Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

It seems that Jane Austen liked "Mansfield Park" better than anything she had done before. With all due respect to her many excellent qualities, I can't agree with that judgment. That's the advantage of the formalist approach, in which the author's opinion of the work carries no more weight than anyone else's – guilt-free disagreement with Miss Jane. I suspect that would be just fine with her; she was no conformist.

Indeed, as with most of her work, "Mansfield Park" concerns itself very closely with the dangers of conformity. In this case, the Bertram family, and their friends and relatives, get into trouble because of conformity not so much with social rules, but with fashion, peer pressure, or even each other. As our story begins, the aristocratic Bertrams have had their poor cousin Fanny Price in their home for several years. She's far too conscious of her station to rebuke her relations, but she sees them stumble into inappropriate and sometimes immoral activity and is not fooled.

So far, for you Austen fans, Fanny Price is the Mr. Darcy, Lady Russell, Elinor Dashwood or Mr. Knightley of "Mansfield Park" - that is, the keen and practical observer of what's really going on. Unlike the keen and practical observers of other Austeniana, however, Fanny rarely speaks up. Then again, she has a lot more to lose. Even the best-intentioned people in this story behave with insensitivity at best, and some seem to genuinely hate her.

As a matter of fact, for the first several chapters of "Mansfield Park," there's no one at all to root for. Even Fanny herself is far too wimpy to sympathize with, at least to the modern reader. Her uncle Bertram, though generous, is unthinkingly cruel in his manner. Her aunt Bertram can barely rouse herself to anything but her own comfort. Cousins Maria and Julia are vain and condescending, cousin Thomas devotes himself to wild living, cousin Edmund the future clergyman is too busy moralizing to notice that Fanny is in love with him. Henry and Mary Crawford, the Bertrams' neighbors, are a couple of hypocrites at best, and the less said about Aunt Norris, the better.

So you have to slog through page after page of nasty behavior, presented under the guise of propriety and standards, and it's really enough to make you sick. It's all backstory, of course - the story proper doesn't begin until the setup's complete - but that just makes it drag all the more. And to top it all off, because she had taken up a serious theme this time, Jane Austen restrained her delicious sense of irony and wrote the whole thing straight. She recovered her lightness of touch toward the finale, but the damage is done.

If there's any irony in "Mansfield Park" at all, it has to do with values and virtue. Far more obviously than in most of her other work (where it was pretty obvious nevertheless), characters in this novel pay lip service to things like loving your neighbor as yourself while behaving in exactly the opposite manner. Several of these people constantly lecture Fanny about how grateful she ought to be to the Bertrams for all they've done – lecture her in such a tone that you'd think she'd just cursed them all roundly. Others loudly sermonize about things they hold dear and proceed to chase after romantic partners who value exactly the opposite things. Or they just assure everyone "I can make do with very little" while subtly demanding huge accommodations to their comfort. In short, they value appearances over substance. Meanwhile, Fanny goes about in virtual silence, doing all that virtue demands and never complaining that people don't notice.

Since Austen began "Mansfield Park" with the intention of considering the clergy, it's worth noting that Fanny seems to value ancient Biblical principle over contemporary devotion to appearances – the gospel of Matthew does, after all, say something about praying in your room with the door shut so no one can see you. It's all constructed beautifully, but as I said, I wish that Miss Jane had really let these people have it, as she did elsewhere. I've said before that novels have plenty of room for moral examination, but you can get the same thing from a sermon. If it's to be a novel, it needs more. And "Mansfield Park" does not lack for entertainment value, but Austen did not play to her strengths here.

This, then, is the lament of a Jane Austen fan who admires the author for stretching out into unfamiliar territory, but will soon return to "Pride and Prejudice" with a sigh of relief. If Miss Jane, who published only six novels during her lifetime (one posthumously), had lived longer, she would very likely have polished up her ability to treat serious subjects seriously (as well as treating serious subjects lightly, which she was brilliant at). She certainly had the talent and the chops. And when it comes to admiring those with the courage of their convictions, like Fanny Price, Austen did at least have time to return to that theme in "Persuasion", maybe her best piece. Yes, although I didn't enjoy "Mansfield Park" all that much, I admire Austen for aiming high and missing, rather than staying in her comfort zone. For that and other reasons, I agree that (as someone else once put it) Jane Austen was probably better than we deserve.

Benshlomo says, You don't have to enjoy noble failures, but you have to admire the willingness to fail.