Diana Birchall,
in the context of a discussion in the Janeites group about the intimate sororal relationship between Jane
and Elizabeth in P&P, brought forward this famous quotation from Chapter 24
of Mansfield Park, describing Fanny’s
intense joy at being reunited after several years at Mansfield Park, with
brother William:
"An
advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is
beneath the fraternal. Children of the same family, the same blood, with the
same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their
power, which no subsequent connexions can supply; and it must be by a long and
unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connexion can justify,
if such precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely
outlived. “
It’s worthwhile to put the above passage in context—here
is the passage that immediately precedes it:
“Excepting
the moments of peculiar delight, which any marked or unlooked-for instance of
Edmund's consideration of her in the last few months had excited, Fanny had
never known so much felicity in her life, as in this unchecked, equal, fearless
intercourse with the brother and friend who was opening all his heart to her,
telling her all his hopes and fears, plans, and solicitudes respecting that
long thought of, dearly earned, and justly valued blessing of promotion; who
could give her direct and minute information of the father and mother, brothers
and sisters, of whom she very seldom heard; who was interested in all the
comforts and all the little hardships of her home at Mansfield; ready to think
of every member of that home as she directed, or differing only by a less
scrupulous opinion, and more noisy abuse of their aunt Norris, and with whom
(perhaps the dearest indulgence of the whole) all the evil and good of their
earliest years could be gone over again, and every former united pain and
pleasure retraced with the fondest recollection.”
Please
note in particular how Fanny’s reunion with William, joyous as it is, places
second in the hierarchy of Fanny’s greatest felicities, behind the occasional
instances of Edmund’s unexpected “consideration”. Other than for the spicy
soupcon of the narrator’s (suggestive, but slyly deniable) references to “fearless
intercourse” and “united pain and pleasure” (which would work really well in the
copy of an ad by a dominatrix for high-class S&M services), this is a description
of an ideal of deep but chaste brother-sister love.
We’re
surely intended to be immediately reminded of Mrs. Norris’s argument to Sir
Thomas back at the start of the novel, responding to his concern about an
incestuous romance arising between Fanny and one of the Bertram boys in the
event she were to be brought to live at Mansfield:
“Do
not let us be frightened from a good deed by a trifle…You are thinking of your
sons—but do not you know that, of all things upon earth, that is the
least likely to happen, brought up as they would be, always together like
brothers and sisters? It is morally impossible. I never knew an instance of it.
It is, in fact, the only sure way of providing against the connexion. Suppose
her a pretty girl, and seen by Tom or Edmund for the first time seven years
hence, and I dare say there would be mischief. The very idea of her having been
suffered to grow up at a distance from us all in poverty and neglect, would be
enough to make either of the dear, sweet-tempered boys in love with her. But
breed her up with them from this time, and suppose her even to have the beauty
of an angel, and she will never be more to either than a sister."
Glenda
Hudson used “precious remains” (from Diana’s quotation) about the powerful
trauma required to cause a sibling divorce) in the title of her 1989 article
about sibling love in P&P, linked here:
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number11/hudson.htm Not surprisingly, the bulk of her discussion
was about the bond between Eliza and Jane, so you might want to read it apropos
of this recent thread of discussion. Hudson
, a decade later, wrote a whole book, Sibling
Love and Incest in Jane Austen’s Fiction, in which, as the title indicates,
she broadened her discussion considerably, to include the loaded word and topic
“incest”.
And
that brings me to the serendipity of Diana’s bringing that quotation forward,
at the very moment that I’ve been posting about Andrew Davies’ controversial depiction---in
at least four scenes, by my latest count, through 3 episodes, with one
remaining to be viewed--of explicit incest between Anatole and Helene in War and Peace.
As I’ve
already argued, I’m totally in accord with Davie’s interpretation, and am also
now completely certain that Tolstoy was strongly focused on the incestuous
connection between Henry and Mary Crawford, not least because of the startling
parallel between Mrs. Norris’s above quoted speech about cousins in close
proximity, and the discussion of the dangers of “voisinage” in “cousinage” early
in War and Peace, regarding Nikolai
Rostov and his poor orphaned cousin Sonya.
The
latest clue I’ve now seen for the first time (it’s eons since I read War and Peace in high school, and I
remembered nothing about any of this) is the way Helene repeatedly panders
Natasha to Anatole, in exactly the same way that Mary does with Fanny vis a vis
Henry. Sure, there are plot motifs which repeat in literature, but the
parallels here are clustered and very specific, far beyond the possibility of
random coincidence.
And
it isn’t just Anatole and Helene –it’s Nikolai and Sonya, too, and also, but on
a much much subtler level, Natasha and Nikolai, as I suggested in my original
post about War and Peace. Tolstoy was
clearly just as engrossed with the murky boundaries of sibling love as Austen
had been, and so it was entirely natural that Mansfield Park in particular would be a touchstone for him on this
theme.
And
so I don’t think it’s at all accidental that Jane Austen used the strong and
marriage-related word “divorce” to refer to the rupture of a sibling bond. She was
well aware that, in the real world of her time—including very possibly in her
own family of origin, considering her very close bond with Frank in particular—there
were all too often de facto incestuous
“marriages” between siblings. Just recall perhaps the most famous of them from
JA’s lifetime---Fanny Burney’s brother James and sister Sarah who actually eloped
and cohabited for several years. Anielka has long argued that the Burney family
is a key allusive subtext for Mansfield
Park, and I, as you might guess, agree with her, and this is a key portion
of that subtext.
And
it’s not just in Mansfield Park in JA’s
canon, but that’s a topic for another post.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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