Sun 27 Jan 2008
Warning: Mansfield Park spoilers ahead.
I hope they get it right.
Mansfield Park is a novel that has intrigued and infuriated me for years. When I first read it, I despised Fanny. When the Crawfords arrived on the scene roughly a quarter of the way through the novel, I thought, “Here is our heroine at last!” and I admired Austen for departing from convention. Mary was beautiful, worldly, witty, intelligent, and looking for love. In fact, she seemed to be the character (apart from her beauty) most like Jane Austen herself. When Henry started making love to Fanny, my suspicions were confirmed: the pairing would certainly be Henry/Fanny and Mary/Edmund.
When Henry fell from grace by running off with Maria, and Mary followed suit by making a crass remark about it to Edmund, I felt royally cheated. Surely Austen could not mean to pair milquetoast Fanny off with her milquetoast foster-brother? In the least romantic denouement in the Austen canon, that’s exactly what happens. Pthhhhhhbbbbbbbbbt.
I came back to Mansfield when I was a bit older, thinking I might have some more sympathy for Fanny as a heroine. Except…not so much. I still hated her and Edmund and their prissy morality. But I really came to admire the structure and wit of the novel. The scene at Rushworth’s house, with the young people playing wedding in the church, is masterful. (Best come-on to an engaged woman: “I do not like seeing Miss Bertram so near the altar.”) Lady Bertram with her pugs (and drugs?) is a terrific character. Somehow I had missed Mary’s extreme snarkiness the first time around (”Certainly, my home at my uncle’s brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices I saw enough. Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.”)
One thing, however, eluded me. What made Austen elevate Fanny to heroine status — Fanny, who seemed more like one of the minor characters in her earlier novels, an uptight foil to the heroine like Jane Fairfax was to Emma or Charlotte Lucas to Elizabeth Bennett? And what made her condemn Mary (or, at least, not redeem her) when she resembled no one so much as Emma or even Elizabeth? Was there something going on in Austen’s life that made her more circumspect, more pious, less tolerant of carelessness and levity? Or was she just trying something different?
Since I first read Mansfield I’ve been looking for a film adaptation that would illuminate this for me, one that would make me care about Fanny, one that would supply what I’m missing in my heart when I read the novel. The 1983 version is dull and plodding, and has the production values of a film shot a decade earlier. Sylvestra Le Touzel looks like a deer in the headlights, and she still makes me want to kick Fanny. (Le Touzel was much more relaxed as Mrs. Allen in last week’s Northanger Abbey.) The 1999 Patricia Rozema version is widely panned. It is not that bad, but it’s not really Austen either. In it, Fanny is changed into a spitfire who spouts some of Anne Eliot’s best dialogue.
So I am nervously awaiting tonight’s adaptation. Billie Piper, the actor who plays Fanny, looks like she was cast in the “spitfire” mold. At least, the bleached-blonde-with-dark-roots ‘do she’s sporting looks kind of punk.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:48 am
Hmm. I never thought of Mary that way. Looking at her through your lens, I can see your point. I hated her, however, for Fanny’s sake. And I didn’t even like Fanny. I’ve never been able to figure out why Mary didn’t go for Tom Bertram, even if he is a tool. He’s the one to inherit, and Austen never was able to explain that to my satisfaction.
No PBS here in Israel, but I’m hoping my mother-in-law will send me some of these movies on dvd when they come out. I’m enjoying your reviews.
January 28th, 2008 at 11:37 am
I watched it last night and quite enjoyed it, but no, it didn’t make me like Fanny. Perhaps I’m just hopelessly American, but I can’t get over the squick-factor of falling in love with one’s cousin, either.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I missed it! Argh! We had the kids’ birthday party yesterday and I passed out at 8:30pm. Hopefully they will do re-runs soonish.
I cannot get past the same romantic pairing problems you describe. I haven’t read MP in a while, but I remember liking Fanny enough not to want her to end up with such a blah person as Edmund. And it’s not just that I objected to the end of the Henry romance — it’s that I thought the ending was poorly written. For once, I felt the hand of the author coming down to change the romantic direction of the story — something that, for all the lucky happenings of other books (Louisa suddenly falling for Benwick perhaps most of all), I had never felt before.
And to give Edmund of all people to Fanny. Ick. And also sigh.
January 29th, 2008 at 9:52 am
As a teenage goody-two-shoes who grew up to marry a stick-in-the-mud after a series of bad boys, I just can’t imagine the reasons for the uproar over the pairing!
However, now that I’ve matured in my literary analysis, I imagine that Jane (36 when she wrote Mansfield Park) was exploring how the smart, sassy girls with practical notions — like herself — were passed over for the classically sweet, pious, childish martyrs like Fanny. The quick, all-too-convenient happy ending is given such short attention that it’s clear that’s not the point of the book, after all.
I don’t believe we’re meant to like Fanny too much, despite the fact she’s the heroine. Mansfield Park presents a microcosm of the disappearing world where religion and piety and ways of thinking were so deeply embedded, that of course cousins Fanny and Edward had to marry because their belief systems did not allow for them to exist outside of Mansfield Park in the changing times. Maria’s departure from Mansfield Park of course resulted in disaster and she was so shamed she could never return home again.
While Fanny might not be the most likable heroine, the book is certainly the best fodder for conversation, touching on religion, slavery, child rearing, modern values, and the roles of women. I could write about it all day! Makes me wish I were back in college!
As for the movie, it was good enough. I did enjoy how clearly it portrayed that Henry could have been saved by Fanny if she could just get over herself. It left out Fanny being sent back to her poor family for being ungrateful. Perhaps that would require too many sets be built.
February 2nd, 2008 at 11:48 am
I never liked Fanny, but I appreciated the book — I always felt it was Austen’s most cynically satirical novel (which, given Emma, is saying something!). Fanny being a milksop who simply waited for things to improve seemed, to me, to be Austen’s indictment of the traditional woman’s role (and, for that matter, the traditional heroine’s role). Possibly it was even an indictment of her readers — I wonder if it drove her nuts that people thought she was writing sweet romance novels, when she was really writing social caricatures.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but it’s on the list. I do love Billie Piper (not that I’m a Doctor Who fan or anything), though I doubt she’s going to be representative of the novel’s concept of Fanny. Northanger Abbey, though, was absolute perfection.