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.

The post Once Again, I Call Shenanigans: Mansfield in May, Part Five appeared first on Reading the End.

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.

The post Badger Badger Badger Badger: Mansfield in May, Part Four appeared first on Reading the End.

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.

The post Flying the Fuckboy Flag: Mansfield in May, Part Three appeared first on Reading the End.