Everything of Higher Consequence

[Sorry for the drought in posts: I have been busy with other things on Peace and Wisdom.]

I had been meaning to respond to a post by Arnie on Austen-L about PJM Scott’s assessment of Mansfield Park.

Scott shows a good instinct for the deeper mysteries of MP when he spends a good amount of time in his chapter on MP raising questions regarding the following narration about Fanny Price’s thoughts about the home theatricals at Mansfield Park:

“For her own gratification she could have wished that something might be acted, for she had never seen even half a play, but everything of higher consequence was against it.”

Scott asks: “Are [Fanny’s] reactions hysterical, are Austen’s out of scale? Is the author advocating a supremely punctilious decorum for young people of the upper middle class such as hardly existed in her own life? and if so, why with such a passion?”

I agree with Trilling in fingering parental authority, as Edmund explains in this exchange with Tom.

“And I am convinced to the contrary. Nobody is fonder of the exercise of talent in young people, or promotes it more, than my father, and for anything of the acting, spouting, reciting kind, I think he has always a decided taste. I am sure he encouraged it in us as boys. How many a time have we mourned over the dead body of Julius Caesar, and to be’d and not to be’d, in this very room, for his amusement? And I am sure, my name was Norval, every evening of my life through one Christmas holidays.”

“It was a very different thing. You must see the difference yourself. My father wished us, as schoolboys, to speak well, but he would never wish his grown-up daughters to be acting plays. His sense of decorum is strict.” (13.25-6)

Happiness (Ch. 24)

In Chapter 24 we see Fanny and William united for the first time, drawing some interesting commentary from the narrator on the nature and causes of happiness.

Is she Queer? (Ch. 24)

In Chapter 24 Mary and Henry are discussing Fanny Price, when Henry turns to wondering why he is not making any progress with Fanny Price.

Was Fanny’s Love Realistic? (Ch. 24)

Some of Austen’s critics have difficulty following her counterfactual reasoning, as when she speculates about how Henry Crawford would have got on if Fanny hadn’t formed an early attachment to Edmund.

What a Corrupted Mind (Chs. 23-4)

By the 23^rd chapter (II.V) Fanny’s revulsion towards Henry Crawford becomes quite explicit, and this has been enormously controversial in 20^th century criticism. Reginald Farrer in his 1917 essay called her a ‘prig-pharisee’ and professor Trilling in his 1957 essay on Emma agrees that many are ‘repelled’ by Fanny Price, that no essay he has written has met with so much resistance as the one on Mansfield Park where he ‘tried to say that it was not really a perverse and wicked book’. This trend looks as if it has carried over into the 21^st century with one popular internet message board devoting a special section to guidelines on how to discuss Fanny Price without starting or prolonging flame wars:

Meanwhile, you should be careful about casually throwing around words such as the following in reference to Miss Price: “insignificant”, “moralizing prig”, “feeble”, “dull”, or “nebbish” – not because these are necessarily objectively wrong, but because on AUSTEN-L they are what the U.S. Supreme court has termed “fighting words”.

Idealistic Fanny and Materialistic Mary (Ch. 22)

Fanny’s conversation with Mary in the Grants’ shrubbery—the only casual conversation between the two rivals—resonates with contrasts. As Jane Stabler’s excellent notes remind us, Fanny’s stilted conversation reflects her discomfort in the presence of her worldly-wise rival that she has tried so hard to keep at a distance.

Sir Thomas and Maria (Ch. 21)

The transposition of two passages in the chapter where Maria is married to Mr Rushworth had never struck me so forcibly before.

Mr Yeats and Edmund on Sir Thomas (Ch. 20-1)

It is easy to dismiss Mr Yeats, ‘trifling and confident, idle and expensive’ (20.21) and therefore his thoughts, so it is as well to pay close attention to them.

Sir Thomas Attends to Business (Ch. 20)

It was a busy morning with him. Conversation with any of them occupied but a small part of it. He had to reinstate himself in all the wonted concerns of his Mansfield life: to see his steward and his bailiff; to examine and compute, and, in the intervals of business, to walk into his stables and his gardens, and nearest plantations; but active and methodical, he had not only done all this before he resumed his seat as master of the house at dinner, he had also set the carpenter to work in pulling down what had been so lately put up in the billiard-room, and given the scene-painter his dismissal long enough to justify the pleasing belief of his being then at least as far off as Northampton. The scene-painter was gone, having spoilt only the floor of one room, ruined all the coachman’s sponges, and made five of the under-servants idle and dissatisfied; and Sir Thomas was in hopes that another day or two would suffice to wipe away every outward memento of what had been, even to the destruction of every unbound copy of Lovers’ Vows in the house, for he was burning all that met his eye. (20.9)

It never struck me before how pointed this passage is. Sir Thomas has returned to discover that he doesn’t really know his children and he responds by clearing away every symptom so that he can forget it as quickly as possible.

Lady Bertram (Ch. 20)

Austen seemed derive as much amusement from Lady Bertram’s indolence and inertness as Mrs Norris’s hyper-activity and interference. While more educated people tend to adopt more impersonal ways of speaking, Lady Bertram takes this to extravagant lengths, sometimes almost rendering herself a non-entity in her speech, apparently vacating herself entirely.

Edmund’s Sober judgement (Ch. 20)

Edmund’s first object the next morning was to see his father alone, and give him a fair statement of the whole acting scheme, defending his own share in it as far only as he could then, in a soberer moment, feel his motives to deserve, and acknowledging, with perfect ingenuousness, that his concession had been attended with such partial good as to make his judgment in it very doubtful. (20.1)

Edmund’s dilemma as to whether he should join in the theatricals is almost perfectly balanced so that his integrity hinges entirely on his motivation. If the reason he had given to Fanny (16.4-27) were his motivation for taking part (and there was a good case for him taking part despite his principled opposition to the scheme) then he could have proceeded with a clear conscience. But as he says himself ‘If you [Fanny] are against me, I ought to distrust myself’.