MP - HumBox

Mansfield Park 1

Outline • • • •

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