Welp, the time has come. Henry Crawford has showed back up, and he is fucking around, and he is finding out. The time has come for Henry Crawford to be an all-the-way fuckboy, and if my memory is correct, he is going to then substantially reform because he legit falls for Fanny, and then Jane Austen’s going to be like “Henry Crawford seems nice AND fun? Can’t have that!” and narratively ruin him. But let’s see how matters unfold.
Not to keep beating a dead horse, but Mansfield Book continues to rule. I am having the best time reading it, and I swear to you that I am going to love it more than Emma by the time I finish. And I fucking love Emma. It’s just that in this one, Jane Austen is simultaneously so funny and so insightful that I kind of can’t take it. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t read a Jane Austen book in a little while and I forgot how good she is? Could that be it? Because I keep being bowled over by how keenly observed this book is, even on the scale of Jane Austen to Jane Austen. I’ll get into it, but the whole business of Fanny needing a chain for her necklace is just *chef’s kiss*.
Okay, so! We start with Edmund being a class-A prick. Fanny’s talking to him about how much she enjoys hearing her uncle talk about the West Indies, and she says “I am unlike other people, I dare say,” meaning unlike the Crawfords lololol, and Edmund says this:
Do you want to be told that you are unlike other people in being more wise and discreet? But when did you, or anybody, ever get a compliment from me, Fanny? Go to my father if you want to be complimented. He will satisfy you.
Edmund, I cordially invite you to get fucked. Like, I am going to have some very critical things to say about Henry Crawford in a minute, but at least Henry Crawford knows he’s a fuckboy. At least Henry Crawford gets slapped down by Fanny and the text of Mansfield Park for being a fuckboy. This is the weirdest most unnecessary piece of cruelty I can imagine, and Fanny is mortified about it. She hates compliments and is not fishing for one! Which if Edmund were paying the slightest bit of attention to her, ever, he would know! Then when he sees that he’s embarrassed her, he just goes ahead and embarrasses her more, this time 100% definitely on purpose.
If you cannot bear an uncle’s admiration, what is to become of you? You must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking at. You must try not to mind growing up into a pretty woman.
I hate Edmund. I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate him. We also get the famous moment where Fanny mentions that she, alone of the young Bertrams, has follow-up questions about the slave trade, i.e., the trade on which the Bertram family fortune has been founded. This exchange, in which Fanny mentions that she asked about the slave trade and was met with silence, is the only reason I read Mansfield Park in the first place: It was part of a course on colonial British literature that I took when I was twenty. It is not really very headline-worthy! Enslaving human beings is bad, says Jane Austen, maybe, sort of.
Anyway, Maria gets married and Julia goes off to stay with her, which means Fanny is the only girl at the house, which means everyone is suddenly bored enough to pay attention to Fanny. She hates it. I would too! It sounds awful! And I would feel like a real dick having everyone be like “oh Fanny’s pretty, actually!” and “oh maybe let’s throw a dance for Fanny!” after years of that never ever happening. It would make me feel like a doll that everyone had suddenly gotten bored enough to want to play with.
Case in point, Henry Crawford, fuckboy, who tries to talk to Fanny about the play and gets slapped down hard (v. satisfying honestly). The next morning he announces to his sister, “My plan is to make Fanny Price in love with me.” Which is a very fuckboy thing to say, but I have to admit his follow-up is pretty funny. But bad!
“No, I will not do her any harm, dear little soul! only want her to look kindly on me, to give me smiles as well as blushes, to keep a chair for me by herself wherever we are, and be all animation when I take it and talk to her; to think as I think, be interested in all my possessions and pleasures, try to keep me longer at Mansfield, and feel when I go away that she shall never be happy again. I want nothing more.”
These are good jokes. I am sorry. I would be madder at the Crawfords if they didn’t seem so fun to be around.
Except, here’s where I truly am mad at the Crawfords. Okay, so Fanny’s brother William has shore leave or whatever and comes to Mansfield Park on a visit. Fanny is so happy, and I am happy for her. SHE DESERVES THIS. While he’s there, Sir Thomas (who like everyone is bored) decides to have a little dance and invite some people from the area and it’ll be a nice treat for Fanny. So far so good. Her problem is that she has this very pretty amber cross that William brought her from Italy, but he wasn’t able to afford a gold chain to put it on, and a piece of ribbon isn’t fancy enough for Fanny to put it on for this dance. So what will she do? Crisis!
Mary Crawford then is like, oh, do you need a gold chain for that pretty cross that William gave you? Have one of mine! I have too many!, and as she’s showing Fanny all the different chains she can choose from, Fanny gets the impression that Mary wants her to choose this one specific chain. So okay, Fanny chooses that one. Then Mary says this:
“You must think of somebody else, too, when you wear that necklace. You must think of Henry, for it was his choice in the first place. He gave it to me, and with the necklace I make over to you all the duty of remembering the original giver. It is to be a family remembrancer. The sister is not to be in your mind without bringing the brother too.”
Fanny suspects, and I do too, that the Crawfords talked this over and CONNIVED on it together. She feels awful, but she has already accepted the gift and can’t take it back now. When she gets home, Edmund is there with a gold chain to give her a gift. Even more crisis! This occasions a big conversation between Edmund and Fanny about how nice he thinks Mary Crawford is, and Fanny realizes that he’s maybe in love with Mary Crawford? Question mark? Which makes Fanny sad because she, of course, is in love with Edmund.
In the event, though, the chain Mary Crawford gave her is too big and won’t go in the little ring on the amber cross, so she has to wear Edmund’s. She feels so happy about it that it reminds me of that “Cyclops Has a Good Day” thing where it counts as a good day if he, like, finds a quarter on the ground. I just want Fanny to be happy.
The whole sequence of events around the gold chain reminded me of what I love so much about Jane Austen. It’s a matter of very little consequence, in the broad scheme of things. Fanny is going to get a chain, and she’s going to put the amber cross on the chain. But the path to get there tells us so much about everybody involved, about both Crawfords, about Fanny, and about Edmund. It’s also the type of thing that feels so much like life, where like, you have this one small thing that needs to get accomplished (acquire gold chain for amber cross), but every step on the way to the goal is fraught with these weird emotional sand traps where instead of just getting a damn necklace, you have to navigate a series of increasingly fraught and complicated social dynamics when all that really needed to happen was get a damn gold chain for this damn amber cross. And that’s a very Jane Austeny thing and I’m into it.
Did the Crawfords Do a Wrong?
Yes, both of them. Mary continues to be such a rude jerk to Edmund about his job. Like, Edmund sucks, and I’d love for Mary to insult him about the things he deserves to be insulted about. But she keeps being like, “Ugh, a vicar. Gross. Poor. Hate it.” Mary, that’s rude! Who raised you?
Henry, meanwhile, is being the fuckboy of all fuckboys by conceiving a plan to make Fanny fall in love with him just because he’s bored and she’s unattainable. That said, this would be an amazing romance novel premise, wouldn’t it? Like, he starts out fucking around but then he falls in love for real and becomes a better person and at the end they fall in love? WHY ISN’T THAT THE BOOK I’M READING, JANE AUSTEN?
The matter of the gold chain is honestly cruel, though it’s unclear to me the extent to which the Crawfords realize it’s cruel, given their imperfect understanding of Fanny. But I am mad at them both.
Were the Crawfords Wronged?
Not even slightly. Not a bit. The Crawfords are jerks in this section. I have nothing to say in their defense except that they do still seem really fun. I don’t want to marry a Crawford, but I’d love to take a Crawford out for brunch. By contrast, I would rather demolish the institution of brunch for all time than attend one single brunch with Edmund Bertram, who sucks.