3. Jane Austen's Mansfield Park
Sep. 16th, 2008 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_losThe following is culled largely from my side of aim conversations with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aralias: apologies for the resulting disjointedness.
Jane Austen's Mansfield Park is written without Austen’s characteristic level of faith in humanity. Normally in Austen people can be funny, or flawed, but they're largely inherently decent. In Mansfield Park, that decency is gone: the majority of humanity is at best morally neutral, at worst basically petty, vain and selfish. In its protagonists’ quiet, insular misery, reminded me of Jane Eyre in a way.
The book gets billed as the 'triumph of goodness over intelligence', but it's really more a question of Fanny having better sensibility/more of a soul than strictly that she has better morals than Mary Crawford. As to the whole intelligence versus morals issue, Fanny /is/ intelligent, she's just not conversationally witty. She reminds me a bit of Sue in Jude the Obscure, before Sue went crazy with religion and dead babies. While she sucks at conversations, she's anticipating romanticism with her appreciation of the sublime in nature. So she's kind of boring, a fair bit lame--well, yes, but I don't know, the /horribleness/ of being trapped on the many dates of the guy you love and some other girl who’s not worthy of him, and in the confidence of both, really outstrips that, and I feel achingly bad for her, and thus fond of her.
On the Lover’s Vow’s production: even before Edmund caves like a bitch b/c Miss Crawford thinks acting is cool, he’s still being a dick about it. As a modern reader I have a hard time interrogating the actual wrong behind the action. Obviously their father wouldn’t like it, because their father is anti-fun, but I'm still on 'Why does it matter? Is he here? Use your own judgment, Edmund.'
Still, if Edmund didn't the whole home-brewed play idea /just/ b/c he was a snobby bitch about theater and thought amateur theatricals blew chunks? I'd enjoy that. Though I was head-desking during Mister Crawford’s thoroughly embarrassing "I feel I could act any part! Shylock, Richard III, you name it, I am that awesome right now!" moment. Even though it later turns out that he is just That Good at reading Shakespeare. Still.
Initially when Crawford is flirting with Fanny’s cousins about the time of the play, I really really don’t care about him one way or another. I found Mary Crawford kind of exasperating then as well. At the time I thought hard about why she, while initially seeming fine, really does kind of suck.
Miss Crawford, even in the beginning, is occasionally awful without thinking about it: and that's the thing, she never thinks. She cares about other things only as regards herself. She doesn't ever want to understand situations. She tries to be good, yes, but she lacks that innate intellectual curiosity which Fanny actually possesses. When Edmund informed her, after her disrespectful speech about the church, that he himself is soon destined to take orders, she's all LULZ HOW DUMB, and never thinks to say "okay, person I like and respect: why?" When Mary Crawford eventually gets better about the subject, she's only reconciling herself to it rather than displaying any urge to really /get/ this person she's interested in, or respect his uniqueness.
And she /does/ parrot back the general opinion--what the hell was 'but the general opinion is usually right' nonsense? She's /way/ too classist and invested in social standing. Like when she’s an ass about Admirals being the only people in the navy of any worth when Fanny's JUST SAID 'my beloved brother is in the navy and not v. high in it either.' At first I excused Miss Crawford’s more eye-roll provoking statements because this IS a period novel, but then Edmund would say something waaaaay more tactful and I was forced to question my blasé glossing over those points, and see them as character issues, rather than period issues.
I like Mary a lot more towards the middle, though everything I said earlier about her is still true: she's just somehow more endearing now that I've read more of her pov in the narrative.
I think that Miss Crawford scene at the end is her dealing with stress in a way that Edmund can’t understand She's not being v. tactful or considerate, but then she's really at a loss herself. Of course the earlier “So is Tom dead yet?” letter is baffling and such a bizarre, OOC moment from her that I’m kind of unable to countenance it.
But when Mr. Crawford comes to visit Fanny with her family? I really like him in that moment, and want her to love him--and Fanny, who's never hitherto REALLY annoyed me more than a little sensation of 'oh Fanny, why are you lame' is just odious in that moment. Crawford’s love for Fanny makes him attractive. Is making Fanny annoying when she's mean to Crawford a cheap literary contrivance on Austen's part, to show up the reader when Fanny's right and he's a baddie? I feel like the effect was intentional and manipulative.
Initially I didn’t get what had gone on with him and Fanny’s now-married cousin: once I understood that she’d just shown up at his house and basically left him without options, it was fine, but initially I was very ‘Wait, what now? Was all his love of Fanny bull? Because I don’t believe that.’ Mary said something awful in her last conversation with Edmund along the lines of “if Fanny had only married Henry, then he would have been too happy for several years or so to do much more than harmlessly flirt.” Which I don’t want to think is a fair assessment, because it would mean that loving Fanny hasn’t changed him at all: clearly, it has, and he spends the rest of him life oppressed by a newly awakened appreciation of Fanny’s qualities, and the knowledge that now he’s beyond ever attaining them in a bride, or of ever interacting with her again.
I'm impressed by some of the writing in Mansfield Park, but I can't help but dislike a lot of the resolution. The ending is a super-lame fadeout: dumb like Marianne and Brandon's glossed over courtship in S&S is dumb. After all that strife, do you get a good courtship for Edmund and Fanny? Do you get to see Edmund come to love Fanny in a reliable mind-in-action sort of way? Nope.
I loathed their aunt Mrs. Norris the whole book through. I know I was supposed to, but this was a pure detestation, and I found her eventual fate a little sad but REALLY funny.
I like the idea that Fanny /would/ have caved and married Mr. Crawford after Edmund married and really became unobtainable. Edmund's initially VERY kind, and I can't but respect that. Edmund is really similar to Fanny, good for them...but the annoying things about Fanny? Are just going to continue to fester with the husband she ends up with. She's always going to be kind of prim and prissy and over-fastidious. Fanny will be incapable of easing up, because he's not exactly encouraging her in that direction. And Edmund, for all the novel wants us to believe he handles Fanny perfectly, still enjoins her to gratitude sometimes, like an ass: there is no one you need to remind to do that /less/ than Fanny.
Whereas Crawford would have been, in the course of time, maybe capable of instilling some frigging self-worth in her. B/c really, Fanny and Mr. Crawford actually are...kind of complementary. cough hot Shakespeare reading *cough* PLUS the whole passage about how Edmund’s shaped Fanny's development, thus she's a perfect wife for him: is creepy. It might be healthier for her to get away from luuuv-cousin and that infatuation that so overshadows her individuality.
aralias: apologies for the resulting disjointedness. Jane Austen's Mansfield Park is written without Austen’s characteristic level of faith in humanity. Normally in Austen people can be funny, or flawed, but they're largely inherently decent. In Mansfield Park, that decency is gone: the majority of humanity is at best morally neutral, at worst basically petty, vain and selfish. In its protagonists’ quiet, insular misery, reminded me of Jane Eyre in a way.
The book gets billed as the 'triumph of goodness over intelligence', but it's really more a question of Fanny having better sensibility/more of a soul than strictly that she has better morals than Mary Crawford. As to the whole intelligence versus morals issue, Fanny /is/ intelligent, she's just not conversationally witty. She reminds me a bit of Sue in Jude the Obscure, before Sue went crazy with religion and dead babies. While she sucks at conversations, she's anticipating romanticism with her appreciation of the sublime in nature. So she's kind of boring, a fair bit lame--well, yes, but I don't know, the /horribleness/ of being trapped on the many dates of the guy you love and some other girl who’s not worthy of him, and in the confidence of both, really outstrips that, and I feel achingly bad for her, and thus fond of her.
On the Lover’s Vow’s production: even before Edmund caves like a bitch b/c Miss Crawford thinks acting is cool, he’s still being a dick about it. As a modern reader I have a hard time interrogating the actual wrong behind the action. Obviously their father wouldn’t like it, because their father is anti-fun, but I'm still on 'Why does it matter? Is he here? Use your own judgment, Edmund.'
Still, if Edmund didn't the whole home-brewed play idea /just/ b/c he was a snobby bitch about theater and thought amateur theatricals blew chunks? I'd enjoy that. Though I was head-desking during Mister Crawford’s thoroughly embarrassing "I feel I could act any part! Shylock, Richard III, you name it, I am that awesome right now!" moment. Even though it later turns out that he is just That Good at reading Shakespeare. Still.
Initially when Crawford is flirting with Fanny’s cousins about the time of the play, I really really don’t care about him one way or another. I found Mary Crawford kind of exasperating then as well. At the time I thought hard about why she, while initially seeming fine, really does kind of suck.
Miss Crawford, even in the beginning, is occasionally awful without thinking about it: and that's the thing, she never thinks. She cares about other things only as regards herself. She doesn't ever want to understand situations. She tries to be good, yes, but she lacks that innate intellectual curiosity which Fanny actually possesses. When Edmund informed her, after her disrespectful speech about the church, that he himself is soon destined to take orders, she's all LULZ HOW DUMB, and never thinks to say "okay, person I like and respect: why?" When Mary Crawford eventually gets better about the subject, she's only reconciling herself to it rather than displaying any urge to really /get/ this person she's interested in, or respect his uniqueness.
And she /does/ parrot back the general opinion--what the hell was 'but the general opinion is usually right' nonsense? She's /way/ too classist and invested in social standing. Like when she’s an ass about Admirals being the only people in the navy of any worth when Fanny's JUST SAID 'my beloved brother is in the navy and not v. high in it either.' At first I excused Miss Crawford’s more eye-roll provoking statements because this IS a period novel, but then Edmund would say something waaaaay more tactful and I was forced to question my blasé glossing over those points, and see them as character issues, rather than period issues.
I like Mary a lot more towards the middle, though everything I said earlier about her is still true: she's just somehow more endearing now that I've read more of her pov in the narrative.
I think that Miss Crawford scene at the end is her dealing with stress in a way that Edmund can’t understand She's not being v. tactful or considerate, but then she's really at a loss herself. Of course the earlier “So is Tom dead yet?” letter is baffling and such a bizarre, OOC moment from her that I’m kind of unable to countenance it.
But when Mr. Crawford comes to visit Fanny with her family? I really like him in that moment, and want her to love him--and Fanny, who's never hitherto REALLY annoyed me more than a little sensation of 'oh Fanny, why are you lame' is just odious in that moment. Crawford’s love for Fanny makes him attractive. Is making Fanny annoying when she's mean to Crawford a cheap literary contrivance on Austen's part, to show up the reader when Fanny's right and he's a baddie? I feel like the effect was intentional and manipulative.
Initially I didn’t get what had gone on with him and Fanny’s now-married cousin: once I understood that she’d just shown up at his house and basically left him without options, it was fine, but initially I was very ‘Wait, what now? Was all his love of Fanny bull? Because I don’t believe that.’ Mary said something awful in her last conversation with Edmund along the lines of “if Fanny had only married Henry, then he would have been too happy for several years or so to do much more than harmlessly flirt.” Which I don’t want to think is a fair assessment, because it would mean that loving Fanny hasn’t changed him at all: clearly, it has, and he spends the rest of him life oppressed by a newly awakened appreciation of Fanny’s qualities, and the knowledge that now he’s beyond ever attaining them in a bride, or of ever interacting with her again.
I'm impressed by some of the writing in Mansfield Park, but I can't help but dislike a lot of the resolution. The ending is a super-lame fadeout: dumb like Marianne and Brandon's glossed over courtship in S&S is dumb. After all that strife, do you get a good courtship for Edmund and Fanny? Do you get to see Edmund come to love Fanny in a reliable mind-in-action sort of way? Nope.
I loathed their aunt Mrs. Norris the whole book through. I know I was supposed to, but this was a pure detestation, and I found her eventual fate a little sad but REALLY funny.
I like the idea that Fanny /would/ have caved and married Mr. Crawford after Edmund married and really became unobtainable. Edmund's initially VERY kind, and I can't but respect that. Edmund is really similar to Fanny, good for them...but the annoying things about Fanny? Are just going to continue to fester with the husband she ends up with. She's always going to be kind of prim and prissy and over-fastidious. Fanny will be incapable of easing up, because he's not exactly encouraging her in that direction. And Edmund, for all the novel wants us to believe he handles Fanny perfectly, still enjoins her to gratitude sometimes, like an ass: there is no one you need to remind to do that /less/ than Fanny.
Whereas Crawford would have been, in the course of time, maybe capable of instilling some frigging self-worth in her. B/c really, Fanny and Mr. Crawford actually are...kind of complementary. cough hot Shakespeare reading *cough* PLUS the whole passage about how Edmund’s shaped Fanny's development, thus she's a perfect wife for him: is creepy. It might be healthier for her to get away from luuuv-cousin and that infatuation that so overshadows her individuality.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 09:51 pm (UTC)Hrmph. I see what you mean here, but, well. I &heart; Jane, and the biggest reason why is that because beneath the reserve she's so fiery and resolute. Fanny's more like what Jane might have been if she'd stayed with her Aunt Reed's family in the first chapter. I can't see Fanny choosing Lowood, or leaving Lowood to go to Thornfield, or then leaving Thornfield and wandering around starving because she was just that stubborn about the things she believes in. Jane is...loud in her quiet misery. ^_^
Which has a lot to do with the fundamental differences in Bronte and Austen, and they are fundamentally different. I'm totally willing to believe Austen to be both more realistic and the better craftswoman. And I know I've totally strayed from your actual point, but the comparison just kind of struck me, because really, there are a lot of parallels.
she's anticipating romanticism with her appreciation of the sublime in nature
Fanny isn't anticipating the idea of the sublime in nature, surely? Unless the book's set a whole lot earlier than I remember.
Mister Crawford’s thoroughly embarrassing "I feel I could act any part! Shylock, Richard III, you name it, I am that awesome right now!" moment.
*snerk* Put like that, I am forcibly reminded of
he whole passage about how Edmund’s shaped Fanny's development, thus she's a perfect wife for him: is creepy
*cough* Mr. Knightley *cough* Much as I love him, uh, yeah.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-18 09:39 pm (UTC)I don't know, I think that the fundamental differences prevent me from analyzing their quality relative to one another. Mansfield Park is Austen trying to write a novel more in Bronte's zone, and it's problematic. Emma, however, is great in the peculiarly Austen vein of awesomeness.
Oh god, you're right re: the sublime point. The thing that screwed me? I was thinking of the 1850 Wordsworth prelude. Not, you know, EVERYONE ELSE, or even the earlier versions of that poem... so I guess the only credit I can give Jane here is being aware of artistic currents and not insensible to them?
Ah! I know not this Malfoy reference! I clearly am falling behind in my Old Fandoms of Yore Awareness: its like not having gone to the right public school. Soon I'll not know the common references, and not have gone to Eton, and just be kicked out of the club and off the Interwebz. Sigh.
*laughs* at Mr. Knightley's skeevy pervy man-love for 13 year old Emma. Oh I just read that as well/have to write up a bit about it next. But see, Knightley's been markedly less successful, and Emma's Emma-ness is in full force, and he's fine with that, really, so I don't mind.