The Lady of the Manner(s)

2014-9-4 Fanny img02Ask nearly any teenage girl who reads fiction why she enjoys her favorite book series, and the answer will likely involve comments about the capability, intelligence and/or general, all-around awesomeness of Hermione Granger, Annabeth Chase, Katniss Everdeen, or Tris Prior. While these fictional leading ladies inhabit different settings and face different challenges, all would fall under the category of “strong female heroines.” Far from being a scarcity in our current literary culture, modern fiction teems with capable young women who, ready or not, take charge and tackle their problems head-on with sass, charm, and a weapon of their choice. Even those who read older pieces of fiction in their leisure time find themselves more drawn to leading ladies like Shakespeare’s Beatrice, Jane Eyre, Hester Prynne, and Elizabeth Bennet. These women are survivors, champions, managing to be beautiful and intelligent and come out on top, even when their societies try to push them down.

Of course, this simply what we’ve come to expect from a heroine. If an author chooses to focus on a female, that female had better burst onto the scene with guns blazing, save the city, and have a brilliant remark to relieve the tension at the end. In other words, she bears quite a bit of responsibility for the action in the work.

Perhaps this expectation explains why Mansfield Park doesn’t receive the attention or the respect that Pride and Prejudice enjoys. Despite having the same author, the two heroines of these novels would probably not be found chatting fondly together at a party. Witty, dry-humored, sensible, smart –Lizzy Bennet seems to have captured the hearts of modern readers because of her willingness to cheat her social system, even fighting it when necessary. Fanny Price is…well, another kettle of fish.

If Lizzy Bennet exemplifies what modern readers love in classical heroines, then the heroine of Mansfield Park, exemplifies everything they hate. A barely-genteel girl from a poor Portsmouth family, Fanny Price is adopted by her aunt and said aunt’s Baronet husband into their upper-class home at Mansfield Park. Fanny is quiet and timid, rarely speaking up for herself even when doing so will save her a great deal of suffering. She is physically very frail, becoming exhausted simply by spending an afternoon in the sun cutting roses, and she is a staunch upholder of societal rules, which causes most of her cousins and readers alike to find her dreadfully priggish and boring. Whether readers agree with her English country morals and her strict sense of propriety or not, many readers find themselves frustrated with Fanny’s simple lack of action. She is almost always to be found sitting, watching her world shift around her, for better or worse, and having seemingly little effect on it.

2014-9-4 Fanny img01To complicate Austen’s characterization even more, enter foil character Mary Crawford, Fanny’s chief rival for the affections of main man Edmund. Miss Mary Crawford, a visitor to the country from London, displays many of the traits readers love in Elizabeth Bennet and more. She is beautiful, makes sparkling conversation, possesses an erudite wit, and skillfully plays the harp. Yet, despite all her attractive qualities, Austen paints Mary as the villain, a rival not worthy of the affections of as good a man as Edmund Bertram.

So why does Fanny triumph, in the end? Has Austen changed her mind? Is she advocating in Fanny Price a revival of prudishness, weakness, and timidity? Of course not. Rather, she’s advocating something even better than the individualism that drives both our culture and our art.

Fanny is quiet and frail and a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, yes. That’s the point. The story isn’t about Fanny’s self-actualization. It’s not about Fanny learning to take the reins in her life or to defy the injustice done to her in order to seek her own happiness. Fanny Price is standing for something greater than herself. And by standing, I mean sitting down and staying rooted to the things that are most important to her: her culture and her values. She continually refuses to participate in a play—not to deny her cousins their fun, but because it would encourage the inappropriate flirtation between Henry Crawford and the engaged Maria Bertram. She will not explain to her uncle why she refuses to marry Henry in order to protect the reputation of her cousins. She succeeds, in the end, because she has stuck to her English-gentry principles. Unlike Mary, who proves to have no solid moral foundation at the end of the novel, Fanny remains loyal to her family and continues to practice the behaviors and mannerisms that define Mansfield, even when she is exiled from it. Fanny is not a heroine of individualism, but of cultural conservatism.

So, what should we make of what might be Austen’s most curious novel? I would prefer not to think of Mansfield Park as an awkward flop in a series of otherwise-loveable Austen novels. On the contrary, Fanny Price shows Austen’s flexibility as an author, and affirms the core of the moral and societal codes that comprised Austen’s world. Perhaps we modern readers have become so accustomed to heroines who win by rebelling against corrupt societies or mistakes in their systems that we simply don’t know how to react when a heroine is given another quieter but equally valuable mission. Fanny is one of the few heroines who is given the opportunity to “live well” by holding onto that which she already has. Rather than criticize her for that, we ought to celebrate her. Of course she will do things we don’t like; all humans do. However, at the end of the day, Fanny has managed to be a defender of goodness by doing little more than staying put. That, my fellow readers, is something to be admired.

Pevensie

About Pevensie

Pevensie is primarily a student of English, along with two or three other languages, but to pay her rent and travel expenses she makes cloaks and herds other people’s children. Whether at work or at play, Pevensie seeks to preserve finely-woven tapestries of truth, while picking at poorly-woven conventions old and new with the seam-ripper of logic. She enjoys a good cup of tea, the writings of Martin Chemnitz, and anything with caramel, and in her spare time she builds castles on swamps and scours the black market for dragon eggs.

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