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”.

The problem is Fanny Price shares her cousin’s and uncle’s strict sense of propriety, and indeed is more consistent than either, and she repulses the eligible Henry Crawford’s addresses; and Austen herself acknowledged to Cassandra (letter, 18^th March 1814) that her own brother (Henry) had ‘properly’ admired Henry Crawford as ‘a clever, pleasant man’. By repulsing Henry, Fanny sets in train a chain of events that destroys Maria, ruptures the relationship between Edmund and Mary and the author concedes in the final chapter of the book that, ‘[w]ould he have persevered’ (48.19), after Mary had married Edmund, Henry could have had the Fanny that he so ‘rationally as well as passionately loved’ (48.22) as his reward. Thanks to Fanny’s stubbornness, the two dull, pious cousins, instead of marrying the clever, witty, talented, affluent, urbane and attractive Crawfords, marry each other in a near incestuous marriage. The novel seems to look backwards and inwards, Farrer calling it Austen’s Gran Refiuto (a reference to Inferno section of Dante’s Divine Comedy where he deals with the ‘cowardice of the grand refusal’).

Note that Farrer, like others that reject Mansfield Park’s ethical scheme, pay full tribute to its technical mastery, an important milestone in the development of the novel. So, given that one of Austen’s greatest critics did try to explain why it wasn’t ‘a perverse and wicked book’, that the internet discussions wouldn’t get so heated if everybody was of the same opinion, and that her 19^th century critics didn’t see the novel as so ethically exceptionable, it maybe worth considering whether Austen wasn’t pointing out a gathering force in our modern sensibilities.

While writing the book Austen said two things in her letters that seem particularly significant, neither ostensibly about Mansfield Park. In a letter to Cassandra on the 4^th February 1813 she famously said of Pride and Prejudice ‘The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn specious nonsense, about something’. Characteristically she doesn’t miss the opportunity to make a joke, but given the nature of the dark novel she was writing in which all the lively qualities of her favourite heroine get transposed into the anti-heroine, and the errant sister gets properly disgraced, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that she was concerned that Pride and Prejudice may have given the impression that wit was being promoted at the expense of ethics; for a moralist—and she was a moralist as well as a novelist—having got people’s attention, she seems to have been determined to set the record straight. The second comment was in a letter (18^th November 1814) to her troubled niece Fanny Knight who is having second thoughts about a sterling if a little dull suitor, advising Fanny that ‘Wisdom is better than Wit, & in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side’. This I think is the motif of Mansfield Park.

“It is as a dream, a pleasant dream!” he exclaimed, breaking forth again, after a few minutes’ musing. “I shall always look back on our theatricals with exquisite pleasure. There was such an interest, such an animation, such a spirit diffused. Everybody felt it. We were all alive. There was employment, hope, solicitude, bustle, for every hour of the day. Always some little objection, some little doubt, some little anxiety to be got over. I never was happier.”

With silent indignation Fanny repeated to herself, “Never happier!—never happier than when doing what you must know was not justifiable!—never happier than when behaving so dishonourably and unfeelingly! Oh! what a corrupted mind!” (23.55-6)

This may seem a little harsh, but Henry himself says later when he is courting Fanny “I should be sorry to have my powers of planning judged of by the day at Sotherton. I see things very differently now. Do not think of me as I appeared then.” Because of Fanny’s secret passion for Edmund she is the only person not viewing the Crawfords through the distorting lens of sexual passion, so she has observed Henry the ‘clandestine, insidious, treacherous admirer of Maria Bertram’ (33.6), and it is this trifling with Maria that prompts the proud Maria to decline her father’s offer to rescue her from the disastrous relationship with Rushworth, and we learn later in the last conversation between Fanny and Mary that this was by no means the first time that Henry has done this, who may likewise have propelled others through angry pride into unhappy, mercenary marriages (36.16). And then he couldn’t ‘be satisfied without Fanny Price, without making a small hole in Fanny Price’s heart’, and the perceptive Mary calls it herself.

“Phoo! phoo! This is only because there were no tall women to compare her with, and because she has got a new gown, and you never saw her so well dressed before. She is just what she was in October, believe me. The truth is, that she was the only girl in company for you to notice, and you must have a somebody. I have always thought her pretty—not strikingly pretty—but ‘pretty enough,’ as people say; a sort of beauty that grows on one. Her eyes should be darker, but she has a sweet smile; but as for this wonderful degree of improvement, I am sure it may all be resolved into a better style of dress, and your having nobody else to look at; and therefore, if you do set about a flirtation with her, you never will persuade me that it is in compliment to her beauty, or that it proceeds from anything but your own idleness and folly.” (15.53)

Fanny understands all of this, and she has nailed Mary too, who satisfies herself with a mild remonstrance when she understands Henry’s plans for Fanny (24.10) and is not above lying to and coercing Fanny in support of her brother’s wicked scheme.

It was impossible for her to be insensible of Mr. Crawford’s change of manners. She had long seen it. He evidently tried to please her: he was gallant, he was attentive, he was something like what he had been to her cousins: he wanted, she supposed, to cheat her of her tranquillity as he had cheated them; and whether he might not have some concern in this necklace—she could not be convinced that he had not, for Miss Crawford, complaisant as a sister, was careless as a woman and a friend. (26.23)

So, Fanny has understood Henry and Mary’s character, charming, clever, witty and affluent as they are, that they can be trusted about as far as they can be thrown, and for all the squealing of critics like Farrer and Amis to the contrary, Austen has developed their characters consistently with this particular effect in mind. So why this peculiar reaction? Can it be the prospect of forming ethical judgements that cut against sentiments? Like the Bertrams we find the Crawfords bewitching and have difficulty getting past their pleasing surfaces to the character formed in their corrupt, consumerist metropolitan milieu (which is not to say that every metropolitan milieu is corrupt, though it was undoubtedly Austen’s design to suggest, as Edmund says, that the ‘metropolis’ was not representative of the ‘proportion of virtue to vice throughout the kingdom’ (9.49)).

Austen drives the point home that, while a developed sense of aesthetics may be useful in developing ethics, it is far from sufficient; while Henry may have sense enough to recognise and value integrity when he sees it, Henry’s character is determined by his habits.

It was a picture which Henry Crawford had moral taste enough to value. Fanny’s attractions increased—increased twofold; for the sensibility which beautified her complexion and illumined her countenance was an attraction in itself. He was no longer in doubt of the capabilities of her heart. She had feeling, genuine feeling. It would be something to be loved by such a girl, to excite the first ardours of her young unsophisticated mind! She interested him more than he had foreseen. A fortnight was not enough. His stay became indefinite. (24.20)

[…]

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. (30.16)

Mary appreciates Fanny’s qualities as much as her brother and while Fanny may understand the characters of the Crawfords, Mary, as yet, has not the slightest insight into the steel at the centre of Fanny’s character.

“Well, well, I am satisfied. I know now to whom it must relate, and am in no hurry for the rest. Fanny Price! wonderful, quite wonderful! That Mansfield should have done so much for—that you should have found your fate in Mansfield! But you are quite right; you could not have chosen better. There is not a better girl in the world, and you do not want for fortune; and as to her connexions, they are more than good. The Bertrams are undoubtedly some of the first people in this country. She is niece to Sir Thomas Bertram; that will be enough for the world. But go on, go on. Tell me more. What are your plans? Does she know her own happiness?”

“No.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“For—for very little more than opportunity. Mary, she is not like her cousins; but I think I shall not ask in vain.”

“Oh no! you cannot. Were you even less pleasing— supposing her not to love you already (of which, however, I can have little doubt)—you would be safe. The gentleness and gratitude of her disposition would secure her all your own immediately. From my soul I do not think she would marry you without love; that is, if there is a girl in the world capable of being uninfluenced by ambition, I can suppose it her; but ask her to love you, and she will never have the heart to refuse.” (30.11-15)

Mary understands the problem where her brother is concerned yet fools herself that the damage hasn’t already been done.

“That’s right; and in London, of course, a house of your own: no longer with the Admiral. My dearest Henry, the advantage to you of getting away from the Admiral before your manners are hurt by the contagion of his, before you have contracted any of his foolish opinions, or learned to sit over your dinner as if it were the best blessing of life! You are not sensible of the gain, for your regard for him has blinded you; but, in my estimation, your marrying early may be the saving of you. To have seen you grow like the Admiral in word or deed, look or gesture, would have broken my heart.”

“Well, well, we do not think quite alike here. The Admiral has his faults, but he is a very good man, and has been more than a father to me. Few fathers would have let me have my own way half so much. You must not prejudice Fanny against him. I must have them love one another.” (30.27-8)

Henry, unable even to remember her dancing while her cousins were present (25.62), seems entirely unaware of his own past neglect of Fanny and (naturally enough) remains utterly insensitive to her real needs in his infatuation.

“I care neither what they say nor what they feel. They will now see what sort of woman it is that can attach me, that can attach a man of sense. I wish the discovery may do them any good. And they will now see their cousin treated as she ought to be, and I wish they may be heartily ashamed of their own abominable neglect and unkindness. They will be angry,” he added, after a moment’s silence, and in a cooler tone; “Mrs. Rushworth will be very angry. It will be a bitter pill to her; that is, like other bitter pills, it will have two moments’ ill flavour, and then be swallowed and forgotten; for I am not such a coxcomb as to suppose her feelings more lasting than other women’s, though I was the object of them. Yes, Mary, my Fanny will feel a difference indeed: a daily, hourly difference, in the behaviour of every being who approaches her; and it will be the completion of my happiness to know that I am the doer of it, that I am the person to give the consequence so justly her due. Now she is dependent, helpless, friendless, neglected, forgotten.”

“Nay, Henry, not by all; not forgotten by all; not friendless or forgotten. Her cousin Edmund never forgets her.”

“Edmund! True, I believe he is, generally speaking, kind to her, and so is Sir Thomas in his way; but it is the way of a rich, superior, long-worded, arbitrary uncle. What can Sir Thomas and Edmund together do, what do they do for her happiness, comfort, honour, and dignity in the world, to what I shall do?” (30.33-5)