A Stroll in Mansfield Park

A few nights ago, I finally finished a German translation of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. It was my favourite book when I was ten or eleven; probably I understood it better than Austen's other books because one doesn't lose as much if one reads it with no understanding of irony. Besides, I would picture the scenes as I read: the stairs where Edmund comforts Fanny as a little girl, the mansion of Mansfield Park, the shrubbery, Sotherton and the "ha-ha" (I still don't know what that means), and then the chaotic house in Portsmouth and the seaside. Though much of the action takes place indoors, certainly not all of it does, and one could profitably illustrate the book with a bountiful range of decorous English landscape (or seascape) paintings.

Now what strikes me most is the incredible nuance with which Jane Austen depicts a sensitive character with whom she doesn't seem to have much in common. Of course this nuance is precisely the quality that is commonly identified with the author, but she probably surpasses herself here. I recognize a good deal of my own hypersensitive feelings, especially with regard to the twinges of pain, the tiredness and the constant undermining caused by the perfectly horrid character of Mrs. Norris, who, to use a Harry Potter analogy, is a cross between Dolores Umbridge and a Dementor. There is a truth she brings out well, which is that supposedly good people of even a petty level of villainy can make life a living hell for others. The Portsmouth scenes are also excellent, about the depressing effect of one's surroundings if they are shabby and disorganized.

I've never subscribed to the view that Fanny is merely a "passive victim" or weak. She comes out much better than anyone else in the book, because, though she may not be innately more gifted or intelligent than those around her, she simply uses what she has better. She refuses to be blinded to the world around her, and she is steadfast in adhering to her principles, unlike any of the other characters. "Peer pressure" is a force that, I'd say, ninety-nine people out of a hundred can't resist, so she is definitely not weak. What I dislike in her is the hard judgmental streak, which comes out even before she returns home and finds her mother a "slattern," etc., and which (I think) reflects an underlying humourlessness of the author herself. If one looks at Jane Austen's villains, they firmly meet retribution; in Mansfield Park, she is abominably prim when she writes, first of Henry Crawford and Maria Bertram, and then of Mrs. Norris and Maria, that they are "their mutual punishment."

So I had more sympathy with the Crawfords for a while than with Edmund Bertram or even Fanny. Edmund is altogether a pitifully weak character. He is friendly enough, and when I was eleven I only saw that; but now his principles seem to me to be more a passive rigidity, even prejudices, than anything finer or more spontaneous. The way he talks to Fanny is also dreadfully patronizing. I'm guessing that in real life Fanny would have the upper hand of things once they were married, and also that he'd have to treat her as an intellectual equal, instead of continuing to be her "preceptor." It is unfair to expect a husband to be an outright superior to his wife, instead of an equal partner or even a mild inferior, but he shouldn't assume superiority if he hasn't any. In Sense and Sensibility, for instance, Edward Ferrars openly sees that Elinor is superior and he bows with a good grace to the feminine yoke; besides, he faces Mrs. Ferrars with splendid courage when she disowns him for his engagement with Lucy Steele. So I prefer him to Edmund.

But I do still love many things about Jane Austen: her fluent style, decisiveness and incisiveness in reading character (except where I find it too harsh), sympathy for her heroines, sense that there is a "rightness" in the world, refinement, emphasis on intelligence and self-knowledge, etc. I think she fits squarely into the Enlightenment tradition (though not into the tradition of the artificial, saccharine sensibility that passed as fiction) because she dissects feelings so clearly and emphasizes self-control, self-analysis, and rationality so persistently. For many years I've found other writers more congenial — Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Leo Tolstoy (in War and Peace), and Thomas Hardy — but there is no denying that she has had a permanent influence on me, and that, whenever I lose the feeling of Austen-saturation, I enjoy her as much as ever.