Books by Jane Austen (currently Mansfield Park)

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

Couldn't find a thread about her (so didn't know if anyone would care to discuss), but I have just finished Jane Austen's Mansfield Park for a class. I've read two Jane Austen works in my life and she is growing on me, but I like Mansfield Park and think it far superior to Sense and Sensibility. It has more depth. Care to discuss (especially while it is fresh)?

I am also reading (at least parts) The Things They Carry for a potential topic for my final paper in one of my English courses. I may change to theatre of the absurd and the plays of Pinter, Beckett, Albee, Stoppard (one of these fellows at least). Thoughts?

[vison]

I love Mansfield Park but it is not everyone's cup of tea. It does have more depth than Sense and Sensibility, but in a sort of odd way. Fanny is lovable, but only just lovable. I could never love the Dashwood sisters quite as much. On the other hand, the men in Mansfield Park do not fare well at ALL.

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

Fanny certainly is only lovable. She is affected by too much for the reader to care about her, only that the plot moves her into a happy place so that you don't have to read a tragedy.

Mrs. Norris is one you love to hate. She treats Fanny worse than everyone else who treats her as an afterthought anyway. She actively tries to deny Fanny anything after propositioning for her betterment in the beginning.

I have an idea about Tom Bertram (older son) that I may propose to my class tonight. I'll see what you think first, vison. I think Tom may be homosexual in the book. When Mrs. Grant first discusses the Bertrams with the Crawford siblings, she specifically tries to seek a match between Henry and Julia. She doesn't actively seek a match between Mary and Tom, but Mary begins to miss the entertainment that Tom provides when he ventures off on his trip of fun. Not too much is mentioned about Tom after that. Austen takes cares to match everyone with a mate of the opposite gender except Tom. He mentions some friends (Sneyd at one point) and brings Yates to the house. Tom proposes the play. He is whisked back to Mansfield Park after catching a fever.... he is never mentioned in the company of women except his family and he doesn't express interest in Mary, though Mary wishes him dead so that she may marry the only "Sir Bertram" who would be left. What do you think?

[vison]

Tom gay? Could be, I guess. But the thing is, gay or not gay, he'd still be expected to marry and produce an heir. Eldest son and all. What he might or might not do outside that marriage, before and after, wouldn't really be important. Well, except that this family is more religious and strait-laced than most of Austen's characters.

I think it's an interesting idea. It might lead you down some interesting roads researching 18th century notions of sexual morality, etc.

Austen had 18th century sensibilities, although she wrote in the early 19th century. What we think of as "Victorian" strictness was still a very long way off.

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

Austen was a product of specifically the age of sentimentalism and sensibility. A lot of books were written as "conduct guides" for young girls on how to attract a prosperous mate (virtue rewarded). Although, Austen was much more ironic and satiric about these notions. This age actually affected every aspect of British life. We get a lot of our notions of politeness from this era. Sensible people acted politely because it was better for business.

I asked my class if what I was thinking about Tom may be there, or if I was reading into something that wasn't. My professor told me he hadn't even considered it before and after hearing my quick evidence agreed that there might be something there. I've been thinking about it as a potential paper topic, but I will wait until I meet with the professor more so I don't chase down pointless topics.

Tom would be expected to marry (by the standards of the society), but the idea isn't even floated in the book while his younger brother and sisters marriages (and potential marriages) are the entire focus. In some way, Austen may be insinuating something that she is not comfortable outright admitting, especially considering the society of her audience. Even the conclusion of the book just has Tom getting better from his illness and getting over his desire to party and become a help to his father, but still not mention of a lady in his life. And by the end of the book there is no lady character left for him--which could be a fault of the story more than any form of commentary.

One excellent (though tedious) book from the age of S&S is Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson. This is generally considered one of the earliest "novels" as we think of them today. Give it a read if you can stomach a lot of repetition. It's a good book, and even has an excellent dark night of the soul scene and near-rape scene. The rape isn't good, but the scene is funny, bizarre, enlightening, and very much a turning point in the novel.

[axordil]

Oh good lord, Richardson and the epistolary novel. The man almost smothered the art form in its crib. Look at Fielding's parody Shamela for another hoot.

[vison]

Austen was hardly a sentimentalist, nor did she demonstrate much "sensibility". Her outlook was pretty cold-blooded, in many ways. The ideal love match between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy was about as romantic as she got - the other great matches she made were very sensible: Mr. Knightley and Emma, Fanny and Edmund, etc. "The heart" was brought into rational step with the real world.

There was no real discrepancy of fortune or status between any of the couples in her stories. Elizabeth was, as she herself pointed out, a gentleman's daughter: a lady.

I like the idea that Tom Bertram might have been gay. But I have to be honest, I think it's a stretch to think Austen might have been hinting at it, or even that she had it in her mind without the hinting. Tom was offstage for most of the book and he wasn't a character that mattered. His eventual marriage, once he survived his illness, was a matter of course. I once thought that Austen had intended to kill him off and let Edmund become Sir Edmund, but maybe she thought that was too good for Fanny?

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

Austen certainly was not a sentimentalist nor a woman of sensibility, though her works do reflect a sharp wit and irony of this age that her writing was influenced by. I've only read S&S and Mansfield Park, so I can't speak much about ideal matches across her novels, but the ending (ch. 48) of Mansfield Park certainly does question whether the narrator honestly believes that Fanny and Edmund are a real ideal match. There is an uncertainty in the narrator's sudden shift from third to first person in the beginning of the chapter and it's use of "must" when describing how things worked out for people. The narrator says that Fanny must have been happy to return to Mansfield Park, and on the surface the reader can guess that she might but why would the narrator sound so unsure that it needs to add "must" to make the statement believable. The match of Edmund and Fanny was certainly rational and the way things should have gone (considering the actions of the novel), but there is a fantastical quality to the pipe dream that the narrator seems to want to convince the reader of in the final chapter. Time is referenced so vaguely that the narrator is telling the reader that "of course things ended happily ever after, how else could they end?" I think I'm trying to say that the narrator undermines it's own certainty in the final chapter.

You may be right that Tom's sexuality may be a stretch. I can't find any critical works that support it. My only support comes from the text and my own brain... not a good standing.

Ax, I need to read Shamela, though if it is as long as Pamela, I will pass....

[vison]

I think the way the word "must" was used in that era is misleading you!

But I agree that Edmund was not madly in love with Fanny - he had been badly burned by Miss Crawford and had turned to Fanny for comfort and Fanny was "safe". He knew everything about her, he had even been largely responsible for forming her character, as they used to say. But Fanny was in love with Edmund, all right.

You "must" read the other novels!! You have so much pleasure ahead of you, TED.

I also think that Jane Eyre, the character, had a great deal in common with Fanny Price.

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

But I agree that Edmund was not madly in love with Fanny - he had been badly burned by Miss Crawford and had turned to Fanny for comfort and Fanny was "safe". He knew everything about her, he had even been largely responsible for forming her character, as they used to say. But Fanny was in love with Edmund, all right.

This is very true.

I disagree with the singular reading of 'must.' Though I understand how they spoke during the day.

"My Fanny indeed at this very time, I have the satisfaction of knowing, must have been happy in spite of every thing." (First page of ch. 48, first sentence of second paragraph) You're reading must correctly as well, but read that juxtaposition of "knowing" and "must." There isn't a hint of uncertainty in the narrator's voice? Also, considering the change to the 'I' narrator from the omniscient.

Anyway, this is a fun discussion. We should do this with another work. I probably will read more Austen.

Have you read some of the other ladies of the S&S, early Romantic era? Burney, Wollstonecraft, whoever wrote Memoirs of Emma Courtney....

[vison]

Well, TED, I think you are misreading that. Change the sentence around: "I have the satisfaction of knowing my Fanny, indeed at this very time, must have been happy in spite of everything." Reads a bit awkwardly, but maybe expresses the thought more accurately? If the sentence said, ". . . my Fanny WAS happy in spite of everything . . ."?

Also, the change in narrator voice from omniscient to "I" is not unique or especially meaningful, IMHO. It was a little authorly conceit, I think.

I haven't read Burney or Wollstonecraft, but I have read Elizabeth Gaskell and someone else whose name escapes me at the moment.

These books were all written at a time when the convention of "love" within marriage was becoming normal. It never was, before. "Love" usually meant some passion outside marriage, either before or during, and was never intended to be a basis for marriage. In the "upper classes", especially, it was said that "love" in marriage was a delusion or habit of the "lower classes", like servants. That notion hung on much longer in the upper classes.

I hope you do take the time to read Pride and Prejudice, and Emma, both of which are masterpieces on a level beyond Mansfield Park or Sense and Sensibility. Mansfield Park was written in a kind of fit of conscience for Austen, she thought she'd written too "lightly" and thought it was time to be serious, moral, and religious. She had become famous, and thought her reputation was not quite what a clergyman's daughter should have.

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

Well, TED, I think you are misreading that. Change the sentence around: "I have the satisfaction of knowing my Fanny, indeed at this very time, must have been happy in spite of everything." Reads a bit awkwardly, but maybe expresses the thought more accurately? If the sentence said, ". . . my Fanny WAS happy in spite of everything . . ."?

That certainly does work as a reading. I think my reading has some legs to it, though. The narrator is fuzzy on the dates of when this happy ending happened. Of course Edmund and Fanny must have married and been happy and it happened just when it was supposed to, not a week before. The narrator tells the reader that it can't prove what happened, but that the reader must believe the narrator. Is this happy ending a reality? Everyone gets their comeuppance? Was this reality for women at the time? The narrator may know that this entire ending is a pipe dream, but a pipe dream necessary to point out the irony of the life.

It's an interesting ending. I don't disagree with your reading of it.

-----

Who do you think is narrating the story (even before the 'I' appears)? Fanny in the future? An outside observer? Jane Austen herself? One theory that I've learned in class is the implied author and implied reader. The implied author isn't necessarily the author who wrote the piece, but the voice that tells the story and the implied reader isn't you, vison (for example), but the "person" who that voice is addressing.

[vison]

Well, TED, I think you are misreading that. Change the sentence around: "I have the satisfaction of knowing my Fanny, indeed at this very time, must have been happy in spite of everything." Reads a bit awkwardly, but maybe expresses the thought more accurately? If the sentence said, ". . . my Fanny WAS happy in spite of everything . . ."?

That certainly does work as a reading. I think my reading has some legs to it, though. The narrator is fuzzy on the dates of when this happy ending happened. Of course Edmund and Fanny must have married and been happy and it happened just when it was supposed to, not a week before. The narrator tells the reader that it can't prove what happened, but that the reader must believe the narrator. Is this happy ending a reality? Everyone gets their comeuppance? Was this reality for women at the time? The narrator may know that this entire ending is a pipe dream, but a pipe dream necessary to point out the irony of the life.

It's an interesting ending. I don't disagree with your reading of it.

-----

Who do you think is narrating the story (even before the 'I' appears)? Fanny in the future? An outside observer? Jane Austen herself? One theory that I've learned in class is the implied author and implied reader. The implied author isn't necessarily the author who wrote the piece, but the voice that tells the story and the implied reader isn't you, vison (for example), but the "person" who that voice is addressing.

I guess the author. You know, I read a lot of Trollope. He was famous or infamous for speaking directly to the reader, but he wasn't the only author who did so. Sometimes the actual character did: Jane Eyre: "Reader, I married him."

As for "was this the reality for women at this time"? Well, I don't know exactly what you mean. Here is Fanny Price, about to make an excellent marriage to an excellent young man who has a decent income, and that was, indeed, the very BEST outcome. Will Fanny be "happy" all her life? Was this going to be a "happy marriage"? I bet it was, since Fanny and Edmund were both determined that it would be.

Would it be our idea of a "happy marriage"? Probably closer than some of that era. Edmund respected Fanny's morals and education (since he had created them! ), he thought of Fanny as a Person, not just a baby machine. I think so, at any rate. To "the world", Edmund has not made a "good marriage". He has married a "nobody", a relative with no fortune, and no connections that will help him in his future life. It seems obvious that Edmund and Fanny will spend their entire lives as Mr. and Mrs. Vicar Bertram, with a comfortable home and enough money to live on. Edmund will never be a high-ranking cleric - that took connections and influence, and money. But to Jane Austen, Fanny and Edmund's future life was HER ideal - it was the kind of home she had been happily brought up in.

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

I read Austen with more irony in the idea of a happy marriage. Were there any happy marriages in Mansfield Park. Was Fanny destined to be happy because the narrator says so, or is the narrator lying to itself to justify the marriage? Fanny and Edmund would probably live a life similar to Sir and Lady Bertram--idolatry. Edmund had the parsonage at Thornton Lacey and then acquired the parsonage at Mansfield Park--something he seemed against earlier in the book. Were the Grants happy?

I wonder if Austen even considered Fanny's marriage a good one (absent of her letters, I don't know for fact if she did or not). Her marriage is one possibly happy marriage (only told to us, not shown) in a book full of unhappy marriages. She had a one-in-a-million shot. Austen knew that a woman's fate in her time was not necessarily a happy marriage, mostly marriages of convenience because you need an income to live. Interestingly, Austen herself never married.

By author, you mean Jane Austen?

Consider the The Catcher in the Rye for example. The book speaks directly to the reader through the voice of Holden Caulfield... is that voice also JD Salinger, or is it a voice created by Salinger? Tim O'Brien wrote The Things They Carry and in it is a short story called "How to Tell a True War Story." The narrator uses 'I' throughout the story, even talks to the reader, but would you say that author is Tim O'Brien?

[axordil]

I would never assume, even in a first-person POV with direct address to the reader, that the author is actually "speaking." I assume it's an author-construct unless I'm reading a memoir or autobiography.

Scratch that. I don't trust authors even then.

[Primula Baggins]

There are some happy marriages in Austen (I'm thinking of the Musgraves in Persuasion, and also Admiral Whatsit and his wife who sailed everywhere with him). But they're not major characters.

I don't, though, think this was because Jane Austen didn't believe in happy marriages. I think it's because there is no story to tell in happy marriages. The characters aren't changing or going anywhere, and nothing is in peril.

Also, Austen meticulously wrote only about situations and kinds of people she had seen with her own eyes; this is why there are no scenes with only men present. It may also be why there are only a few brief scenes between married couples in private. Not feeling able to write such scenes at length, or for anything but comic effect, might incline you to leave happily married people out of your story, even if you saw them every day in real life.

[vison]

There are some happy marriages in Austen (I'm thinking of the Musgraves in Persuasion, and also Admiral Whatsit and his wife who sailed everywhere with him). But they're not major characters.

I don't, though, think this was because Jane Austen didn't believe in happy marriages. I think it's because there is no story to tell in happy marriages. The characters aren't changing or going anywhere, and nothing is in peril.

Also, Austen meticulously wrote only about situations and kinds of people she had seen with her own eyes; this is why there are no scenes with only men present. It may also be why there are only a few brief scenes between married couples in private. Not feeling able to write such scenes at length, or for anything but comic effect, might incline you to leave happily married people out of your story, even if you saw them every day in real life.

Yes.

While Jane Austen's books aren't mad romances, they are, in one sense romantic, in that she did believe in happy marriages. She certainly showed unhappy, or at least unpleasant, marriages but I do think that Fanny and Edmund had a pretty good chance at earthly happiness. So did Elizabeth and Darcy, and Emma and Mr. Knightley.

But we are so determined on "happiness" in our day, are we not? What is "happiness" in a marriage, anyway? Fanny was going to be respected, loved, consulted, cared for, provided for. Her wishes would always be considered, and Edmund would always be kind to her. I don't know, in all honesty, what more a person could want.

Our idea of "happiness" in marriage is mostly about *s*e*x*, isn't it? But Jane Austen wrote only very obliquely about sex. She did not have Victorian notions, but the conventions of the day kept her characters pretty chaste in behavior. Except Lydia and Mr. Wickham, of course. Oh, and the eloping Bertram daughter with Henry Crawford.

[Primula Baggins]

Merciful heavens, the Bertram daughter was actually Mrs. Rushworth, actually married when she committed "at the very least, very great indiscretion" with Mr. Crawford! And her husband divorced her (as I recall, it literally took an Act of Parliament to get a divorce in those days). Pretty racy stuff, though it all takes place "offstage" and is merely reported.

I know you'll all be shocked, but I think Jane Austen probably had sex sorted into its proper place. Marry the right person, someone who respects you for your own qualities, and make a sensible match that lets you live without worrying about money all the time; and the sex probably takes care of itself.

[vison]

Merciful heavens, the Bertram daughter was actually Mrs. Rushworth, actually married when she committed "at the very least, very great indiscretion" with Mr. Crawford! And her husband divorced her (as I recall, it literally took an Act of Parliament to get a divorce in those days). Pretty racy stuff, though it all takes place "offstage" and is merely reported.

I know you'll all be shocked, but I think Jane Austen probably had sex sorted into its proper place. Marry the right person, someone who respects you for your own qualities, and make a sensible match that lets you live without worrying about money all the time; and the sex probably takes care of itself.

Merciful heavens!!!!

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

Prim, I can't comment on happy marriages in other works of Austen because I have only read two and don't even remember S&S enough.

I don't, though, think this was because Jane Austen didn't believe in happy marriages. I think it's because there is no story to tell in happy marriages. The characters aren't changing or going anywhere, and nothing is in peril.

I very much agree with this. This accounts for the abruptness of the ending of Mansfield Park. Edmund has his powwow with Fanny and then it's wrap-up time!

Your comment about Austen not writing about married people to leave them alone, I can't comment on, Prim, because I don't know enough about Austen personally to know if its true. Does she state this in any letter?

What does the narrator seem to say about marriage throughout the book? Austen is not (in my opinion) the narrator. Austen is only the writer.

Our idea of "happiness" in marriage is mostly about *s*e*x*, isn't it?

Is it? Is that your idea? Society certainly implies it, so I don't totally disagree, but we, as a society, seem to value some of the other aspects as well (like the presents and tax breaks ). I would read Fanny's impending marriage as comfortable, like Sir and Lady Bertram and the Grants. There is no apparent indication that either of those are happy per se (any definition of happy). I see Fanny's marriage following in a similar suit. Edmund marries her as an afterthought anyway (much like how she's treated in the entire book).

I'd like to get opinions on the play within the story: The Lover's Vows. Why was the play so dangerous that both Fanny and Edmund were against it (at least first until Edmund caved)?