Avid readers may recall a recent blog post in which I complained about Miss Jane Austen's tedious build up (some 37 chapters or so) to the resolution of Mansfield Park. She did go on about it--but that was the point. Country life was a maddening reiteration of similar days, followed by tea.
Who wouldn't have wanted a little amusement? Some amateur theatricals perhaps? But (apparently) they were immoral--so we knew what the end must be. We ought to have braced ourselves for it. But lulled into a stupor by thirty-seven chapters of Fanny's life as a poor relation--we weren't quite prepared for divine retribution.
We fully expected the eldest son to be stricken--and stricken he was, but Miss Austen fooled us by not entirely disposing of him. Almost fatally chastened, he was kept alive for the sole purpose of preventing his younger brother, Edmund, from inheriting the title, thereby forcing Edmund to become a Church of England clergyman (notwithstanding the absolutely conclusive arguments of his would be girl-friend, the beautiful and wealthy Mary Crawford, against it.)
But Edmund doesn't care about her, really. She's too worldly and ambitious. She actually hopes his older brother will die so Edmund can become the Baronet (a social rank once described, as '...neither a gentleman nor a lord...' but still, not bad, compared to being a Church of England clergyman.)
Never mind--she'll get over him--because she's got what it takes to succeed in London--beauty, money and the kind of low morals that can't see any objection to amateur theatricals.
And the rest of them must be similarly dealt with. It's like a family gathering in Afghanistan, thirty-seven chapters of boring, and suddenly, for hardly any reason at all, a drone strike!
The eldest daughter is chivvied into marrying a complete idiot, because he has the big bucks. She can't take it for long, however, and soon has a torrid affair (we assume 'torrid' although it happens in London, beyond our horizon) with Henry Crawford, the very same amateur thespian who is either trifling with, or in love with, Fanny. [He is the brother of Mary Crawford, who is either trifling with or in love with Edmund, Fanny's cousin. Try to keep up!]
Fanny's other cousin, Julia, elopes with the other thespian, Mr. Yates, pretty much a 'no-good' although not charged with anything except acting. Julia is thereby doomed to spend her life with somebody completely 'ineligible'
It's all rather shocking, but it is interesting that divine retribution, which takes the form of grotesque marriages of convenience, scandalous divorces, elopements and general degradation, should also be the reward of virtue, for (as we had long suspected) Fanny marries her cousin, Edmund, dooming themselves to a cheese-paring life in the Parsonage. Happily, they were so virtuous we can assume a sexless marriage, thereby avoiding further genetic damage to the ruling class.
Having brought you to the end of Mansfield Park I am obliged to confess that I cheated a little. Just to be sure I finished the story in my lifetime, I got the film, starring Frances O'Connor. It was quite good. Film Fanny is a bit more 'gamine' than Book Fanny, but all the more charming for that. At a brisk 112 minutes, the film must be about 900 minutes shorter than the book--cutting away a vast over-burden of subtlety--much of which we could do without.
They could have cut another 10 or 12 minutes by leaving out scenes, totally without any basis in the book, suggesting that Sir Thomas tortured and raped his slaves.
But who knows? We can't assume much from what Miss Austen leaves out of her stories. Maybe, in 1812, all Baronets with sugar plantations were known to be rapists--so that the film people felt obliged to clarify what Miss Austen considered common knowledge.
As for the veiled sexuality, Austen was a country girl. She (and Fanny) knew where the kittens came out--and how they happened to be in there. As absurdly innocent as her heroine appears to us, Fanny lived in an age when adult women were pregnant half their lives, and babies were born at home. It wasn't a mystery--just another unpleasantness which, in books at least, could be avoided.
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