There were years when I could not bear Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park.  I particularly could not bear Fanny Price.  She was so timid, so prim, so wan, and had nothing of wit about her. 

This time around I’ve had a revelation.  Mansfield Park is not a comedy.  And perhaps that is why this novel does not entirely work.  Jane Austen is so witty that it’s hard to read her straight.  And we expect all the characters to be comical.

But it’s not funny: not really. It is a complex, serious novel – much more so than I had realized. A timid waif is transported to a wealthy estate. Fanny Price is raised by her Aunt and Uncle Bertram at Mansfield Park, because her parents, living in poverty, could not afford to take care of their ever-growing family. And Fanny gradually fits in: her languid Aunt Maria likes her as a restful companion who can fix dropped stitches and embroidery errors, and her older, more glamorous cousins, Maria and Julia Bertram, tolerate her graciously. There is a wicked second aunt, but we won’t write about her here.

Fanny’s cousin, Edmond, the second son, soon to take orders as a clergyman, has always been her best friend. Fanny is in love with him, and he is kind and solicitous, though he does not regard her as a possible wife.

But the two sisters, Maria and Julia, go to great lengths to compromise their morals in their flirtation with a charming newcomer, Mr. Crawford, who, along with his sister, Miss Crawford, is staying at the vicarage with their half-sister, the vicar’s wife. Mr. Crawford loves flirtatious mayhem.

There is much confusion in the realm of love at Mansfield Park. Maria is engaged to Mr. Rushford, a very rich but stupid young man, but because she plans to marry for money she sees nothing wrong with flirting, or perhaps falling in love, with an eligible bachelor. Fanny is appalled to witness a similar dynamic between Edmond and charming Miss Crawford, whose witty repartee persuades him to compromise his morals. He agrees to act in an amateur play he has said is improper and inappropriate at Mansfield Park. He changes his mind because he is jealous. Ge cannot bear for Miss Crawford to act a love scene with another man.

What a tangled web do the witty Crawfords weave! They are completely louche, as far as Fanny is concerned.

I began to appreciate Fanny’s intelligence during a brief but poignant passage of stream-of-consciousness.  As she muses on her feelings of repulsion toward Henry Crawford, who has decided he is in love with her and makes unwanted advances daily, she is also angry with her uncle, who encourages Henry and thinks it would be a very good thing for him to marry Fanny.

Fanny does not think so, and refuses. Again and again.

Now she was angry. Some resentment did arise at a perseverance so selfish and ungenerous. Here was again a want of delicacy and regard for others which had formerly so struck and disgusted her. Here was again a something of the same Mr. Crawford whom she had so reprobated before.  How evidently was there a gross want of feeling and humanity where his own pleasure was concerned – And, alas! how always known no principle to supply as a duty what the heart was deficient in.  Had her own affections been as free – as perhab they ought to have been – he never could have engaged them.

One feels empathy for Fanny, a woman bullied by two men who do not respect her feelings – because they want her to respect their own.

Mansfield Park is not a comedy. it’s rather like a twenty-first-century women’s saga, Fanny and Miss Crawford both resist marriage to men who love them -though Fanny does not believe Henry Crawford loves her – and Mary Crawford refuses to marry Edmond if he becomes a clergyman, though both are very much in love.

Who suffers the most? There is a happy marriage on the rebound at Mansfield Park, but I wonder about Mary Crawford. Does she feel regret? She was in charge of her life, unlike Fanny, and made her own decision. But surely someone has written an Austen sequel about Mary Crawford!

N.B. In the twenty-first century, there is still great pressure on women like Fanny to marry and have children. I read in the Guardian that Newsweek magazine recently published a male author’s rant, “Taylor Swift Is Not a Good Role Model,” chiding her for being single and not having children.

Jane Austen and Taylor Swift. I rest my case.