I’ve
been on a Mary Crawford kick all month, as my presentation in Montreal gave
special emphasis to Mary’s covertly Shakespearean aura, and to my increasingly
firm and documented view of Mary as the most unfairly maligned of all major Austen
characters.
In a
nutshell, just as it is difficult to see the real Jane Fairfax, because our
vision of her character is so strongly blocked by Emma’s relentlessly clueless
misunderstanding, jealousy, and lack of empathy, so too is our perception of
Mary at least partially obscured by Fanny’s relentlessly clueless fear,
jealousy and lack of empathy for Mary.
But…unlike
the situation with Jane Fairfax, who almost never speaks, and whose letters we
never get to read, we have a number of opportunities to hear Mary speak---including
several times when Fanny is not present-- and we also get to read two of Mary’s
letters to Fanny. So it is much easier to discern the complexities of Mary’s
character than is the case with Jane, IF we can overcome the initial hurdle of
being trapped inside Fanny’s head and heart.
I’ve scoured
the Internet and relevant databases for every scholarly analysis of Mary’s
character I could find, and in one of them, an obscure, never-cited article from
the fringe of Austen scholarship written nearly 40 years ago, I came across a
wonderfully on-point bit of textual evidence that, I believe, crystallizes this
apparent paradox of Mary being judged harshly by Janeites, even as her behavior
is far more like Jesus’s than Fanny’s. Sound crazy? It won’t take me long to
show otherwise.
As my
Subject Line suggests, this has to do with the descriptor “very ungrateful”—this
phrase appears only twice in the entire Austen canon, and you may not be
surprised to learn that both of them occur in Mansfield Park. It should not be surprising, because one of the
most persistent themes in the novel is that of gratefulness, and Fanny Price is
almost always the subject of this theme. We are constantly reminded of Fanny’s
vulnerable position at Mansfield Park, and how often she is under pressure to
express gratitude for benefits which readers today would consider only her
rightful due, and how often she is also under pressure to express gratitude,
and to comply in her behavior, in
response to what we today can clearly see as abuse that is inflicted on her.
But
there is (at least) one instance where it is not Fanny who is the locus of this
theme, but Mary. And, surprise surprise, the one who expresses judgment on Mary
for not being grateful is not Mrs. Norris, or Sir Thomas, it’s none other than
Fanny herself!: In Chapter 7, we read the following tete-a-tete between Fanny
and Edmund, as they debrief Mary’s “rears and vices” pun:
"Well, Fanny, and how do you
like Miss Crawford now?" said Edmund the next day, after thinking
some time on the subject himself. "How did you like her yesterday?"
"Very well—very much. I like to
hear her talk. She entertains me; and she is so extremely pretty, that I have
great pleasure in looking at her."
"It is her countenance that is
so attractive. She has a wonderful play of feature! But was there nothing in
her conversation that struck you, Fanny, as not quite right?"
"Oh yes! she ought not to have
spoken of her uncle as she did. I was quite astonished. An uncle with whom she
has been living so many years, and who, whatever his faults may be, is so very
fond of her brother, treating him, they say, quite like a son. I could not have
believed it!"
"I thought you would be struck.
It was very wrong; very indecorous."
"And VERY UNGRATEFUL, I
think."
"Ungrateful is a strong word. I
do not know that her uncle has any claim to her gratitude; his wife
certainly had; and it is the warmth of her respect for her aunt's memory which
misleads her here….“
Indeed
Edmund is correct that Mary hardly owes a debt of gratitude to her uncle, who has
exposed her to behavior that we cannot know precisely, but which has a strong
whiff of being a whole lot worse than just an overly quick replacement of a
late wife with a young mistress. But Fanny displays an appalling lack of empathy for what it must have been
like for Mary in her uncle’s home after the death of her beloved aunt. Fanny,
who was uprooted from her home at a young age, seems not to be moved by the
fact that Mary has felt compelled to leave a comfortable home immediately after
the death of a beloved aunt.
And modern
psychology (which JA anticipated) tells us that we ought not be surprised,
because Fanny, as I stated above, is so often a victim of the particularly ugly
experience of being abused and then being required to say thank you for that abuse!
Fanny not only suffers from Stockholm Syndrome, she judges other victims who
don’t “catch” that disease! But now here’s the hidden catch, that tells the
alert reader that JA really did portray Mary, albeit covertly, around the edges
of Fanny’s biased point of view, as a really good and moral person.
Check
out this famously painful passage in Chapter 15, when Tom is pressuring Fanny
to play Cottager’s Wife:
"You must excuse me, indeed you
must excuse me," cried Fanny, growing more and more red from excessive
agitation, and looking distressfully at Edmund, who was kindly observing her;
but unwilling to exasperate his brother by interference, gave her only an
encouraging smile. Her entreaty had no effect on Tom: he only said again what
he had said before; and it was not merely Tom, for the requisition was now
backed by Maria, and Mr. Crawford, and Mr. Yates, with an urgency which differed
from his but in being more gentle or more ceremonious, and which altogether was
quite overpowering to Fanny; and before she could breathe after it, Mrs. Norris
completed the whole by thus addressing her in a whisper at once angry and
audible—"What a piece of work here is about nothing: I am quite ashamed of
you, Fanny, to make such a difficulty of obliging your cousins in a trifle of
this sort—so kind as they are to you! Take the part with a good grace, and let
us hear no more of the matter, I entreat."
"Do not urge her, madam,"
said Edmund. "It is not fair to urge her in this manner. You see she does
not like to act. Let her chuse for herself, as well as the rest of us. Her
judgment may be quite as safely trusted. Do not urge her any more."
"I am not going to urge
her," replied Mrs. Norris sharply; "but I shall think her a very
obstinate, ungrateful girl, if she does not do what her aunt and cousins wish
her—VERY UNGRATEFUL, indeed, considering who and what she is."
Edmund was too angry to speak; but
Miss Crawford, looking for a moment with astonished eyes at Mrs. Norris, and
then at Fanny, whose tears were beginning to shew themselves, immediately said,
with some keenness, "I do not like my situation: this place is too
hot for me," and moved away her chair to the opposite side of the table,
close to Fanny, saying to her, in a kind, low whisper, as she placed herself,
"Never mind, my dear Miss Price, this is a cross evening: everybody is
cross and teasing, but do not let us mind them"; and with pointed
attention continued to talk to her and endeavour to raise her spirits, in spite
of being out of spirits herself. By a look at her brother she prevented any
farther entreaty from the theatrical board, and the really good feelings by
which she was almost purely governed were rapidly restoring her to all the
little she had lost in Edmund's favour.
Fanny did not love Miss Crawford;
but she felt very much obliged to her for her present kindness; and when, from
taking notice of her work, and wishing she could work as well, and
begging for the pattern, and supposing Fanny was now preparing for her appearance,
as of course she would come out when her cousin was married, Miss Crawford
proceeded to inquire if she had heard lately from her brother at sea, and said
that she had quite a curiosity to see him, and imagined him a very fine young
man, and advised Fanny to get his picture drawn before he went to sea again—she
could not help admitting it to be very agreeable flattery, or help listening,
and answering with more animation than she had intended.
The consultation upon the play still
went on, and Miss Crawford's attention was first called from Fanny by Tom…” END
QUOTE
In my JASNA AGM talk, I pointed out
what I originally blogged about in May of this year, which is the pointed irony
of Mrs. Norris tracking, word-for-word, the veiled Shakespearean allusion to
Hamlet’s famous pessimistic speech (“What a piece of work is man”) spoken by
Cottager’s Wife in Lover’s Vows, the
very character whom Mrs. Norris is pressuring Fanny to play!
But it’s Mrs. Norris’s referring to
Fanny as “very ungrateful” that I am focused on today—and look at who steps up
to defend and console Fanny—it’s not Edmund (whom Fanny thinks is “too angry to
speak” but, truth be told, he just fails to step up once again when Fanny is
subjected to abuse), it’s Mary!
And the double irony is that we are
reminded of Chapter 7, when Fanny, faced with a choice as to whether to judge
Mary for her pun about her uncle, elects to judge and fault Mary, leaving it to
Edmund to point out the strong mitigating circumstances.
So, if that’s not turning the other
cheek on Mary’s part, I don’t know what is! Even though Mary was not present
when Fanny rendered judgment on her privately, Mary is no dope, and she surely readily
inferred from what must have been Fanny’s shocked nonverbal reaction to Mary’s “rears
and vices’ pun that Fanny had put a negative spin on it.
And yet, in the moment of truth,
Mary not only did not retaliate, by piling on Fanny, she actually was the only
one in the room brave and moral enough to defend and take care of Fanny in that
very traumatic situation.
And, there’s one final turn of the moral
screw—because, as I have argued repeatedly, Mary’s “rears and vices’ pun,
properly understood, was the only way Mary could warn Fanny that William’s
promotion in the navy was going to come at a very high “price” in that Admiral Crawford
and his Danteseque circle of admirals were going to subject William’s “rear” to
their “vices”! And that’s what JA is reminding us of, when Mary inquires, while
consoling Fanny after Mrs. Norris’s nasty attack, if Fanny had heard lately
from William at sea. But again, Fanny is clueless, she is unaware of what Mary
is actually up to.
So, in both instances, Mary was
actually defending Fanny and William the underdogs—in the first case, she gets
blamed for it by Fanny, but at least in the second instance Fanny, in spite of
herself, begins to soften toward Mary, and deservedly so.
So, putting this all together, Mary’s
behavior in both instances is what we would expect from a highly evolved moral
being, willing to suffer pain to help the helpless, even willing to help
someone who does not understand her—the most Christian of actions, if we follow
Jesus’s actual words and not what many of the powerful hypocrites, like Sir
Thomas, who acted in his name only in the world of the novel and JA’s real
world as well.
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
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