Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park
Patriarchy Critiqued or Defended?
Eileen Manion
“How was I to have an attachment
at his service, as soon as it was asked for?”
That seems as close to anger or indignation as Fanny Price, Jane Austen’s anxious, timid protagonist in Mansfield Park, ever gets in her discussion of Henry Crawford’s unwanted pursuit with Edmund. Unfortunately, this statement only confirms her cousin in his belief that Henry will gain Fanny’s affections if he persists long enough and goes about it correctly.
Henry imagines that Fanny will make him a “sweet little wife, all gratitude and devotion.” To him, Fanny represents an ideal of feminine “sweetness,” seen as “essential” to a woman’s character “in the judgment of men.” Henry notes that he has observed Fanny when her temper has been tried by Mrs. Norris’s bullying and Lady Bertram’s self-centeredness. Under all provocation, she has remained “sweet.” So Henry imagines he too can benefit from her sweetness and behave any way he wants with no opposition, no inconvenient angry outbursts or sulks. Moreover, he appreciates Fanny’s “good principles”; she won’t make him a cuckold.
In her conversation with Edmund about Crawford’s proposal, Fanny can be more open than with Sir Thomas about her disapproval of Crawford’s conduct in relation to Maria and Julia Bertram — after all Edmund was there at all the rehearsals of the play. His response is telling. All he saw was Henry “led on” by his sisters. All their fault. As usual — blame the women for any impropriety.
Edmund’s judgment of Henry is clouded by his love for Mary, of course, but also by the assumptions and clichés of so-called romantic love. He tries to persuade Fanny that she and Henry have complementary personalities and will be good for each other.
While this might well have been true for Darcy and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, it is not the case for Fanny and Henry since Henry is a narcissist incapable of love.
In addition, unlike Darcy, he is an irresponsible landlord, for, once married, he plans to rent his estate and live partly near Mansfield Park and partly in London. In his attempts to “win” Fanny, he changes course and tells her he will return to his estate and manage it himself; however, he fails to follow through on either of his projects for property or self-improvement. Such behavior would have been a red flag among Austen’s contemporary readers.
While characters like Sir Thomas, Mary Crawford, and Edmund admire Henry’s persistence in his suit, seeing him as a sort of knight attempting to win the love of a fair lady, the reader recognizes his behavior for what it is: stalking. “I do and will deserve you,” he tells Fanny — giving her no choice in the matter. “When you know her as well as I do…” he boasts to her sister after he has followed Fanny to Portsmouth.
The comical scene in which Henry attempts to prove himself capable of “seriousness on serious subjects” may fool Edmund, but not Fanny or the reader who sees through his bombastic rhetoric on religious services and preaching.
Fanny is truly alone in her resistance to Crawford’s proposal; all the other characters gang up on her, amazed by her refusal and even more astonished by her defiance.
Mary obviously thinks Henry has “a right to everything he may wish for” while Edmund imagines she must “be sorry for [her] own indifference.” He has no more respect for her judgment or feelings than his father has although he is gentler in his effort to persuade.
Fanny is a character easy to misunderstand. Although at first her refusal of Crawford may seem priggish and moralistic, Austen gives her real psychological insight. She sees through Crawford’s charm to recognize the egocentric entitlement underneath. He has been corrupted not only by the “contagion” of the Admiral’s vices, but also by the privileges he has enjoyed in a patriarchal society.
Henry may seem less crude than a Harvey Weinstein, but they are on a continuum of abuse of power.
If Fanny is right in rejecting a predator, how can we understand her endogamous, quasi-incestuous love for Edmund, with whom she has had a Pygmalion-like relationship?
Edmund is not a moral arbiter in the novel he may at first appear. His reaction to his sister’s adultery and Mary Crawford’s characterizing it as “folly” rather than “evil” is hardly a model of Christian compassion or forgiveness. He’s only too eager to cast not only the first stone, but a whole pile of them.
The patriarchal orderliness of Mansfield Park, which Fanny comes to appreciate when she visits her messy family in Portsmouth, is based on wealth acquired from Sir Thomas Bertram’s sugar plantations in Antigua, in other words, on slavery. It may look mannered and manicured, but the base, which is rotten and corrupt, must be maintained by repressing this recognition and expelling disorderly elements — epitomized in the female sexuality of Maria Bertram Rushworth and Mary Crawford.
The same system which requires “sweetness” in Fanny forces enslaved Africans to toil 14 hours a day in Antigua to produce the sugar that keeps Mansfield solvent.
So Mansfield Park is hardly the pastoral good place we might expect to find in a Jane Austen novel. Although both Fanny and Edmund profess a love of nature that relies on familiar Romantic tropes and reject the mercenary values that prioritize glamor over domestic tranquility, the rarely mentioned but unforgettable economic basis of their lives reveals their class for what it is. And the smug hypocrisy of their rigid moralistic principles shows us the ethical vacuum at the core.
As a supporter of abolition, Austen knew that “the most respected and beneficent of society people oversaw forced labor camps that were politely called plantations.” *
By recognizing the social consensus that allowed powerful men to get what they want in relation to women and revealing that the English gentry’s attractive shrubberies and proper manners were based on one of history’s worst abuses of patriarchal/ imperial power, Jane Austen was truly ahead of her time.
*Isabelle Wilkerson, Caste: the Origins of Our Discontent, p.47
“How was I to have an attachment at his service,
as soon as it was asked for?
That seems as close to anger or indignation as Fanny Price, Jane Austen’s anxious, timid protagonist in Mansfield Park, ever gets in her discussion of Henry Crawford’s unwanted pursuit with Edmund. Unfortunately, this statement only confirms her cousin in his belief that Henry will gain Fanny’s affections if he persists long enough and goes about it correctly.
Henry imagines that Fanny will make him a “sweet little wife, all gratitude and devotion.” To him, Fanny represents an ideal of feminine “sweetness,” seen as “essential” to a woman’s character “in the judgment of men.” Henry notes that he has observed Fanny when her temper has been tried by Mrs. Norris’s bullying and Lady Bertram’s self-centeredness. Under all provocation, she has remained “sweet.” So Henry imagines he too can benefit from her sweetness and behave any way he wants with no opposition, no inconvenient angry outbursts or sulks. Moreover, he appreciates Fanny’s “good principles”; she won’t make him a cuckold.
In her conversation with Edmund about Crawford’s proposal, Fanny can be more open than with Sir Thomas about her disapproval of Crawford’s conduct in relation to Maria and Julia Bertram — after all Edmund was there at all the rehearsals of the play. His response is telling. All he saw was Henry “led on” by his sisters. All their fault. As usual — blame the women for any impropriety.
Edmund’s judgment of Henry is clouded by his love for Mary, of course, but also by the assumptions and clichés of so-called romantic love. He tries to persuade Fanny that she and Henry have complementary personalities and will be good for each other.
While this might well have been true for Darcy and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, it is not the case for Fanny and Henry since Henry is a narcissist incapable of love.
In addition, unlike Darcy, he is an irresponsible landlord, for, once married, he plans to rent his estate and live partly near Mansfield Park and partly in London. In his attempts to “win” Fanny, he changes course and tells her he will return to his estate and manage it himself; however, he fails to follow through on either of his projects for property or self-improvement. Such behavior would have been a red flag among Austen’s contemporary readers.
While characters like Sir Thomas, Mary Crawford, and Edmund admire Henry’s persistence in his suit, seeing him as a sort of knight attempting to win the love of a fair lady, the reader recognizes his behavior for what it is: stalking. “I do and will deserve you,” he tells Fanny — giving her no choice in the matter. “When you know her as well as I do…” he boasts to her sister after he has followed Fanny to Portsmouth.
The comical scene in which Henry attempts to prove himself capable of “seriousness on serious subjects” may fool Edmund, but not Fanny or the reader who sees through his bombastic rhetoric on religious services and preaching.
Fanny is truly alone in her resistance to Crawford’s proposal; all the other characters gang up on her, amazed by her refusal and even more astonished by her defiance.
Mary obviously thinks Henry has “a right to everything he may wish for” while Edmund imagines she must “be sorry for [her] own indifference.” He has no more respect for her judgment or feelings than his father has although he is gentler in his effort to persuade.
Fanny is a character easy to misunderstand. Although at first her refusal of Crawford may seem priggish and moralistic, Austen gives her real psychological insight. She sees through Crawford’s charm to recognize the egocentric entitlement underneath. He has been corrupted not only by the “contagion” of the Admiral’s vices, but also by the privileges he has enjoyed in a patriarchal society.
Henry may seem less crude than a Harvey Weinstein, but they are on a continuum of abuse of power.
If Fanny is right in rejecting a predator, how can we understand her endogamous, quasi-incestuous love for Edmund, with whom she has had a Pygmalion-like relationship?
Edmund is not a moral arbiter in the novel he may at first appear. His reaction to his sister’s adultery and Mary Crawford’s characterizing it as “folly” rather than “evil” is hardly a model of Christian compassion or forgiveness. He’s only too eager to cast not only the first stone, but a whole pile of them.
The patriarchal orderliness of Mansfield Park, which Fanny comes to appreciate when she visits her messy family in Portsmouth, is based on wealth acquired from Sir Thomas Bertram’s sugar plantations in Antigua, in other words, on slavery. It may look mannered and manicured, but the base, which is rotten and corrupt, must be maintained by repressing this recognition and expelling disorderly elements — epitomized in the female sexuality of Maria Bertram Rushworth and Mary Crawford.
The same system which requires “sweetness” in Fanny forces enslaved Africans to toil 14 hours a day in Antigua to produce the sugar that keeps Mansfield solvent.
So Mansfield Park is hardly the pastoral good place we might expect to find in a Jane Austen novel. Although both Fanny and Edmund profess a love of nature that relies on familiar Romantic tropes and reject the mercenary values that prioritize glamor over domestic tranquility, the rarely mentioned but unforgettable economic basis of their lives reveals their class for what it is. And the smug hypocrisy of their rigid moralistic principles shows us the ethical vacuum at the core.
As a supporter of abolition, Austen knew that “the most respected and beneficent of society people oversaw forced labor camps that were politely called plantations.” *
By recognizing the social consensus that allowed powerful men to get what they want in relation to women and revealing that the English gentry’s attractive shrubberies and proper manners were based on one of history’s worst abuses of patriarchal/ imperial power, Jane Austen was truly ahead of her time.
*Isabelle Wilkerson, Caste: the Origins of Our Discontent, p.47
