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Mansfield Park

Jane Austen

Why we're reading this: Recommended by Kori Schake
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Dec 19, 2009 Trice rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: culture-studies, literature, 2009, 2012

Read 2: May 6 - 12, 2012 2nd read ups it to 5*s, with kudos to William Deresiewicz for his thoughts that, although I don't entirely agree, spurred some deeper digging into the reading.

Read 1: Dec 23, 2009
I always like Jane Austen's writing - her use of language is truly wonderful - but Mansfield Park, besides the language, I found a bit annoying for the first half. Maybe it was expectations brought on by the film adaptation, but even as I read I really expected Fanny Price to have a greater role Read 2: May 6 - 12, 2012 2nd read ups it to 5*s, with kudos to William Deresiewicz for his thoughts that, although I don't entirely agree, spurred some deeper digging into the reading.

Read 1: Dec 23, 2009
I always like Jane Austen's writing - her use of language is truly wonderful - but Mansfield Park, besides the language, I found a bit annoying for the first half. Maybe it was expectations brought on by the film adaptation, but even as I read I really expected Fanny Price to have a greater role in events. Instead she's in the room, but not really active in any observable way. I wish we could have understood her thinking better, though perhaps the intention was to first observe without much comment the actions of the selfish people who surrounded her, as well as those less selfish but rather blind to what 'evil lurks in the hearts of men' and women.

I was pulled more strongly into the book when Fanny goes to Portsmouth. There we start to gain a clearer sense of her as she observes the family she was born into and is struck, not by poorer conditions really (although these do affect her health and appetite), but rather by their poorer manners, their lack of consideration, and their lack of wisdom and management. There she learns how to be a benefactor in a small way, and starts to know her sister Susan better and seek to benefit her in other ways. I think this is the part I was really drawn to the most. Though she held her own when pressed to accept Henry Crawford's marriage proposal, she always seems more like a body pushed about by other people than a person until she returns here.

I think it's interesting that, to a certain extent, Austen seems to agree with both Mary Crawford and Mrs. Norris that by marrying Henry Crawford Fanny could, perhaps, have prevented him from his later episode with Maria. The difference is that Austen frames it more as Fanny being the potential saving of him rather than at fault for his actions.

All books cannot be summarized by one statement, but I think at least in part Austen's meaning in Mansfield Park can be found on the last page where Sir Thomas, observing the young Prices as they grow into adulthood, "acknowledge[s:] the advantages of early hardship and discipline, and the consciousness of being born to struggle and endure" (380). The one doubt I have with pulling this out as her theme, is that Fanny, whose voice is so close to that of the narrator, is so critical of their lack of manners and of her parents' lack of love for any daughter but the youngest, whom the mother spoils. Perhaps it is the balance that we must seek - Fanny must find that the Prices are not as superior as a family as she had thought when she was younger; Sir Thomas must understand that wealth and privilege do not, in turn, make a family superior. But then again, perhaps I am working too hard to summarize here. I'm sure this first reading was a rather shallow one. ...more

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