Mansfield Park (1814)

Fanny is quite a different bird than most that fly through the books I normally read, self-effacing, eager to please, and horribly self-conscious. I'm not used to that as a main character in an Austen book. Still, it works. She's shy and sensitive, and while we all like to poo-poo such characters in novels, they're generally quite wonderful people in real life.

So am I giving this novel a pass because I felt something for Fanny? Possibly. Otherwise, I probably would have been up in arms against the stupid man who just HAD to have her and all the family members and friends who just HAD to have her marry the cad. Seriously. What's up with these people? If a girl says, no, it should be NO. Seriously.

Quite besides that, I really enjoyed the tale and the twists and turns, from the awful production of the play to the horse-riding to the nasty social crap in a society known for being really crappy with social crap.

Still, if it wasn't for Fanny being so likable and beset amongst all her betters, I'm not quite sure I'd have cared so much. This novel walked a fine line and I liked it quite a lot. In any lesser hand, this would have been an unqualified disaster. :) ( )

This was so boring - the whole plot could've been done with in less than 100 pages... I liked Fanny as a character and it was good to see her grow, but barely anyone else had any redeemable qualities. Not even Edmund (though apparently on Fanny's side) asked her what she actually wanted, but always just assumed and rarely let her confirm. And every single time Mrs Norris opened her mouth I wanted to hit something. ( )

Fanny Price is sent to live with her rich aunt and uncle, Lady Bertram and Sir Thomas Bertram, and their family at Mansfield Park.

The most serious of Jane Austen's novels and perhaps the most difficult to get into. ( )

Can I admit it? Loyal Janeite though I am, this is my least favourite of Jane's novels.
Not for the usual reason, though. I actually like Fanny, and I don't think she's a prude (I think these need to be read in the context of their periods; see review of Jane Eyre); on the contrary, her naivete awakens a tender, protective feeling in me. The reason I (gasp) didn't like it:
if a normal novel goes
exposition --> rising action --> climax --> falling action --> resolution,
Mansfield Park goes
exposition--> rising action --> "assume falling action (and resolution) happened."
Yep. And, no less, after spending a good couple hundred pages convincing you that no, that resolution will not, under any circumstances, be possible.
To wit: Several hundred pages: "Edmund thinks of Fanny as a sister. Edmund is in love with Miss Crawford. Edmund will never fall in love with Fanny. Edmund thinks of Fanny as a sister. Edmund is in love with Miss Crawford. Edmund will never fall in love with Fanny. Ever."
Second-last page: "Eventually Edmund stopped loving Miss Crawford. Then he started loving Fanny, so they lived happily ever after." Or, more precisely: "I only entreat everybody to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could desire." She does not even describe it happening, or when it happened, or A. NY. THING. Just, as the sort of wrapping-up conclusiony epilogue stuff, she mentions that it happens, the way she describes the state of the Gardiners at the end of P&P or Charlotte Bronte talks about St John at the end of Jane Eyre. As a postscript. As an afterthought. As though that event weren't the point of the WHOLE. BLOODY. NOVEL.

(deep breath)
It was good to get that out.

In other news, Edmund. At the beginning, when he's the only person in the entire world being a little bit decent to Fanny, I was all like "Awww he's such a nice guy." But later in the book, especially when he's in love with Miss Crawford, his relationship with Fanny becomes increasingly selfish. he is the taker; she is the giver. (Of emotional energy and care, not gold chains.) Case in point: when they dance together at the ball, does he ask how she's doing? Does he consider the idea that she might want companionship? No. He takes advantage of her niceness for "peace": "His mind was fagged, and her happiness sprung from being the friend with whom it could find repose. “I am worn out with civility,” said he. “I have been talking incessantly all night, and with nothing to say. But with you, Fanny, there may be peace. You will not want to be talked to. Let us have the luxury of silence.”" Because he's suffering, her comfort is irrelevant. Who cares whether Fanny is happy when Miss Crawford doesn't like clergymen? During that entire period, she supports him and comforts him; their relationship is centred around his comfort, and hers is irrelevant. That doesn't seem like friendship, in love or not in love. Thus, Edmund is not, in fact, an exception from the way that *everyone* uses and takes advantage of Fanny -- yet another thing which makes MP's conclusion so disappointing, as this does not change right up to the end.

And last comment: I can't resist saying this, but this has more of that creepy Regency rape-culture obsession with women being persuadable all the time that there is in Northanger Abbey--only there, it's coming from John Thorpe, who's a creep, and here it's from people you're supposed to respect, like Sir Thomas. Worrying. ( )

'The Adelphi edition of the works of Jane Austen was originally published by Martin Secker' ( )