illegitimate biracial cousin, Dido
Elizabeth Belle. Dido lived as a member
of the family and was raised in the manor house. In the Earl's will, she
received a lifelong annuity, and he reaffirmed her emancipation. In 1794, Dido left the estate to marry a
clergyman.[25]
Jane Austen had strong opinions
about religion and politics, in spite of the fact that they do not seem to
appear obviously in her novels. Austen
came closest to stating her beliefs in Mansfield Park, tackling slavery,
the Evangelical movement, and the concept of free will, among other
things. Her firmest theological
statement in the novel, however, is her subtle lesson on the Augustinian nature
of evil, using the three-dimensional, sympathetic, and tragic characters of
Henry and Mary Crawford.
Augustine and
the Problem of Evil
A brief overview of Augustine’s
(354-430) theology must be incomplete.
For the purpose of this discussion, it is most helpful to focus on some
of Augustine’s main points regarding the problem of evil. Because God is infinite, Augustine believed
that evil must be literally nothing.
Otherwise, evil would be a substance, and God would have to be
limited. All substance, then, is
necessarily good:
If they shall be deprived of all
good, they shall no longer be. So long therefore as they are, they are good:
therefore whatsoever is, is good. That evil then, which I sought whence it
is, is not any substance: for were it a substance,
it should be good.[26]
For
Augustine, evil cannot exist without good; evil is like a parasite that feeds
on something good and perverts it.
Therefore, “a flaw can exist only as a damage or fault in a good
nature.”[27]
The
Problem of Evil in Mary Crawford
Suppose there is a novel about a
young woman named Mary Crawford. She is
intelligent, witty, lively, sometimes rash, and very sensitive—another
fictional character named Elizabeth Bennet comes to mind. Mary, as an orphan, has been raised by her
uncle and aunt. The uncle does not have
much use for her, but the aunt adores her.
Mary grows up under their care, no doubt observing the affair that her
uncle makes no attempt to conceal from his wife. When Mary’s aunt dies, she is devastated to lose one of the few
people who loved her and cared about her.
To make matters worse, her uncle throws her out of his house so that his
mistress can finally come to live with him.
Mary doesn’t know where she can go; her brother has a great estate, but
does not offer to let her live there.
Fortunately, her sister, the wife of a clergyman, invites Mary to stay
with them. Mary meets a wealthy family
close by. Disillusioned by what she has
so far seen of marriage, she is determined to marry someone rich—namely the
older son of the wealthy family, who stands to inherit the great estate. Her plan fails, however, when she falls in
love with the younger son, a serious man whose only ambition is to be a clergyman. He treats her with kindness and respect,
unlike her uncle. Mary also learns to
love the young, shy cousin who lives with the family, though the cousin never
returns her warmth. Mary is delighted
when her brother appears to fall in love with the cousin, even though the girl
is very poor. The cousin refuses Mary’s
brother, however, and he elopes with a married woman. Mary is upset, but is determined to remain faithful to her
brother, whom she loves unconditionally.
The clergyman she loves tells her that he wants nothing more to do with
her because she does not condemn her brother.
Mary goes to London, miserable and alone, and there the book ends.
Mary Crawford, along with her
brother Henry, is one of the most troublesome characters in fiction—and one of
Jane Austen’s finest creations. She
quickly commands the reader’s affection, though that affection turns to
sympathy (and occasionally anger) over the course of the novel.
Crucial to evaluating Mary’s
character is an understanding of the anger and hurt she feels regarding her
uncle. Admiral Crawford and his wife
raised Henry and Mary; the Admiral favored Henry, while Mrs. Crawford loved
Mary. Admiral Crawford made no effort
to hide his mistress from his wife, and when the latter died, he turned Mary
out of his home to make room for the mistress.
Mary was doubly wounded, therefore, by both the death of her aunt (in
effect, her mother) and the loss of her home.
Mary does not disguise her opinion of the Admiral. She tells Edmund and Fanny coldly, “I have
been . . . little addicted to take my opinions from my uncle.”[28] When Henry decides to propose to Fanny, Mary
says passionately, “If I could suppose the next Mrs. Crawford would have half
the reason which my poor ill-used aunt had to abhor the very name, I would
prevent the marriage, if possible.”[29] Edmund and Fanny, always hasty to judge,
criticize Mary for speaking ill of her uncle; they go so far as to suggest that
Mrs. Crawford—who had to stand by while her husband carried on a blatant
affair—did not teach Mary a proper respect for her uncle! Fanny begins,
“She ought not to have
spoken of her uncle as she did . . . I could not
have believed it!”
“I thought you would be
struck. It was very wrong—very indecorous.”
“And very ungrateful I
think . . . Do not you think that this impropriety
is a reflection itself upon Mrs. Crawford, as her niece has been entirely brought up by her? She cannot have given her right notions of what was due to the admiral.”
“That is a fair remark. Yes, we must suppose the faults of the niece to have been those of the aunt.”[30]
Scarred by her unhappy past, Mary
nevertheless entertains those around her with her brightness and humor. Apart from Edmund, she shows more concern
for Fanny than anyone else at the Park.
When the Bertrams distress Fanny by insisting that she join their
theatricals, Mary goes to sit by Fanny and comforts her. Mary also has the moral intuition to
recognize the bad effects of her uncle on Henry:
My dearest Henry, the advantage to
you of getting away from the Admiral
before your manners are hurt by the contagion of his . . . You are not sensible of the gain, for your
regard for him has blinded you; but, in my
estimation, your marrying early may be the saving of you. To have seen
you grow like the Admiral in word or deed, look or gesture, would have broken my heart.[31]
Tragically,
Mary’s happiness at Henry’s “saving” himself with Fanny Price will be
short-lived; by the end of the book, she will see her brother “grow like
the Admiral,” and both Henry and Edmund will break her heart in their different
ways.
But there is a dark side to Mary, in
whom Austen “diagnoses a moral disorder that, because less under conscious
control, is both more alarming and more pitiful.”[32] Edmund himself recognizes the tragedy of
Mary: “This is what the world does. For
where, Fanny, shall we find a woman whom nature had so richly endowed?—Spoilt,
spoilt!”[33] Mary’s darker side is the very evil that
perverts her good nature and good intentions.
Mary does make some frightening statements:
There is not one in a hundred of
either sex, who is not taken in when they marry
. . . it is, of all
transactions, the one in which people expect most from others, and are least honest themselves.[34]
What is to be done in the
church? Men love to distinguish
themselves, and in either of the
other lines, distinction may be gained, but not in the church. A clergyman is
nothing.[35]
Mary wants to do good, but her
actions are often twisted into evil. In
trying to help her brother win the heart of Fanny Price, Mary tricks Fanny into
accepting a necklace that Henry bought, telling her that it was a gift from
herself. Really believing that she did
the right thing, she later tells Fanny, “I was delighted to act on his
proposal, for both your sakes.” Fanny,
however, cries, “Oh! Miss Crawford, that
was not fair . . . had I had an idea of it, nothing should have induced me to
accept the necklace.”[36]
In spite of Mary’s past and her
twisted attempts to do the right thing, Austen never lets the reader forget
that Mary’s unhappy end comes as a result of her own choices. There is no hint of determinism or
fate. Mary provides a bit of sad foreshadowing
during a card game when she exclaims, “There, I will stake my last like a woman
of spirit. No cold prudence for me . .
. If I lose the game, it shall not be from not striving for it.”[37]
Mary Crawford walks away from
Mansfield Park as a tragic character, but Austen’s final words about Mary keep
the door open for future happiness.
Readers who sympathize with her may well hope that she will eventually
choose goodness over the bitter
cynicism that corrupts her judgment:
Mary . . . was long in finding . . .
any one who could satisfy the better taste she
had acquired at Mansfield, whose character and manners could authorise a hope of the domestic
happiness she had there learnt to estimate.[38]
The
Problem of Evil in Henry Crawford
With Henry Crawford, Jane Austen created one of “the most
compelling and complex evildoers” [39] in fiction. Because of Henry, some scholars call Mansfield Park an
artistic failure. Austen introduces
Henry as a rake; he spends the first volume of the novel flirting with both of
the Bertram sisters, eventually setting them against each other. He leads Maria Bertram to believe that he
will propose to her, and he never does.
Upset, Maria consents to marry the idiotic, wealthy Mr. Rushworth, even
though her father kindly offers to free her from the engagement. Henry then tells Mary of his next amusement:
My plan is to make Fanny Price in
love with me . . . I cannot be satisfied without
Fanny Price, without making a small hole in Fanny Price’s heart . . . Her looks say, “I will not like you,
I am determined not to like you,” and
I say, she shall.[40]
Mary,
genuinely concerned for Fanny, tells Henry not to make her “really unhappy,”
for though “a little love perhaps may animate and do her good, . . . she
is as good a little creature as ever lived, and has a great deal of feeling.”[41] Henry begins to try to capture Fanny’s
attention, but she has never liked him.
In his efforts to make a conquest of Fanny, Henry falls “rationally as
well as passionately”[42]
in love with her and decides to propose.
Fanny refuses him, of course, angering Sir Thomas Bertram, who sends her
home to Portsmouth. Henry goes to visit
her there, giving her and her crude family every kind attention. At this point in the story, the reader feels
that “every cynical remark of Henry’s is balanced by some act of generosity or
evidence of a well-judging intellect.”[43] He leaves Fanny to visit Mary, and Austen
creates a plot twist which scholars have debated hotly ever since. Henry meets Maria Bertram (now Rushworth)
again, and they run off together in “a piece of standard fictional delinquency,”
suggesting “rather less commitment to this part of the story on Austen’s part.”
[44] Chapman explains the problem eloquently,
though he doesn’t agree with it:
Henry Crawford was designed as the
villain, came to life as a sympathetic
character, and was driven back to
sinful courses by an arbitrary use of his author’s
prerogative.[45]
Instead
of a warm story of redemption, Austen gives her readers a cold tragedy. Not only does Henry’s foolish and wicked
behavior cost him a chance at Fanny’s hand in marriage (which, Austen tells the
reader, “must have been his reward—and a reward very voluntarily bestowed”[46]),
but it also leads to Mary’s separation from Edmund, whom she really loved. Jane Austen knew that she had disappointed
people; her favorite brother—Henry, incidentally—didn’t understand why Henry
Crawford had run off, and her sister begged her to change the ending, but she
remained firm. It is a great injustice to suggest that Austen, who joked that
“an artist can do nothing slovenly,”[47]
lost control of her plot and finished her fourth novel with an ending which
dissatisfied her. Chapman agrees:
It is a common view that Jane Austen
vacillated, finally cutting the knot with
the blunt razor of elopement and adultery.
I cannot bring myself to accept
this. If Jane Austen had made such a
muddle of a book I think she must
have known it; she was incapable of self-deception.[48]
Like his sister, Henry constantly
creates evil out of potentially good acts.
He brings about the promotion of Fanny’s beloved brother, William, but
does it chiefly to make Fanny feel obligated to him. Therefore, he gives Fanny the news of her brother’s advancement
in the navy and follows immediately with his first marriage proposal.
As with Mary, Austen also makes
clear that Henry’s downfall is a result of his conscious, irresponsible
choices. In one especially poignant
scene, Henry reflects on the virtuous William Price, wishing he were like him,
and then quickly deciding that he doesn’t want to change:
His heart was warmed . . . The glory
of heroism, of usefulness, of exertion, of
endurance, made his own habits of selfish indulgence appear in shameful contrast; and he wished he had been a
William Price . . . instead of what he
was! The wish was rather eager than
lasting . . . he found it was as
well to be a man of fortune at once with horses and grooms at his command.[49]
Conclusion
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.[50]
Some scholars believe that the
Crawfords are the true hero and heroine of Mansfield Park, while Edmund
and Fanny are ironic characters. One
essay compares Fanny to the monster Grendel from Beowulf![51] In none of her other novels does Jane Austen
take readers into the points of view of her villains—not a single sentence—but Mansfield
Park contains entire chapters devoted to the Crawfords. Austen may be providing a hint that the Crawfords
are not terrible villains, but genuinely good young people who go astray.
Austen actually leaves little doubt
as to whose side she supports. The
narrator of Mansfield Park refers to Fanny as “my Fanny”—the only one of
Austen’s heroines to have this distinction.
With all their faults, Edmund Bertram and Fanny Price are the
hero and heroine of the novel. Henry
and Mary Crawford, clever and amusing and sympathetic as they are, nevertheless
serve as Austen’s somber warning that evil can subtly undo people with the
highest potential.
Bibliography
Augustine, The
Confessions and The City of God.
Translated by Marcus Dods. In Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 18.
Edited by Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: William Benton, 1952.
Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. In The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen. 7 Vol.
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[1] The Republic of Pemberley website, run by a volunteer committee, hosts sixteen discussion boards, texts of Austen’s six novels and minor works, and the largest Austen information page on the internet. The main page can be reached at http://www.pemberley.com.
[2]Jane Austen, “To Cassandra Austen, 4 February 1813,” in Jane Austen’s Letters, 3rd ed., ed. Deirdre Le Fay (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 203.
[3] Jane Austen, “Opinions of Mansfield Park,” Minor Works, in The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen, vol. 3, 3rd ed., ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 433-4.
[5] Jane Austen, “To Fanny Knight, 23 March 1817,” in Jane Austen’s Letters, 3rd ed., ed. Deirdre Le Fay (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 335.
[7] Austen did deal with an adulterous woman in her early epistolary novel, Lady Susan. The title character, Susan Vernon, is one of the most wicked and fascinating characters Austen ever created, but the story was not published until decades after Austen’s death.
[8] Emma also contains a subtle reference to the slave-trade, and Austen’s unfinished novel, Sanditon, introduces one of the few mulatto characters in nineteenth-century literature. These and the Mansfield Park reference will be further discussed below.
[9] Henry Austen’s “Biographical Notice of the Author” appeared in the first editions of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, which were published together posthumously in 1818. Quoted from Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, in The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen, vol. 5, 3rd ed., ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 8.
[10] Jane Aiken Hodge, Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen (Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Premier, 1972), 181.
[11] Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, in The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen, vol. 3, 3rd ed., ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 98.
[12] In Sense and Sensibility, Elinor Dashwood marries Edward Ferrars, who wants to be a clergyman. Edward has high principles, but Austen portrays him as rather a weak, dull man. Pride and Prejudice introduces one of the finest comic creations in literature, Reverend William Collins. Obsequious and stupid, Collins loves to read from Fordyce’s Sermons as he tries to win the affections of whichever Bennet girl will bestow them first. In Mansfield Park there are three clergyman. The first, the unfortunate Mr. Norris, dies before the reader gets any idea of his character. The second, Dr. Grant, is often criticized by his sister-in-law Mary Crawford for being a lazy glutton, and Mary’s assessment is on the mark. Finally, there is Edmund Bertram, the “hero” of the story; Edmund, however, gives one the impression of being an unforgiving prig. In Emma, Austen created the Reverend Philip Elton, a bad-natured man who marries a wealthy, vulgar woman. Austen came closest to introducing a positive clergyman in Northanger Abbey with the charming, lively, and intelligent Henry Tilney, one of her most delightful male characters. Some have pointed out, however, that Henry is a little flippant about his occupation and sometimes relies on his curate more than he ought. Finally, in Persuasion, readers meet the poor clergyman Henry Hayter, though Austen does not reveal much of his personality.
[13] Jane Austen, “To Cassandra Austen, 29 January 1813,” in Jane Austen’s Letters, 3rd ed., ed. Deirdre Le Fay (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 202.
[14] Jane Austen, “Opinions of Emma,” in The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen, vol. 6, 3rd ed., ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 437.
[16] Epictetus, The Enchiridion, trans. Thomas W. Higginson (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1948), 19.
[17] Gary Kelly, “Religion and Politics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, ed. Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 149.
[20] Jane Austen, “To Cassandra Austen, 24 January 1809,” in Jane Austen’s Letters, 3rd ed., ed. Deirdre Le Fay (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 170.
[21] Jane Austen, “To Fanny Knight, 20 November 1814,” in Jane Austen’s Letters, 3rd ed., ed. Deirdre Le Fay (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 280.
[22] Daniel Pool, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 118.
[25] Irene Fizer, Natural Daughters: Illegitimacy and Cultural Production in the British Novel, 1778-1816, (University of Pennsylvania, 1996), 37.
[26] Augustine, Confessions VII.xii.18, trans. Marcus Dods, in Great Books of the Western World, vol. 18, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago: William Benton, 1952), 49.
[27] G. R. Evans, Augustine on Evil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 100. See also Augustine, The City of God XI.17: “Wickedness can be a flaw or vice only where the nature previously was not vitiated.”
[32] Thomas R. Edwards, “The Difficult Beauty of Mansfield Park,” in Modern Critical Interpretations: Mansfield Park, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987), 7.
[47] Jane Austen, “To Cassandra Austen, 18 November 1798,” in Jane Austen’s Letters, 3rd ed., ed. Deirdre Le Fay (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 20.