Mansfield Park 1
Outline
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The dialogism of CR with MP
Scott on Austen
Social position and morality in MP
Class and Englishness in MP
The dialogism of CR with MP
• The dangerous politics of the ‘Hibernian
Tale’ in CR sharpened rather than shortcircuited by the addition of a complex
narrative apparatus – Thady tells his own
story on ‘Monday morning’, etc.
• Irish identity presented as a form of dialogue through the symbolism of ME’s
‘country house’ novel
The dialogism of CR with MP
• JA takes up with the country house novel
in order to explore the nature of Englishness in MP
• MP also represents an attempt at advancing the novel as a form of literary
production
• CR strong on narrative voice but weak on
related aspects of technical composition
The dialogism of CR with MP
• JA a first fusion of ‘the novel’ as a serious
art form
• The seriousness of MP in relation to Pride
and Prejudice, for example . . .
• Working with unpromising material: Fanny
Price as heroine
• Bridget Jones’s Diary a paradoxical return
to eighteenth-century modes of fiction in
the late twentieth century
Scott, review of Emma, Quarterly
Review (1816)
• Scott: ‘a style of novel has arisen, within
the last fifteen or twenty years, differing
from the former in the points upon which
the interest hinges; neither alarming our
credulity nor amusing our imagination by
wild variety of incident’ (Jane Austen: The
Critical Heritage, p. 63)
Scott, review of Emma, Quarterly
Review (1816)
• Scott: ‘The substitute for these excitements, which had lost much of their poignancy by the repeated and injudicious
use of them, was the art of copying from
nature as she really exists in the common
walks of life, and presenting to the reader,
instead of the splendid scenes of an imaginary world, a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking place
around him’ (ibid., p. 63)
Scott, review of Emma, Quarterly
Review (1816)
• Scott: ‘We, therefore, bestow no mean
compliment upon the author of Emma,
when we say that, keeping close to common incidents … she has produced sketches of such spirit and originality, that we
never miss the excitation which depends
upon a narrative of uncommon events,
arising from the consideration of minds,
manners, and sentiments, greatly above
our own’ (ibid., pp. 63-64)
Scott on Austen
• First major critical notice of JA
• JA praised for incorporating ‘romance’ into
‘realism’ within the novel (Scott: ‘In its first
appearance, the novel was the legitimate
child of the romance’ (ibid., p. 59))
• JA a leading contributor to the newly
emergent ‘style of novel’ from around 1800
Scott on Austen
• Scott: ‘In this class she [JA] stands almost
alone; for the scenes of Miss Edgeworth
are laid in higher life, varied by more
romantic incident, and by her remarkable
powers of embodying and illustrating
national character’ (ibid., p. 64)
Scott on Austen
• Scott: ‘the author of Emma confines herself chiefly to the middling classes of society; her most distinguished characters do
not rise greatly above well-bred country
gentlemen and ladies; and those which
are sketched with most originality and
precision, belong to a class rather below
that standard’ (ibid., p. 64)
Social position and
morality in MP
• The trajectory of Fanny Price in MP – role
of the outsider (cf. Cinderella)
• JA (a clergyman’s daughter) as an ‘outsider’ in relation to the social layer of landed gentry
• The landed gentry’s morals reassessed
through the critical distance opened out in
terms of JA’s positioning ‘outside’
Social position and
morality in MP
• Though an outsider, Fanny wants to believe in the sort of traditional life represented by the class of wealthy land owners
• Note, for instance, her view of the chapel
visited at Sotherton Court . . .
MP, vol. 1, ch. 9
• ‘I am disappointed, cousin,’ said she in a
low voice to Edmund. ‘This is not my idea
of a chapel. There is nothing awful here,
nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here
are no aisles, no arches, no inscriptions,
no banners. No banners, cousin, to be
“blown by the night wind of Heaven”. No
signs that a “Scottish monarch sleeps
below”’.
Social position and
morality in MP
• Via Fanny, the landed gentry here presented as falling short of an ideal envisaged for it in terms of traditionalism
• But the idea of tradition linked to landed
wealth is apparently more of a positive
compared with the morals expressed from
within emergent urban capital
Social position and
morality in MP
• The ‘metropolitan’ values of Henry and
Mary Crawford – the country vs. the city
• JA’s support for the ‘country’ way of life in
MP: the values, standards, and beliefs of
the landed gentry need to be regenerated
in line with the idea of tradition in order to
stave off the threat of corruption (frivolousness, triviality) posed by the city (London)
Social position and
morality in MP
• Fanny Price – moral integrity the price to
be paid in order to secure the ideal of rural
tranquillity which JA wants to promote with
MP
Class and Englishness in MP
• In JA, rural traditionalism equated with
‘Englishness’ – JA’s penchant for irony,
understatement and moral evaluation
marks her out as a quintessentially English
writer
• The Englishness of an ‘improved’ landed
gentry presented as profoundly moral (NB
the importance of improvement as a contemporary keyword)
Class and Englishness in MP
• At the same time, JA’s English morality
appears a complicated construction in light
of the strengths and limitations of the class
viewpoint developed particularly in MP
• JA a superb social historian, in fiction, of
‘the middling classes of society’ (all the
way from the clergy up to the landed
families)
Class and Englishness in MP
• Raymond Williams: ‘She [JA] is concerned
with the conduct of people who, in the
complications of improvement, are repeatedly trying to make themselves into a
class. But where only one class is seen,
no classes are seen’ (The Country and the
City (1973), p. 117)
Class and Englishness in MP
• English identity not conceived of as a ‘dynamic’ dialogue between classes in MP in
the way that Irish identity is presented as
an ongoing dialogue, between landlords
and tenants, in CR
• Mansfield Park a country house with a
landlord (Sir Thomas Bertram and his
family) but, apparently, no tenants
Class and Englishness in MP
• In this sense, the ‘tenants’ are the workers on Sir
Thomas’s sugar plantation in Antigua, on whose
productivity Mansfield Park is dependent specifically as an English country house
• See Edward W. Said, ‘Jane Austen and Empire’,
in Culture and Imperialism (1993), pp. 95-116;
see also You-Me Park and Rajeswari Sunder
Rajan, eds, The Postcolonial Jane Austen
(2000)
Said, ‘Jane Austen and Empire’
• ‘She [JA] sees clearly that to hold and rule
Mansfield Park is to hold and rule an imperial estate in close, not to say inevitable
association with it. What assures the domestic tranquillity and attractive harmony of
one is the productivity and regulated discipline of the other’ (p. 104)
Class and Englishness in MP
• Upon his return from Antigua, Sir Thomas
brings the same style of governance practised in his sugar plantation to bear on a
Mansfield Park that has grown unruly
while he has been away
• MP, vol. 2, ch. 1: ‘How is the consternation
of the party to be described? To the greatest number it was a moment of absolute
horror. Sir Thomas in the house!’
Class and Englishness in MP
• MP, vol. 2, ch. 3: ‘Sir Thomas’s return
made a striking change to the ways of the
family, independent of Lover’s Vows’
• Sir Thomas’s attitude towards Lovers’
Vows, etc., reflective of Fanny’s dubiousness about the frivolity at Mansfield Park
during her uncle’s absence
Class and Englishness in MP
• We can infer that JA herself subscribes
somewhat enthusiastically to the sort of
tough-minded morality that Sir Thomas
embodies
• This same moral outlook is presented as
constituting the driving force of the contemporary British empire – MP emerges
as a ‘silently’ pro-imperialist work
Class and Englishness in MP
• To sustain its ‘silent’ pro-imperialist stance
the novel needs to ensure that there is
here no dialogue between landlords and
tenants
• The remarkable invisibility of the Antiguan
plantation within JA’s narrative a sign of
such things as colonialism and slavery
having been rendered an object of silence
• No English identity as dialogue . . .
Class and Englishness in MP
• Such, it would seem, is the means by
which JA is able to present Mansfield Park
as a symbol of country-house Englishness: ‘where only one class is seen, no
classes are seen’ (Williams)
• Rural traditionalism represents an ideal,
settled form of existence only so long as
an ‘Irish’, ‘Edgeworthian’ dialogic dimension to it is disallowed