Mary was brought up by her uncle and guardian Admiral Crawford. On his wife’s death the Admiral, who is described as ‘a man of vicious conduct’, makes it impossible for Mary to go on living with him at his London home because it is now occupied not only by himself, but also by his mistress. Mary decides, therefore, to make a home with the Grants at the parsonage. Speaking of the Admiral’s house, where she was brought up, Mary says that ‘Of Rears and Vices, I saw enough. Now, do not be suspecting me of a pun. I entreat’. Edmund considers this joke to be in poor taste, and is not impressed.
Despite Mary’s faults, which are all too apparent to Fanny, Edmund finds himself falling in love with her. When Mary expresses the desire to learn to ride, Edmund offers her a mare which Fanny considers to be hers. Edmund subsequently notices that Fanny is suffering as a result of spending too much time indoors. He becomes angry with himself for having left her for ‘four days together without any choice of companions or exercise’.
When Fanny has the opportunity to visit the Rushworths at ‘Sotherton’, Aunt Norris continues with her personal vendetta against her by declaring that it is ‘quite out of the question’, as Lady Bertram cannot possibly spare her. In this Edmund overrides her once again. When Fanny is offered the east room of the house, Aunt Norris shows her spitefulness by stipulating that no warming fire would be lit in the hearth ‘on Fanny’s account’.
At ‘Sotherton’ Mr Rushworth’s guests are shown the chapel, where Mary Crawford makes disparaging remarks about the church by referring to those ‘poor housemaids and footmen’ who are required ‘to leave business and pleasure, and say their prayers here twice a day’. In her opinion, it was:
safer to leave people to their own devices on such subjects [and] to chuse [their] own time and manner of devotion.
The amateur theatricals held at Mansfield Park are reminiscent of those organised by Jane’s eldest brother James in the improvised theatre set up in the barn at Steventon. When Fanny is asked to perform a part, in a play of which she disapproves, she objects vigorously. At this Aunt Norris declares:
I shall think her a very obstinate, ungrateful girl, if she does not do what her Aunt, and Cousins wish her – very ungrateful indeed, considering who and what she is.
Mary then attempts to comfort Fanny. (Here, Jane Austen demonstrates, once again, her belief that very few people are entirely without some redeeming features).
Edmund, who previously declared that he would not act in the play, is persuaded to do so, whereupon Fanny reprimands him saying that she is:
sorry to see you drawn in to do what you had resolved against, and what you are known to think would be disagreeable to my uncle.
Fanny finds herself increasingly isolated:
Every body around her was gay and busy, prosperous and important … She alone was sad and insignificant; she had no share in any thing; she might go or stay, she might be in the midst of their noise, or retreat from it to the solitude of the east room without being seen or missed.
Just as Fanny reluctantly succumbs to the pressure and agrees to accept a part in the play, Sir Thomas Bertram returns home. He is delighted to see her again and greets her ‘with a kindness which astonished and penetrated her, calling her his dear Fanny, kissing her affectionately’.
When Sir Thomas shows his displeasure at what has been going on in his absence, Edmund admits that ‘we have all been more or less to blame’. But he does admit to his father that this does not include Fanny who was
… the only one who has judged rightly throughout, who has been consistent. Her feelings being steadily against it from first to last. She never ceased to think of what was due to you.
Mary complains about the ‘remoteness’, ‘unpunctuality’ and ‘exorbitant charges and frauds’ of the local nurseryman and the poulterer, and states that she means to be ‘too rich to lament or feel any thing of the sort’.
When Mrs Grant asks Fanny to dinner, Aunt Norris cannot resist a jibe, by warning the latter about ‘the nonsense and folly of peoples stepping out of their rank and trying to appear above themselves’. When Aunt Norris goes on to suggest that Fanny could walk to the dinner engagement, Sir Thomas overrules her in no uncertain manner and orders the carriage to call and collect her.
At the parsonage Henry Crawford, echoing the views of his sister Mary, declares that the most interesting topic in the world was ‘how to make money – how to turn a good income into a better’. He subsequently declares his intention to ‘make Fanny Price [fall] in love with me’. At this, Mary tells him that it is her wish that he does not make Fanny unhappy, ‘for she is as good a little creature as ever lived and has a great deal of feeling’.
When Fanny’s brother William, who is in the Royal Navy, visits Mansfield Park, Fanny declares that she has
never known so much felicity in her life … Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply …
William presents Fanny with an amber cross, whereupon Mary Crawford invites her to choose a necklace to wear with it. Mary does not tell Fanny that the necklace she chooses had been previously purchased by her brother Henry who has designs on her. In other words, Fanny has been tricked. When Edmund also presents Fanny with a chain for William’s cross, she says she will return the one given to her by Mary. However, he persuades her not to do so. At a ball held by Sir Thomas at Mansfield Park, Fanny resolves the dilemma in which she finds herself by wearing both Edmund’s chain and Mary’s necklace with her cross.
When Sir Thomas asks Fanny to lead the way and open the ball, she is overcome:
She could hardly believe it. To be placed above so many elegant young women! The distinction was too great.
Sir Thomas, for his part, acknowledges that whereas his family had been kind to Fanny, she was now ‘quite as necessary to us’.
Edmund is dismayed when Mary tells him that this will be the last time she will ever dance with him. ‘She never has danced with a clergyman, she says, and she never will,’ he tells Fanny. Not only that, but Mary confirms her lack of feelings for Edmund by telling Fanny that she regards him as no more than a ‘friendly acquaintance’.
Henry Crawford informs his sister Mary that he is determined to marry Fanny Price. He tells Fanny that his uncle the Admiral has promoted her brother William to be a lieutenant in the Navy and confirms that it was he (Henry) who was instrumental in persuading him to do so. Moreover, ‘Every thing he had done for William was to be placed at the account of his excessive and unequalled attachment to her’. Fanny is horrified. ‘But you are not thinking of me. I know it is all nothing,’ she says. Mary compounds the situation by assuming that Fanny has decided to marry her brother and offering her congratulations.
Shortly afterwards Sir Thomas tells Fanny that Henry Crawford has arrived to see her. Fanny responds by telling Sir Thomas that she intends to refuse Henry’s offer of marriage on the grounds that she is ‘so perfectly convinced’ that she could never make him happy and that she should be miserable herself. Aunt Norris then weighs in by criticising Fanny for her independent and secretive spirit. Sir Thomas, having tried his utmost in the matter, finally relents, saying that he will not attempt to persuade Fanny to marry against her will. ‘Your happiness and advantage are all that I have in view.’ As for Lady Bertram, she tries to cheer Fanny up by saying: ‘The next time Pug [her dog] has a litter, you shall have a puppy.’
Nevertheless, Fanny finds herself besieged on all sides. Henry Crawford turns on the charm to persuade her:
My conduct shall speak for me – absence, distance, time shall speak for me. – They, shall prove, that as far as you can be deserved by any body, I do deserve you.
When Fanny tells Edmund that she and Henry are ‘totally unalike … We have not one taste in common. We should be miserable’, he says he believes her to be mistaken. Mary openly admits to Fanny that her brother Henry ‘has now and then been a
sad flirt and cared very little for the havock he might be making in young ladies’ affections’; at which Fanny shakes her head and declares, ‘I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman’s feelings’. When Mary says she believes Henry will love Fanny forever, ‘Fanny could not avoid a faint smile …’
At Sir Thomas’s suggestion, Fanny returns to her family in Portsmouth. The welcome, however, is not what she might have hoped for. Her father is pre-occupied with his son William and her mother has ‘neither leisure nor affection to bestow on Fanny’. Henry Crawford arrives, saying that he cannot bear to be separated from her any longer, and she finds him ‘much more gentle, obliging, and attentive to other peoples’ feelings than he had ever been at Mansfield’. Fanny receives a letter from Edmund who is clearly still in love with Mary; she fears for him. ‘He will marry her and be poor and miserable … She loves nobody but herself and her brother.’
Lady Bertram writes to Fanny to tell her that her son Tom has had a fall in London after ‘a good deal of drinking’ and has now developed a fever. Fanny also receives a letter from Mary Crawford to say that if Tom were to die, Edmund would become heir to Sir Thomas’s estate, and it was Mary’s opinion that ‘wealth and consequence could fall into no hands more deserving of them’. The letter makes Fanny despise Mary even more in that she can, apparently, forgive Edmund for being a clergyman but only ‘under certain conditions of wealth’.
Edmund writes to Fanny again saying that his sister Julia has eloped with their brother Tom’s friend John Yates. It is also rumoured, and finally confirmed, that the Bertrams’ elder daughter Maria has left her husband Mr Rushworth for Henry Crawford. In her judgement of Henry, Fanny is therefore completely vindicated. She is then summoned back to Mansfield Park, at Sir Thomas’s behest, in order that she might comfort his wife Lady Bertram in all her family troubles.
Fanny learns from Edmund that Mary blames her for the debacle, in that had she accepted Henry’s proposal of marriage he ‘would have been too happy and too busy to want any other object’, and ‘would have taken no pains to be on terms with Mrs [Maria] Rushworth again’. Fanny calls this behaviour on Mary’s part cruel. Edmund’s eyes are now, at last, fully opened to Mary’s character. ‘How I have been deceived!’ he says.
Jane Austen concludes Mansfield Park by saying that Fanny, in spite of everything, was a happy creature in that ‘she had sources of delight that must force their way’. Not only that, but when she returned to Mansfield Park, ‘she was useful, she was beloved; she was safe from Mr Crawford’. Also, Sir Thomas, even in his melancholy state of mind, was able to give her his ‘perfect approbation and increased regard’. Most importantly of all, Edmund was ‘no longer the dupe of Miss Crawford’. In fact, he admitted, ‘even in the midst of his late infatuation’, to Fanny’s mental superiority. In other words, Fanny had been able to discern the truth about Mary Crawford, whereas he had not. Edmund and Fanny marry and, on Dr Grant’s death, move into the parsonage at Mansfield Park.
So what is the message of Mansfield Park? It is the story of a young woman who starts life in a lower middle-class family in Portsmouth and becomes, to all intents and purposes, the mistress of Mansfield Park. How does she achieve this? By a steadfastness of character; by an unwillingness to condone or become involved in the schemes of others with which she disapproves, and by refusing an offer of matrimony from someone who may be rich, but whom she knows can never make her happy. Even when she feels ‘deserted by everybody’ she does not abandon her principles. Her happiness is something which comes from within; it is not dependant on the wealth or patronage of others. Fortunately for Fanny, her strengths are recognised by Sir Thomas Bertram and latterly, by his younger son Edmund.
Fanny, a beacon of light in an often dark world, has many tribulations to bear: the spitefulness of Aunt Norris; the indifference of her parents when she returns to Portsmouth; the duplicity of Henry and Mary Crawford and the naivety of the love-struck Edmund. Nevertheless, she behaves unselfishly even when all hope of a union between herself and Edmund appears to have vanished: always making his happiness her primary consideration.
Also, although Fanny’s parents have little time for her, there are strong indications in the novel of the importance Fanny places on her loving relationship with her brother William, and latterly with her sister Susan; such relationships being regarded by her as uniquely to be treasured.
In January 1813, a few days before the publication of her novel Pride and Prejudice, Jane’s sister Cassandra left Chawton to visit Steventon, a journey of 14 miles. She was therefore absent when the author’s copy of the novel arrived from the publishers, and all Jane could do was write to her: ‘I want to tell you that I have got my own darling child [i.e. the novel] from London’.1
Jane’s letters indicate that her mother’s health was particularly bad during that year. For example, in the February:
My Mother slept through a good deal of Sunday … & even yesterday she was but poorly. She is pretty well again today, & I am in hopes may not be much longer a Prisoner [i.e. in the house].2
Jane’s cousin Eliza, Henry’s wife, had also been ill for almost a year, and she was now fading fast. Henry sent for Jane to come to London, to Sloane Street where they now lived, to comfort her. She died on 25 April 1813, aged 50.
In June 1813, Charles’s two eldest daughters Cassandra and Harriet came to stay with their Aunts Jane and Cassandra in Hampshire. From mid-September to November of that year, it was Jane’s turn to stay at Godmersham Park.
Jane sent her brother Francis a long letter in early July. In it, she said that the previous January she had learnt, from the newspaper, that the Revd Samuel Blackall had married Susannah, ‘eldest daughter of James Lewis Esq. of Clifton, late of Jamaica’.3 The previous year Blackall had achieved his wish of becoming Rector of North Cadbury, Somerset and could therefore now afford a wife.
Jane had previously described Blackall as ‘a peice of Perfection’ and someone whom she would ‘always recollect with regard’. Now, in respect of his new wife, she stated as follows:
I would wish Miss Lewis to be of a silent turn & rather ignorant, but naturally intelligent & wishing to learn; fond of cold veal pies, green tea in the afternoon, & a green window-blind at night.4
This smacks of sour grapes on Jane’s part. She knew that Blackall was a lively and intelligent man, so if she had had his best interests at heart, she would naturally have wished for his partner to be of a similar nature. Instead, she expresses the hope that Susannah Lewis will prove to be dull and staid. In other words, Jane hopes that Blackall will be punished for not choosing her instead; she who had all the requisite qualities.
So why had he not married Jane? After all, she was still a single woman and in good health. Was it, as has already been suggested, because of intervention by Cassandra?
Despite receiving this piece of portentous news about Blackall, Jane still found it possible to think of her brother. She wrote to Francis:
My Dearest Frank …
God bless you. – I hope you continue beautiful & brush your hair, but not all off. – We join in an infinity of love.
Yrs very affectly,
Jane Austen.5
At about this time, Jane’s niece Frances (‘Fanny’) Knight observed that her Aunt Jane ‘suffered sadly with her face’.6 Years later, Fanny’s sister Elizabeth (‘Lizzy’) recalled seeing Jane walk
with head a little to one side, and sometimes a very small cushion pressed against her cheek, if she were suffering from face-ache, as she not infrequently did in later life.7
What the Knight sisters were observing in Jane were attacks of trigeminal neuralgia, caused by a dysfunction of the trigeminal (or 5th cranial) nerve which supplies the face. The pain is severe and comes in paroxysms, and the disorder is believed to be due to compression of the nerve in the bony canal between the brain and the face, in which it lies.
Jane told Cassandra that their mother had improved and was ‘no more in need of Leech
es’. (A leech is a large aquatic blood-sucking worm used by the medical profession for the purpose of blood-letting, which was considered to be beneficial.) Nevertheless, James E. Austen-Leigh declares that during the last years of her life, Mrs Austen ‘endured continual pain, not only patiently but with characteristic cheerfulness’. (In fact, she lived on until 1827).8
In September 1813 Jane sent Francis an even longer letter, packed with news and addressed to: ‘Captain Austen, HMS Elephant, Baltic.’9
The following month gave Jane the opportunity of seeing her youngest brother, Charles, when he and his wife Frances arrived at Godmersham Park, where she was staying. She said warmly:
Here they are, safe and well, just like their own nice selves, Fanny (Frances) looking as neat & white this morning as possible, and dear Charles all affectionate, placid, quiet, chearful good humour.10
In a letter to her niece Anna Austen, written in mid-September 1814, Jane gave a clue as to how she obtained ideas for the characters of her novels when she said, ‘3 or 4 Families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on’.11
Notes
1. Letter from Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen, 29 January 1813.
2. Letter from Jane Austen to Martha Lloyd, 16 February 1813.
3. The marriage was reported in the Hampshire Telegraph of 11 January 1813.
4. Letter from Jane Austen to Francis Austen, 3/6 July 1813.
5. Letter from Jane Austen to Francis Austen, 3 July 1813.
6. Deirdre Le Faye, Fanny Knight’s Diaries (The Jane Austen Society, 2000), p. 27.
7. Oscar Fay Adams, The Story of Jane Austen’s Life (USA: Chicago, 1891), p. 176.
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