WELP, I can exclusively report that this is a whole bunch of nonsense. Jane Austen wrote 90% of an excellent book and then 10% absolute shenanigans. Fifteen years have passed since I first read Mansfield Park, and the update is that my opinion of it is unchanged. It rules! It’s great! The Crawfords are very fucking fun, and Henry Crawford’s heel turn feels completely frustrating and unearned, and the only shift in my opinion is that I feel even sorrier for Fanny than I remember feeling, and I hate Edmund even more than I remember hating Edmund. But let’s put a pin in that, and chat for now about the events of the book.
Fanny is at her absolute least sympathetic in this section. Everyone has stopped badgering her about Henry Crawford (huge relief), but she’s also monumentally judgy about her family. She doesn’t like her father because he drinks and swears and talks about his job (seriously, this is a reason that is listed for her not liking him). She doesn’t like her mother because her mother’s not a good housekeeper, although I admit this bit is very well described:
Her days were spent in a kind of slow bustle; all was busy without getting on, always behindhand and lamenting it, without altering her ways; wished to be an economist, without contrivance or regularity; dissatisfied with her servants, without skill to make them better, and whether helping, or reprimanding, or indulging them, without any power of engaging their respect.
“A kind of slow bustle” honestly killed me. Whomst among us has not known the grim failure of a slow bustle? WE INTENDED A FAST BUSTLE BUT THE REALITY IS WHAT IT IS.
She doesn’t like her brother Sam because he’s “loud and overbearing”; she doesn’t like her other brothers because they’re “untameable by any means of address which [Fanny] had spirits or time to attempt”; she doesn’t like Betsey because Betsey’s a brat; and she doesn’t like Susan because Susan fights with all the other family members. Eventually she decides Susan might be sort of okayish, but overall she hates the house because it’s loud. In other words, because her family members are poor. Like, honestly, it’s not surprising that the other Prices don’t want to hang out with Fanny! She clearly thinks she’s better than all of them, and they can tell, and that’s not fun for anyone!
Jane Austen makes another not-un-racy joke here:
In a review of the two houses, as they appeared to her before the end of a week, Fanny was tempted to apply to them Dr. Johnson’s celebrated judgment as to matrimony and celibacy, and say, that though Mansfield Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures.
lolololololol
But then Henry Crawford comes visit, and he could not be more charming and winning. He squires Fanny and Susan all over Portsmouth when they want to go to shops, making himself very agreeable to Mr. Price in the meantime, and he also asks Fanny’s advice about how to be an ethical l…andlord? business-owner? (I’m not 100% on the business that calls him to Portsmouth? because I wasn’t ALL that interested in it, and I was much more interested in Henry Crawford endearing himself to every Price, including Fanny.)
She thought him altogether improved since she had seen him; he was much more gentle, obliging, and attentive to other people’s feelings than he had ever been at Mansfield; she had never seen him so agreeable–so near being agreeable; his behaviour to her father could not offend, and there was something particularly kind and proper in the notice he took of Susan. He was decidedly improved.
I loved that little moment of “she had never seen him so agreeable–so near being agreeable.” How charming is that? She had a little Freudian slip! There simply could not be a better indicator that Fanny is amenable to eventually falling in love with Henry Crawford, right? Like. He’s improved! Pretty soon he’s going to have improved enough that she can love him! Isn’t that a reasonable-ass expectation for me as a reader?
Moreover, Henry learns that Fanny’s been at Portsmouth the greater part of the month, and he not only immediately offers to come with Mary and pick her up and drive her back to Mansfield any time she wants, but he also tells her very gently that he knows that the other residents of Mansfield Park are neglectful of her comforts: “I know Mansfield, I know its way, I know its faults towards you. I know the danger of your being so far forgotten, as to have your comforts give way to the imaginary convenience of any single being in the family.”
I am not sure Edmund has ever stated the case as plainly as this! Henry Crawford, 1. Edmund Bertram, 0.
Then Tom gets sick, and then Tom gets very sick, and Fanny is still at Portsmouth writing and receiving letters about Tom’s illness. Mary Crawford hasn’t written her for a while, which Jane Austen notes rather tartly, but she does eventually write to basically say that she hopes Tom dies. In the same letter, she mentions that Henry is hanging out with Maria again in town, which Fanny gets on the judgiest judgey face about. I was like “Calm down, Fanny, it’s way too early in the book for Henry and Maria to run away together! If they did it now, it would feel way too abrupt and unearned.”
Yeah. Well. Guess what. Henry and Maria Rushworth nee Bertram have run away together. At around the same time, Julia eloped with Mr. Yates — remember him? He wanted to play a part in the play where he got to do a lot of ranting? That guy. He and Julia are married now. The Bertrams are very very upset, so upset in fact that they summon Fanny back to Mansfield Park to run all their errands for them, and generously offering for her to bring Susan too, to run even more errands.
(Oh, Fanny likes Susan now. It’s because Susan has obediently agreed to absorb all of Fanny’s lessons and do exactly what Fanny wants all the time, which in the vocabulary of this book means the Morally Correct Things. I don’t know, y’all, it seems like part of the lesson of the book is that whereas the rich can choose not to be morally righteous, the poor can’t choose to be morally righteous because it’s too, like, noisy in Portsmouth or whatever. Big question mark to Jane Austen on that one.)
So Maria and Henry eventually break up, and Maria goes to live with Mrs. Norris in someplace that isn’t Mansfield Park. (When the question is raised of whether Maria can live at Mansfield Park again, her father is like, oh, absolutely not, too immoral, I can send her money but I can’t, like, associate with her anymore. Great parenting, my dude!) Julia and Mr. Yates are meekly repentant of their elopement, so they get to still associate with the family. Fanny and Edmund get married. The end. Ugh.
Fuck You, Edmund Bertram
My three angriest Edmund Bertram moments both had to do with Mary Crawford, surprise, surprise. The first one is when he’s writing to Fanny about his planned proposal to Mary, and when he anticipates her turning him down, he says this: “The loss of Mary I must consider as comprehending the loss of Crawford and of Fanny.” He says this to Fanny, a woman who has repeatedly, firmly told him that she has no interest in Henry Crawford! But oh, no, here comes Edmund being like “well, you’ll change your mind for sure.” She has just told you and she has repeatedly told you that she’s not planning to marry Henry Crawford. For fuck’s fucking sake.
Second, when Fanny and Edmund are debriefing all the things that went down with the Crawfords, he’s like, listen, I know you were in love with Henry Crawford, but what about my feelings in all this? It’s doubly infuriating because it’s so goddamn selfish but then it’s also predicated on her being in love with Henry Crawford, which she has told him a hundred thousand times she isn’t. Shut! Up! Edmund!
But all of this really pales next to the orgy of self-righteousness he indulges in when he’s telling Fanny about his post-scandal conversation with Mary Crawford. Mary says something like she can’t believe their siblings were so foolish, and Edmund’s like:
Guess what I must have felt. To hear the woman whom–no harsher name than folly given! So voluntarily, so freely, so coolly to canvass it! No reluctance, no horror, no feminine, shall I say, no modest loathings? This is what the world does. For where, Fanny, shall we find a woman whom nature had so richly endowed? Spoilt, spoilt!
He scolds and fusses at Mary (I know because he proudly tells Fanny about it), and when she doesn’t gratefully receive his scoldy lecture about the failures of her character, he’s mad about that too! She jokes:
A pretty good lecture, upon my word. Was it part of your last sermon? At this rate you will soon reform everybody at Mansfield and Thornton Lacey; and when I hear of you next, it may be as a celebrated preacher in some great society of Methodists, or as a missionary into foreign parts.
Once again, and as always, a good joke from Mary Crawford! Edmund indignantly tells her that he hopes he learns to be more self-aware and do her duty, and then he storms off. Advantage Mary Crawford.
Did the Crawfords Do a Wrong?
Yeah, Mary is pretty wicked here. Tom Bertram gets sick, and Mary immediately starts thinking about how fun and great it will be if he dies and she marries Edmund, who will then be the eldest son and thus Sir Thomas’s heir. Mary! That’s a terrible thing to write to Tom and Edmund’s cousin about! Wtf!
Aside from this, their main wickedness in this section is related to Henry’s running off with Maria, for which, see the next section.
Were the Crawfords Wronged?
As in my memory, it feels a lot more like Jane Austen did a wrong than the Crawfords. I cannot explain this distinction, given that the Crawfords have no separate existence from Jane Austen, but I feel it keenly. What bugs me is that I would have been fine with Henry Crawford really truly reforming his fuckboy ways but then not marrying Fanny, because I do not demand that Fanny marries someone she doesn’t love! But here’s Jane Austen’s valedictory statement about Henry:
Henry Crawford, ruined by early independence and bad domestic example, indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded vanity a little too long. Once it had, by an opening undesigned and unmerited, led him into the way of happiness. Could he have been satisfied with the conquest of one amiable woman’s affections, could he have found sufficient exultation in overcoming the reluctance, in working himself into the esteem and tenderness of Fanny Price, there would have been every probability of success and felicity for him. His affection had already done something. Her influence over him had already given him some influence over her. Would he have deserved more, there can be no doubt that more would have been obtained, especially when that marriage had taken place, which would have given him the assistance of her conscience in subduing her first inclination, and brought them very often together. Would he have persevered, and uprightly, Fanny must have been his reward, and a reward very voluntarily bestowed, within a reasonable period from Edmund’s marrying Mary.
So like! It just feels really contrived! Jane Austen has this whole alternative plotline planned out for Henry Crawford where things end well for him and his reform is genuine! Her closing statement is that his reform was genuine, but he got bored of it, which is totally narratively unsatisfying! Like either make it insincere all along (like Frank Churchill flirting with Emma) or let him reform all the way! You know? Why do this to us?
At least Mary Crawford’s faults are consistent! She doesn’t change much over the course of the book: The person she is at the start of Mansfield Park (charming, funny, self-centered) is exactly the person she is at the end. Though Edmund claims that she’s changing and improving, we all know that she’s staying exactly the same. But I don’t think her flaws are all that horrific! The worst ones are her snobbery and self-centeredness, and those are the same flaws Emma Woodhouse has. The only difference is that Jane Austen decides to reward Emma with a moment of realization, and she doesn’t give the same thing to Mary because she’s too committed to Mary being bad.
The most vivid and interesting characters get done the dirtiest, and I simply can’t believe that Jane Austen intended us to like Edmund Bertram. Fanny Price, yes; Fanny at least is in a pitiable position, and it’s easy to feel sympathy for her when her rich relatives go tromping all over her wishes. But Edmund? Is there any redeeming feature to Edmund? He’s a shitty judge of character, a patronizing scold to Fanny, and in the end he’s rewarded by having all his dreams come true. This book rules but my God is the ending ever unsatisfying.