The time has come for absolutely everybody to badger Fanny. It like… feels pretty uncomfortable for poor little Fanny to be at the mercy of all her relatives (especially the men), and for every single one of those people to be like “I know you don’t love Henry Crawford or even feel sympathy for him or share any of his values but might you not marry him anyway?” She is but a poor relation doing her best! Why must she constantly justify her lack of romantic interest in Henry Crawford to others?? God damn!
This whole section features a lot of the Crawfords wanting to spend time with Fanny, and Fanny not wanting to spend time with them. It raises the question “Does Mary Crawford actually like Fanny?” and I am afraid that I do not have a good answer on that one. If I had to guess, Mary Crawford likes people easily and likes Fanny fine; she can see that Fanny is a sweet gentle soul, but she also finds her a bit boring. Which, same! Like, bless Fanny’s heart, but to return to my brunch theme from last week, I wouldn’t take her out for brunch. (Fanny wouldn’t want to go out to brunch either, I’m guessing? She’d rather stay home in her cold cold room?)
Perhaps much more prominently, Henry Crawford (claims that he) has fallen in love with Fanny. For real this time.
Henry Crawford had too much sense not to feel the worth of good principles in a wife, though he was too little accustomed to serious reflection to know them by their proper name; but when he talked of her having such a steadiness and regularity of conduct, such a high notion of honour, and such an observance of decorum as might warrant any man in the fullest dependence on her faith and integrity, he expressed what was inspired by the knowledge of her being well principled and religious.
Look! I will be honest! I kind of like him for this! When people in books — especially men — fall in love on the basis that their love object has infinite integrity, I am won over. See also the conversation Harriet Vane has with Peter Wimsey where she finally asks him what he likes about her even. Just A-plus stuff! So I was slightly won over by that, and then I was won over even more when he tells Mary that he’s tired of all the Bertrams treating Fanny badly, neglecting her, and overlooking her. Once I again, I cannot figure out if he’s sincere in this or not, but he at least seems sincere, and we all agree, right?, that Fanny deserves better from her family than what she has gotten. It would give me satisfaction to see Maria and Julia having to reckon with Fanny as their social equal, rather than alternating between ignoring her and patronizing her.
It turns out that the reason Henry stayed away from Mansfield for so long is that he was exerting his uncle’s influence (remember his uncle? the one who installed his mistress in his house after his wife died, necessitating Mary’s move to Mansfield Park in the first place?) to get William promoted to lieutenant. This is legitimately nice of him, although I do think he’s doing it to get Fanny to agree to marry him, and Fanny is tearfully grateful to him.
Henry Crawford asks Fanny to marry him. Fanny says no.
Henry Crawford asks Fanny’s uncle if he can marry Fanny. Sir Thomas says yes. Fanny still says no.
Here begins the badgering. The people who badger Fanny include:
- Henry Crawford, whom Fanny rejects and who then tries to do an end-run by going to her uncle about it! WTF, sir!
- Sir Thomas, who calls her willful, perverse, and ungrateful
- Henry Crawford again, in a private conference orchestrated by Sir Thomas; though Jane Austen notes that Fanny’s manner is so gentle and equivocal that Henry legitimately doesn’t understand how much she wants to marry him. Girl, I guess.
- Lady Bertram, who says it is “every young woman’s duty to accept such a very unexceptionable offer as this”
- Edward, who’s like “look, it’s fine that you said no now, but later on you of course will have to accept him”
- Mary Crawford, who tells Fanny she can’t scold her but then spends so many pages telling her about all the women who wish they could marry Henry but he’s not in love with them; he’s in love with Fanny
- NOT WILLIAM THOUGH. William secretly thinks she should marry Henry, but he doesn’t tell her so.
Literally all of you people are jerks. Only William can stay!
Oh, yeah, there’s a third thing that kind of brings me around on Henry Crawford a little bit: They ask him to read some Shakespeare for them, and he is staggeringly good at it. Jane Austen devotes most of one entire page to how good he is at reading Shakespeare and how sexy that is of him. No arguments from me on that — though, I suspect, Jane Austen is here making a point about Henry Crawford’s sincerity. Even when he seems very sincere indeed, as he does throughout these chapters, he’s still putting on a show.
(I have not confirmed this reading with Jane Austen scholars but I am sure it is correct and I demand a tenured faculty position in recognition of my rightness.)
As part of the overall badgering campaign, Sir Thomas comes up with the idea that Fanny should visit her (poor) family in Portsmouth, as part of seeing William off. She’s thrilled to get more time with William and thrilled to see her family. Sir Thomas has a sneaky motive that if Fanny goes to her wretched poverty home, she’ll realize how lucky she is and how grateful she should be and how doomed she is if she turns down Henry Crawford. Really superb uncling work, Sir Thomas! Top notch stuff!
And this is where I honestly find Fanny the least sympathetic so far. When she gets to Portsmouth, her little brothers and sisters are shy of her, the house is small and cramped, and her mother isn’t giving her the most attention either. And Fanny acts I HATE TO SAY THIS BUT Fanny acts a little bit entitled about the whole thing. It’s the most sympathetic of faults, but in the same way that Edmund really can’t recognize the position of privilege he occupies in relation to Fanny, I don’t feel like Fanny is the most sensitive to her own privilege as compared to her mother and sisters. I guess we’ll see how things unfold from here.
Were the Crawfords Wronged?
Henry, definitely not. Jane Austen burns him so good when she says “A little difficulty to be overcome was no evil to Henry Crawford. He rather derived spirits from it. He had been apt to gain hearts too easily. His situation was new and animating.” Heeheehee, nailed it.
Mary seems to be being genuinely nice to Fanny in this section. At no point does she indicate that she thinks Fanny’s beneath her brother, although socially it’s clear that she is. Instead she’s all enthusiasm for the marriage, and she goes out of her way to be welcoming and kind to Fanny. Jane Austen broke my heart about this by saying “[Fanny’s] disposition was peculiarly calculated to value af ond treatment, and from having hitherto known so little of it, she was the more overcome by Miss Crawford’s.” Bless this baby and her tiny neglected baby heart.
Did the Crawfords Do a Wrong?
Everyone is a real bully on behalf of Henry Crawford. Officially he’s not responsible for the choices other people make on his behalf, but unofficially he very clearly set matters up to where Fanny would feel obligated to marry him. This is largely a problem of patriarchy, but it is also a problem in which Henry Crawford is on purpose making the patriarchy work for him. Bad!
Remember last time when we talked about how maybe the Crawfords conspired on the matter of the gold chain? Yeah. They did. Mary confirms it in this chapter. Fucking rude.
Fuck You, Edmund Bertram
I had to add this new section so I’d have somewhere to put my dislike of Edmund. His patronizing scolding of Fanny about her refusal to marry Henry is terrible, of course, but the absolute worst comes when he’s trying to explain why they’d make such a good match:
There is a decided difference in your tempers, I allow. He is lively, you are serious; but so much the better: his spirits will support yours. It is your disposition to be easily dejected and to fancy difficulties greater than they are. [furious emphasis mine]
Fuck OFF, just fuck OFF, just really fuck off into the SUN, Edmund! Who the everliving fuck made you the arbiter of how great Fanny’s difficulties are, you absolute wanker? In another reading of your lives, maybe you miss a lot of what goes into making things difficult for Fanny because you are so very privileged by comparison to her! Uggghhhhhhh.
Okay, but he does also say “I told them that you were of all human creatures the one over whom habit had most power and novelty least” and that made me lol because it is relevant to my own personality.