And sitting together on a wrought iron seat amidst the greenery, Fanny told Edmund everything she remembered of their youths together.
Her arrival and desperate unhappiness when she was ten, and the relief at finding a true friend in her cousin, starting to love him already for his kind attentions to her.
Her hurt feelings at not being allowed to learn the accomplishments of a lady, the steady dismissal of her intelligence by everyone but himself, her gladness at being noticed by him, and the resulting deepening of her love for him.
She described the pain of being left behind whenever the others were going out to amuse themselves, and her appreciation of his efforts to include her in some of the outings, morsels of love and kindness handed to her in a world where she deemed herself inferior and unworthy.
And the humility of spirit that especially her aunt Norris' continually
demeaning comparisons of her own status to that of her cousins had given her, her own feeling of inferiority, of it being the most normal thing in the world that she should always be waiting on her one aunt and be demerited and sent on fatiguing errands by the other, only saved from these duties when he, Edmund, had stood up for her, becoming everything that was good and benevolent to her.
Fanny had to admit that in retrospect, when Henry started giving her consequence, attention and love, she had realized how wrong her treatment at Mansfield Park had been, that she did have a right to attention, a right to amusement suitable for a girl of her age, a right to learn whatever she was able to, a right to love being given to her unconditionally, and all of her time living at Mansfield Park she had only gotten anything like it from her cousin, who was just six years her senior.
She had to admit that it had made her angry for some time, towards her her aunts, and even towards her three cousins, who had accepted the compliments at her expense, who would have forced her to act in their play had Edmund and Mary not intervened, who had never treated her as a human being worth noticing or talking to.
But mostly towards her uncle, who had not checked his children nor his wife or sister-in-law in their behavior, who had taken her in but had fulfilled only her most basic needs in the family she was living in, at least until he had returned from Antigua. Of course she had had more than she would have had in her own family, but there she would have been the same as everyone, not so markedly less as to have given her an unnatural humility and an unhealthy dependence on Edmund, the only person in her life from whom she could ever expect anything good.
One can imagine that this confession did cause a lot of hurt and tears to make, and as much hurt, and even some tears, to hear. For Edmund could not deny she had been wronged, even if he hadn't realized it from his own excellent sense of justice, Mary's and Henry's steady efforts to hide their anger whenever she mentioned an instance of neglect in her youth, must have been proof of it.
Edmund clung to her, having no apology to make for his family, only for himself, but Fanny would not accept his guilt for without any example from his father or his mother, he had done the right thing for her from an early age, and the hurt her secret love for him had caused her, the confidences she had
had to hear, the scenes she had had to witness, he could not be held responsible for since he could not have known, she had never once shown her hurt or her desperation.
They held each other, cried together, and after the worst grief had passed, they started to recall the good memories, the things they had done together, the scenes they had witnessed, the intimacies they had shared, for most of Fanny's memories had lost the worst of their pain already, she was truly happy now, and she could remember a lot of events from her youth that had been pleasurable, mostly connected to Edmund. She told him how she recalled every one of his kindnesses still, and the exact spot in which they had been delivered to her.
This sweet knowledge made up a little for the guilt he had felt, and when brother and sister called out to them to let them know they had returned from their trip to the village, they were both ready for tea, and Fanny knew this conversation with Edmund had been the last step in leaving her anxious past where it belonged, and to step into her future with Edmund, Mary and her beloved Henry.
The end
Index
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
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by Luca Calcinai
Document Outline
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Index
Mansfield Park the Crawfords' Redemption Page 16
