Dear Sir,

I said in my last that I would leave Fanny to her fate, but I find that I can't, quite, without saying a few words in her defence.  It has always been my belief that Jane Austen, though subtle, is far from devious, and tells her readers clearly enough the characters and motivations of her creations, and this is the case with Fanny.  Fanny, with her nerves, her fears and her incapacity for action is irritating and at times hard to sympathise with.  But then, anxious, traumatised people often are, and if one thinks carefully about Fanny's history, it becomes clear that she has been one highly traumatised child.  The description of her arrival and early history at Mansfield are really quite sad (this description, as always in Jane Austen, is not given as a dissertation, but in subtle, scattered phrases or sentences).  Her mother gives us the first introduction to Fanny, describing her as 'small and puny'.  She makes a striking contrast to her cousins (one would not have thought the cousins nearly so much of an age as they were).  She is overwhelmed on arrival (where she knows not one human soul, and where she has been sent, at the age of ten, without even a family servant to introduce her), and is sent eventually 'to finish her sorrows in bed'.  The description of her early time at Mansfield Park is one of a child terrified almost to paralysis.  Jane Austen says that she was 'as unhappy as possible'.  She is spoken of as quiet and 'sensible of her good fortune', but is, in reality, crying herself to sleep every night.  It is not until Edmund finds her and realises how miserable she really is that she begins to settle in a little.

Once again, though, Jane Austen gives us no very happy picture of her life: 'kept back as she was by everyone else, his encouragement could not bring her forward'.  Except for him, the family has 'a mean opinion of her abilities.'   And when you really think of it, it must have been a lonely life.  Maria and Julia cannot have been companions to her (she cries when they leave, showing an affection 'they have never done much to deserve'), and there is not one mention of this kid having one single friend or playmate (having come from a large family where 'she was important as playmate and instructress') to turn to.  She never goes out ('my mother does not go out in company, and Fanny stays at home with her').  In fact, she is the most solitary, lonely figure that Jane Austen has created.  Her family never contact her, and no-one seems to think of her ever seeing them again ('only once, in all the years, did she have the happiness of seeing William').  She is almost like a sad little ghost, wandering about Mansfield Park.

No wonder she is scared of her own shadow.  Remember her pausing, when Sir Thomas comes home 'for that courage that the outside of no door had ever given her'?  And her enjoyment of quiet evenings when the family were out 'unspeakably welcome to a mind that had scarcely ever had a rest from its fears and anxieties.'  Having, somehow, survived this traumatic upheaval and change in her life, at such a young age, it is not surprising if the older Fanny dreads change - once would be enough.  And I mean, really, can any of us today imagine doing such a thing, in such a manner, to one of our small children?

I believe the depth of her trauma on being sent to Mansfield and separated forever from her family is really shown when she is offered the chance to return for a visit:  'if Fanny had been at all addicted to raptures, she must have had a strong attack of them then.' She longs for mother as much as she did when initially separated, though her creator comments dryly that Mrs Price had not shown much affection for her formerly. Fanny thinks that this must have been her fault, for being too demanding a child (who was therefore punished by being sent away?), and that now, when she is grown up, mother and daughter will be what they should to each other.

It is only during and after this visit that Fanny can see things as they are: her mother didn't want her then, and doesn't want her now ('she had neither leisure nor affection to bestow on Fanny'. Mrs Price loves her sons, her other maternal feelings are taken up by Betsy.  She has no interest in either Fanny or Susan. When Fanny starts, accidentally at first, to refer to Mansfield as 'home', she is horrified lest she offend her parents - they don't care. 'She was as welcome to wish herself there as to be there.' The news that she is going, when it comes, and that Susan is going too, is met with 'joyful alacrity', and she is dismissed from her father's house 'as tranquilly as she was welcomed to it.' The visit was therapeutic in more ways than Sir Thomas expected: it allowed Fanny to come to terms with what her parents had done to her when she was so small, and to acknowledge, with all its faults, the fact that Mansfield was now her home, and its inhabitants her family - 'Portsmouth was Portsmouth, but Mansfield was home.'
Julie

Dear Julie and Ashton,

Many thanks to both of you for your thoughtful and well- reasoned replies to my inquires about the burial of Jane Austen. The information to the effect that she "asked" to be buried in Winchester Cathedral came from the book Jane Austen Obstinate Heart by Valerie Myer, published in 1997. The reference is in chapter 24 (Winchester 1817) and is as follows: "Jane loved Winchester’s magnificent cathedral and had asked the dean and chapter if she could be buried inside it." On the other hand from the book Jane Austen by Claire Tomalin we read on page 269 "It was Henry surely who sought permission for their sister to be buried in the cathedral  splendid as it is, she might have preferred the open churchyard at Steventon or Chawton. But Henry knew the bishop from his recent examination."

As to the slab, there is a section in the Tomalin book that sheds some light. Here’s what she has to say on page 270: "They [the family] may also have helped Henry prepare the inscription on the fine black marble grave stone, in three pious rolling sentences that contrive to omit her greatest claim to fame". Now there are millions of people in the world who would read that sentence and come to the conclusion that Henry was the author of the inscription and that the family may have helped him. On the other hand there are a few people such as myself (and if I understand Ashton’s remarks on this point, he might join me here) who just cannot accept that Henry wrote the inscription. For us the sentence indicates that Henry MAY have written the inscription and he may have had help from the family. Henry ?? Give me a break--not likely.

One possible clue to my question about why the funeral cost so much could be that the cost of the "fine" marble slab might have been included in the funeral expense.

The one thing about her funeral that has always struck me as somehow sad is the sparsity of mourners in the funeral procession. (three brothers and a nephew). When one thinks about the joy Jane Austen has brought into our world, it seems a shame that those of us who have been so touched by her can not somehow travel back in time and fall in behind that sad little group of mourners, thereby creating the largest and longest procession the world has ever seen.

This summer I am going to England on a Jane Austen trip. For the first four days I will be on my own traveling to Chawton, Winchester and Steventon. Then for a week I will be in Exeter for a one week Elderhostel class devoted to the study of her works. Needless to say, I am really looking forward to the whole thing. I will be in Winchester on July 18 and plan to do a one-man recreation of the funeral procession. The re-created funeral procession seems to me to be the kind of thing that might need to be done each year by fans. Who knows maybe I will find someone over there that might actually know the answers to my questions. However, if past experience is any indicator no one will know anything. As the cartoon on my office door says, "If this is the information age, how come nobody knows anything?"

Again, thanks for your replies.

Dear Ray,

What an interesting posting! Thank you so much. I am not familiar with the Myer reference, perhaps you might be willing to post a review for us? I suppose that is too much to ask.

I will never have the opportunity to visit the places you mention, if I did, I would travel alone--I don't think I could trust myself to maintain some composure. If you have not already found them, let me link you to two posts of Kate2: at Chawton and in the Pump Room at Bath. We all beg you to post your own reflections during your trip. We would very much like that.

I think we live in the Communication Age--not the same thing as information is it? I don't know, what do you think, is accurate information always to be preferred to a high level of communication? Is information the only component of our knowledge and understanding? Do we only seek information? Crucial questions, I think, for users of the Internet--and readers of Jane Austen.

Dear Linda,

On the subject of feminist perspectives, could you elaborate a little, please?  If you haven't had a reply from the Meister on that one yet, it's because he's off looking for his blood pressure tablets - feminism and the Brontes do dreadful things to his cardiovascular system!
Julie

I hope you'll forgive the intrusion, but I have just re-read Mansfield Park and the comments here have me thinking about my own changing view of the novel. What struck me on this reading was how much Fanny and Mary Crawford are mirror images of each other. By that I mean they are the ones, indeed the only ones, who see clearly into nearly everyone else's hearts.  Miss Crawford does miss the true nature of Fanny's attachment to Edmund, but that's only to be expected -- even the Crawfords might be shocked by such a quasi-incestuous relationship. This leads me to suspect that the reader is no more expected to admire Fanny than Miss Crawford. In fact, Fanny shares some attributes with JA's least likeable characters: Mrs. Bennet's sense of entitlement; Mr. Collins' ostentatious obsequiousness and "humility" without real Christian charity; Marianne Dashwood's sensibility without sense; Mrs. Palmer's hysteria over nothing (abeit in Fanny it's mostly internalized); and, Miss Bates' inability to enter into real conversation and tendency to soliloquize apropo of nothing. Perhaps I'm reading my own feelings into the novel, but could the creator of Elizabeth Bennet and Anne Elliot really have wanted us to admire a woman like Fanny who absolutely revels in the victim/martyr role? Who consistently refuses every chance she's given to control her fate, her emotions, and others' perceptions of her?

Dear Cheryl,

I enjoyed Cheryl's comments very much, and they give voice to problems that I had for many years with Miss Fanny.  She is not an 'attractive' heroine, and I have commented elsewhere that the epithet that Jane Austen applied to Emma Woodhouse (I am creating a heroine that no-one will much like but myself), would, in our day, be more appropriate to Fanny Price.  But after twenty-odd years of reading the novel (get a life!), I have either changed my view, or become more in tune with the view of Jane Austen's time.  I see  Jane Austen's creation and development of Fanny Price as one of a powerless person who, frightened and oppressed, nevertheless stands by her principles, even though she cannot possibly be aware of the eventual turnaround of her fortunes.  It is important to remember that Fanny, the protagonist, is only eighteen years old during the critical period of the novel, and a very unworldly eighteen, at that.  This is commented upon by the worldly Miss Crawford :'I begin to understand you all, except for Miss Price:  is she out, or is she not?"  Neither Mr Bertram nor Edmund are able to answer, as Fanny's position in the family is ambiguous.  Sir Thomas means well, and has said himself that, in bringing her up in his own house, he is therefore obliged to give her the provision of a gentlewoman   no-one else, however, seems to have any very clear view, apart from Mrs Norris, who views the poor child as somewhere below the governess and the housekeeper (Fanny could not avoid Mrs Norris on the day of the ball, though the housekeeper could).  I suppose, eventually, she would have ended up as an unpaid companion to Lady Bertram, which is clearly what that lady envisaged, as much as she envisaged anything at all (now, when all our children have left, we find the good in having taken on Fanny).  I can't find it in myself to blame the poor, quivering, girl too much, when all this is taken into account.  She tends to evoke an unattractive trait in many people - both those who people the novel and those who read it - that tendency that many people have to resent, and become aggressive towards, timidity.

As for the similarity between Fanny and Miss Crawford: I can't agree, I'm afraid. Miss Crawford is an acute observer of manners, and assesses people accordingly, but is really and truly clueless about real human emotion.  Remember her tragic assessment of her friend's marriage? Commenting that the marriage is unhappy, she continues that she can't understand why, as her friend did not accept the gentleman rashly, but took five days to 'consider his proposals', and (God help her!), consulted the late Mrs Crawford before accepting!  Edmund sized up the two sisters at first sight: they are in favour of anything mercenary, save only that it be mercenary enough.  His mistake lies in supposing that Miss Crawford's friends had ruined Miss Crawford, when it seems likely that all three women are products of the same environment - fashionable Regency England, which Jane Austen loathed, and felt to be the ruination of the solid, rural values that she espoused, and defended in the characters of Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram.  Remember the lines towards the end of the novel? 'attached alike to country pleasures, the lives of the married cousins ....' I'm quoting from memory here, as usual, and, as usual, I am inaccurate, but the spirit is there.

As for the semi-incestuous:  no, I don't think so.  The whole British Royal family was, and is, composed of marriages of cousins (at best! Maybe that's where they get their excess of nose and paucity of chin?).  Dynastic marriages to unite fortunes was, and is, absolutely normal among the landed gentry of Britain.  In those large families, cousins were a dime a dozen, and not to be sneezed at.  Quite off the topic, I admire the sangfroid of the Royal Family that could, after the death of one prince, promptly marry his fiancee off to his younger brother, so that a perfectly good princess should not be wasted.  I'm talking about King George V and Queen Mary (Princess May of Teck, formerly the fiancee of George's elder brother, the heir apparent, Prince Edward).
Julie

Dear Cheryl,

First of all, you are not intruding. There are to be no private conversations at this place, so you are most welcome to the conversation and to the community. Your posting shows you to be intelligent, knowledgeable, and lively; you are exactly of the type of person for which this forum was created.

I also suspect that you are wrong in this one instance. The best way I can express that is to turn your rhetorical question against you. Do you think that Jane Austen intended for us to take Fanny Price to be ostentatiously obsequious, senseless, without real Christian charity, hysterical, and inarticulate? You must agree that your posting means that your answer is YES! If you are correct, then Mansfield Park is a very queer novel indeed. Why would Jane Austen write such a novel? What could have been her purpose?

I am surprised that you think Fanny's relationship with Edmund to border on the incestuous. The rules of incest vary over space and time. In Jane Austen's time, marriage to a first cousin was not unusual and was not considered incestuous. In our time, this is considered such bad behavior, that it is a joke ("If you go to family reunions to look for girls, you KNOW you are a redneck!"). Jane's brother Henry married their first cousin and that only after the oldest brother James had failed in his courtship of the same person. To show you how different things were then, I can point to the youngest brother Charles, who, after the death of his first wife, married his sister-in-law. That was considered incest (his mother was relieved that the couple "was not to live in the neighborhood"), but such a marriage would be unremarkable today. Incidentally, Elizabeth Bennet and Anne Elliot were courted by cousins and Henrietta Musgrove actually married her cousin, Henry Hayter. Also, remember that it was expected that Darcy would marry his first cousin.

Julie and I sometimes disagree, but on this matter I believe that she is dead right on..

First of all, thank you Julie and Ashton for your gracious replies. I don't quite see how to post this on the same thread?

I failed to state myself clearly; it isn't that Edmund and Fanny are cousins. I'm quite reconciled to first cousin marriages in the Regency -- it's that they were raised as nearly brother and sister.  In fact, Edmund, when he comes to rescue Fanny and Susan from Portsmouth calls Fanny "....my only sister..." It's a bit distasteful, don't you think?

I'm not exactly sure what JA was going about when she created Mansfield Park and its inhabitants. In considering my replies I've been thinking that she was perhaps trying to rewrite Sense and Sensibility. JA's progress as a writer and her emotional maturation has made it a very different novel, but maybe, just maybe, with the same intent. That would explain why Fanny, much like Elinor Dashwood, is admirable but not likeable while Miss Crawford is more likeable on the surface but Marianne's equal in sociopathic behavior. MP has slightly less of a fairytale finish than S&S, and a cynic like myself can't help but wonder whether Fanny wouldn't have been truly happier nursing her petty grievances to the grave.

I must stand by my comparison of Fanny and Miss Crawford. Really, I don't think it's that Mary doesn't understand true emotion, rather that she just doesn't care about others unless it affects herself (and those closest to her) directly. (And where does the brother of Mrs Rushworth get the nerve to complain about the mercenary actions of Mary Crawford's friends???) But is Fanny any different? Her reaction to Maria's adultery is to pity herself, Sir Thomas, and Edmund for the shame visited upon them. Her other reaction is delight in the ill consequences to Miss Crawford, and the material advantages to herself and Susan. There's empathy for you. Mind you, I'm not defending Maria's or Miss Crawford's actions, merely suggesting that the author didn't want us to admire or approve Fanny's *inaction* either.

I agree that one can read MP an infinite number of times over the years and come away with a different opinion of the novel, if not the characters, each time. For many years now I have barely allowed MP any merit as an independent work. How embarassing to discover that it wasn't Jane Austen's failure as a novelist, but my failure as a reader that lead me to that conclusion.

Dear Cheryl,

I'm interested to see that both Julie and Ashton object to the quasi-incestuous comment about Fanny Price.  But the incestuous overtones of Fanny's relationship with Edmund are not based on their blood relation, but on the fact that they are raised as step-brother and step-sister. Indeed, the whole novel can be seen as abandoned Fanny's quest for a family and a home. The book is called Mansfield Park, after all, and it is the estate that becomes a comfort and a security blanket to Fanny, however little she is valued by many of the residents. The play is horrible to Fanny because Sir Thomas might object, but also, perhaps, because it alters this fairy-tale home that Fanny has found.

At the start of the book, Mrs. Norris and Sir Thomas have a discussion about how it would be unthinkable for two cousins who were raised as brother and sister to fall in love.  Although we can hardly expect that Austen agrees with Mrs. Norris, the conversation at least implies that Austen was aware of the quasi-incestuous overtones of the relationship.  It's also interesting that the two people Fanny loves best are William (her brother, did I get the name right?) and Edmund, her big brother figure.  The Crawfords -- coming as they do from a broken home -- represent the anti-family influences which Fanny (who retains the psychological profile of an abandonned child) fears and despises.

Dear Gang,

It is difficult to type while trying to see through the tears--sniff. Did Cheryl have to call Marianne Dashwood a "sociopath"? Did Julie put you up to that?! That reads like something that Julie would say.

I don't understand why Bruce would call Fanny and Edmund "step" siblings. They did not share a parent, so that appellation seems wrong to me. They were raised in the same house, but their status as cousins, and not de-facto siblings, was always carefully maintained. I remember the conversation between Sir Bertram and Aunt Norris that Bruce refers to, but I interpret it much differently. Fanny is on her way to her new home at Mansfield Park, and Sir Bertram wants it understood from the start that he "will not be raising a wife for one of his sons". I have always interpreted that to mean that his fear was not of incest, rather he wanted to make sure that his sons were to be given every opportunity of a "favorable" marriage. By that I mean a marriage to a woman who would bring an economic advantage that Fanny could never provide.

I also have a much different interpretation of Fanny's objection to the play. She objects to the way the Crawfords are using the rehearsals to circumvent the proprieties. Henry Crawford is exploiting the situation to gain a physical familiarity with Maria, to deepen their flirtation. It is never clear whether Crawford is driven on entirely by an attraction to Maria or whether this is, in part, a continuation of his cruel, mocking treatment of Mr. Rushworth. Mary Crawford is using the rehearsals to increase her power over Edmund using similar flirtatious methods. All the while, Mary is trying to choose Edmund's profession for him. Fanny sees it all, and she is the only one who sees it.

I was not disgusted where Edmund refers to Fanny as "....my only sister..."; in fact, I thought it sweet and affectionate. Edmund was telling her that she was more to him than a mere cousin. More importantly, he was expressing his disappointment in his own sisters because they had allowed themselves to fall into the trap that Fanny had seen being set for them during the rehearsals of the play.

Dear Sir,

First, Marianne. You do misunderstand me, if you imagine that I could characterise her as a sociopath! I was verbalising what must be the impulse (not carried out, I hope!) of the mothers of many a teenage girl, when confronted by this monster of emotion, confusion and anger that is female adolescence. Marianne is irritating because she CHOOSES to immerse herself in her emotions, whereas her sister, with greater insight, acts differently. This I believe to have been Jane Austen's point.

From the Meister: Oh--well--OK then.

As to Henry Crawford: now there's a sociopath for you! He was using his time at Mansfield Park to exercise his 'talent to amuse' - himself. All of his behaviour, from beginning to end, and encompassing his treatment of everyone at Mansfield Park, is an exercis in manipulation.  Maria (he bit off more than he could chew, there!), Julia (whose insight allowed her to see his 'odiousness', eventually), Edmund, Lady Bertram, William (particularly nasty intentions - 'I've been nice to your brother, therefore I own you) the whole bang lot of them. His total inability to understand or care about the consequenses of his actions, even as to how they might affect his sister, is the hallmark of the sociopath. Interesting, isn't it, how human behaviour has been around as long as there have been humans, and those with real insight into it (i.e., Jane Austen) are as incisive and, importantly, humane, as many of today's professional psychiatrists, who may spend fifteen years acquiring the knowledge that this remarkable woman was analysing two centuries ago?
Julie

From the Meister: It is such a relief to know that at least one
other person reads Mansfield Park in the same way as I. It is very
sad to think of how out of sync my friend is with the rest of the world.

To Everyone,

While I am prepared to leave Fanny to her fate in most areas, I feel I have to defend her and Edmund from the imputation of quasi-incest.  Fanny was ten years old when she went to live at Mansfield Park, and Edmund was sixteen.  In fact, Edmund was not living at home at that time:  he and Tom were at boarding school and, later, at university (Edmund, at least  Jane Austen is not specific on the subject of Tom's education, but it would be hard to imagine him not going to university).  So, in fact, they were not reared together.

Fanny's feelings about Edmund, at least, were clear.  She was in love with him, and knew herself to be so.  She reprimands herself mentally for ALMOST allowing herself to think of him as Miss Crawford may be justified in doing.  Edmund's comment about Fanny as 'his only sister now' I take to be a subtle pointer of Jane Austen's, that Edmund was not yet aware of his true feelings.

And on the subject of Fanny's frequent soliquies:  they really are, in many instances, the only means of knowing what she thinks, as very often Fanny has no-one to talk to at all, except on a superficial, social level. She either thinks to herself or talks to the cat and he, presumably, got bored and went off mousing.
Julie

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