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.
Mr. Yates was beginning now to understand Sir Thomas’s intentions, though as far as ever from understanding their source. He and his friend had been out with their guns the chief of the morning, and Tom had taken the opportunity of explaining, with proper apologies for his father’s particularity, what was to be expected. Mr. Yates felt it as acutely as might be supposed. To be a second time disappointed in the same way was an instance of very severe ill-luck; and his indignation was such, that had it not been for delicacy towards his friend, and his friend’s youngest sister, he believed he should certainly attack the baronet on the absurdity of his proceedings, and argue him into a little more rationality. He believed this very stoutly while he was in Mansfield Wood, and all the way home; but there was a something in Sir Thomas, when they sat round the same table, which made Mr. Yates think it wiser to let him pursue his own way, and feel the folly of it without opposition. He had known many disagreeable fathers before, and often been struck with the inconveniences they occasioned, but never, in the whole course of his life, had he seen one of that class so unintelligibly moral, so infamously tyrannical as Sir Thomas. He was not a man to be endured but for his children’s sake, and he might be thankful to his fair daughter Julia that Mr. Yates did yet mean to stay a few days longer under his roof. (20.10)
I had previously enjoyed the comedy but missed how this passage strikes at the heart of theme of the novel. Sir Thomas’s future son in law surely has the right idea in getting Sir Thomas to engage with his children on their theatrical project, to be more rational, rather than relying on ‘the advice of absolute power’ (28.33). Instead we see Mr Yeats following the same pattern of his future in-laws, and so Sir Thomas does ‘pursue his own way, and feel the folly of it without opposition’.
Sir Thomas’s return made a striking change in the ways of the family, independent of Lovers’ Vows. Under his government, Mansfield was an altered place. Some members of their society sent away, and the spirits of many others saddened—it was all sameness and gloom compared with the past—a sombre family party rarely enlivened. There was little intercourse with the Parsonage. Sir Thomas, drawing back from intimacies in general, was particularly disinclined, at this time, for any engagements but in one quarter. The Rushworths were the only addition to his own domestic circle which he could solicit.
Edmund did not wonder that such should be his father’s feelings, nor could he regret anything but the exclusion of the Grants. “But they,” he observed to Fanny, “have a claim. They seem to belong to us; they seem to be part of ourselves. I could wish my father were more sensible of their very great attention to my mother and sisters while he was away. I am afraid they may feel themselves neglected. But the truth is, that my father hardly knows them. They had not been here a twelvemonth when he left England. If he knew them better, he would value their society as it deserves; for they are in fact exactly the sort of people he would like. We are sometimes a little in want of animation among ourselves: my sisters seem out of spirits, and Tom is certainly not at his ease. Dr. and Mrs. Grant would enliven us, and make our evenings pass away with more enjoyment even to my father.” (21.2)
Edmund also identifies a problem. Fanny, no admirer of the Crawfords is quite happy to see them shut out of course and sees more clearly (21.3) that the novelty lay in the liveliness while Sir Thomas was away rather than the dullness on his return. There can be no getting away from the suggestion that while the Crawfords, Tom, Maria and Julia may have been spoiled by over-indulgence, Sir Thomas’s imposed austerity is disastrous for the Bertrams, and equally misses the point. The occupiers of the vicarage offer a more balanced alternative, as will its future occupiers (if Edmund’s early management of Fanny and Fanny’s management of Susan at Portsmouth are any guides).
Leave a comment