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Into this Cinderella existence comes Henry Crawford and his sister, Mary, who are visiting relatives in the neighborhood. Soon Mansfield Park is given over to all kinds of gaiety, including a daring interlude spent dabbling in theatricals. Young Edmund is smitten with Mary, and Henry Crawford woos Fanny. Yet these two charming, gifted, and attractive siblings gradually reveal themselves to be lacking in one essential Austenian quality: principle. Without good principles to temper passion, the results can be disastrous, and indeed, Mansfield Park is rife with adultery, betrayal, social ruin, and ruptured friendships. But this is a comedy, after all, so there is also a requisite happy ending and plenty of Austen's patented gentle satire along the way. Describing the switch in Edmund's affections from Mary to Fanny, she writes: "I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that everyone may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people." What does not vary is the pleasure with which new generations come to Jane Austen. --Alix Wilber -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Taschenbuch .
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What has all of this to do with Mansfield Park? Very little. But it has a lot to do with the modern criticisms of Mansfield Park.
People living in the First World, especially in the United States, often forget that there are societies and ways of thinking different from their own. They forget to the extent that they can no longer even imagine such a possibility.
In the Western world today, moral absolutism is treated with suspicion, and as something dirty. Maybe rightly, maybe not. But there's no point in reading every novel as if the author shared your point of view, and then staring in bewilderment when you thus find contradictions in it.
Fanny Price is morally perfect. She is modest, truthful, and certain of nothing but the difference between right and wrong. She is "a loathsome little priss". So how could Jane Austen have made her her heroine? And if she decided to create a revolting heroine, why didn't she express her opinion of her, as she frequently does in her novels? Did Jane Austen like prissy little Fanny? This is the question which is really bothering the critics. Well, maybe she did.
Maybe Jane Austen herself believed in moral absolutes. There's nothing in her letters or novels to make me think that this is impossible. 'But how could an intelligent, sensitive woman think like that?' Why not? I've spent my life studying moral philosophy, and have not yet seen a logical proof for the impossibility of moral absolutes.
It would be unusual for an intelligent, sensitive woman who grew up in Twentieth-Century America to believe in such things. Intelligent people in the United States today are taught to look at many sides of moral issues. But Jane Austen didn't grow up in the United States today. She grew up in a family outwardly very similar to the Bertrams, in a town much like theirs. It is not even clear that Jane Austen herself placed a high value on deep thought and fine moral distinctions. The fact that she enjoyed using them herself is neither here nor there. She may have liked and admired Fanny Price.
I like and admire Fanny Price, too. (According to hearsay adduced by Claire Tomalin, so did Cassandra Austen. Tomalin also quotes some words of Jane Austen which point in the same direction, but I don't know the source.) I wouldn't like to have Fanny Price around, because I wouldn't want my every move supervised by the morals-police. But at a great distance, as a character in a novel, I like her. Because I can imagine a different world, where absolute goodness is absolutely good.
I have no problem with Jane Austen's attitude toward Fanny Price. It's quite possible that Jane Austen could also imagine absolute good. It would be strange if an associate professor from Palo Alto thought in such terms. But Miss Austen wasn't an associate professor from Palo Alto. She was a clergyman's daughter from Hampshire. And she is allowed to think differently from the associate professor. Or from me.
Like many of the critics, I'm not too fond of Mansfield Park. Without Miss Austen's habitual biting wit, her view of society is oppressive. And I can't make any sense of the business with the theatricals. Which annoys me.
But I have no complaints against Fanny Price.
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