It’s
been nearly eight years since I first began writing about both Sir Thomas
Bertram and his all too compliant son Edmund, of course in Austen’s Mansfield Park, as both bearing a disturbing
resemblance to Pandarus from Shakespeare’s Troilus
& Cressida, with the 18 year old Fanny forced to play the role of
Cressida. First she is ogled by her uncle upon his return from Antigua, and
then, shortly thereafter, he attempts in effect to sell her to Henry Crawford,
until she haltingly but bravely objects to being treated as a inanimate commodity
without a say in the matter of her entire future life.
For
example, in this post… http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/05/fe-fi-fo-fum-i-hear-heavy-step-of.html …I wrote the following:
“In Mansfield
Park, Chapter 21, we read Edmund Bertram (or as this speech to Fanny marks
him, a Pandar-in-Training) pushing cousin Fanny Price to accept unacceptable
ogling by her uncle:
"... But when did you, or anybody, ever
get a compliment from me, Fanny? Go to my father if you
want to be complimented. He will satisfy you. Ask your uncle what he thinks,
and you will hear compliments enough: and though they may be chiefly on your
person, you must put up with it, and trust to his seeing as much beauty of mind
in time."
Such language was so
new to Fanny that it quite embarrassed her.
"Your uncle
thinks you very pretty, dear Fanny—and that is the long and the short of the
matter. Anybody but myself would have made something more of it, and anybody
but you would resent that you had not been thought very pretty before; but the
truth is, that your uncle never did admire you till now—and now he does. Your
complexion is so improved!—and you have gained so much countenance!—and your
figure—nay, Fanny, do not turn away about it—it is but an uncle. If you cannot
bear an uncle's admiration, what is to become of you? You must really begin to
harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking at. You must try not to mind
growing up into a pretty woman."
"Oh! don't talk
so, don't talk so," cried Fanny, distressed by more feelings than he was
aware of..."
It occurred to me this
morning to compare the above passage to the following passage in Northanger
Abbey, Chapter 13, describing the end of Catherine Morland’s visit to the
Tilney residence in Bath:
"The general
attended her himself to the street-door, saying everything gallant as they went
downstairs, admiring the elasticity of her walk, which corresponded exactly
with the spirit of her dancing, and making her one of the most graceful bows
she had ever beheld, when they parted. Catherine, delighted by all that had
passed, proceeded gaily to Pulteney Street, walking, as she concluded, with
great elasticity, though she had never thought of it before...."
Now, how to account
for the extreme difference in reaction in two parallel situations, i.e., in
both we have an 18 year old girl receiving compliments on her beauty from a
much older man? I.e., why does Fanny freak out inside while Catherine gets an
extra skip in her stride? I suggest to you that the explanation is simple and
powerful--- Catherine has no history of being sexually abused, but Fanny does….”
END
QUOTE FROM MY 2014 POST
However,
it was not until this morning that I realized that Sir Thomas’s ogling of Fanny
could have been predicted by a close reader of the following passage in Chapter
2 of MP, in which we are introduced to Bertram family dynamics when Fanny first
arrives at Mansfield Park:
“The
young people were all at home, and sustained their share in the introduction
very well, with much good humour, and no embarrassment, at least on the part of
the sons, who, at seventeen and sixteen, and tall of their age, had all the
grandeur of men in the eyes of their little cousin. The two girls were more at
a loss from being younger and in greater awe of their father, who addressed
them on the occasion with RATHER AN INJUDICIOUS PARTICULARITY. But they were
too much used to company and praise to have anything like natural shyness; and
their confidence increasing from their cousin’s total want of it, they were
soon able to take a full survey of her face and her frock in easy indifference.
They
were a remarkably fine family, the sons very well-looking, the daughters
decidedly handsome, and all of them well-grown and forward of their age, which
produced as striking a difference between the cousins in person, as education
had given to their address; and no one would have supposed the girls so nearly
of an age as they really were. There were in fact but two years between the
youngest and Fanny. Julia Bertram was only twelve, and Maria but a year older.”
While
relatively innocuous interpretations of what is meant by Sir Thomas’s “injudicious
particularity” are not implausible (e.g., Deidre Lynch’s 2016 annotation: “[It]
suggests that he has discomfited his daughters by singling them out for
attention or has spoken with excessive minuteness (another sense of particularity) about how he expects them
to behave toward their little cousin…”), it is clear to me that Jane Austen also meant for her careful rereaders to
notice the disturbing resonance of that ambiguous passage in Chapter 2 ---- in
which Sir Thomas can all-too-plausibly be understood to be making very pointed
comments about his 12- and 13-year old daughters’ early-blossoming figures --- with
Sir Thomas’s explicit ogling of the 18-year old Fanny’s late-developing female
body which, as I’ve argued many times, Edmund appallingly tries to blame on the
victim, Fanny, in Chapter 21. That we hear of Maria’s and Julia’s lack of “natural
shyness”, that they compare themselves to Fanny in physical appearance, and that
we then immediately hear that they are “decidedly handsome”, all point to Sir
Thomas’s injudiciousness being that of having no proper sexual boundaries with
his own nubile young daughters (reminding us of yet another disturbing parallel
between Sir Thomas and a powerful man in the news today, besides those I have
pointed out previously).
As
always seems to be the case with Jane Austen’s fiction, it took perhaps my twentieth
reading of that passage over twenty years to notice what had slipped right past
me the first nineteen times. That is partly my bad, but it’s also the result of
Mansfield Park’s drily ironic narrator
being especially delicate and discreet when describing the most disturbing
matters. It’s as if it really was Jane Austen herself speaking: a worldly wise and
mature woman, who, as Mitford famously observed, quietly observed everything
around her, was too polite --- or careful as to deniability--- to be explicit, but
made sure she gave just enough data so that a sharp-eyed reader could fill in
the blanks of what was deliberately left implicit.
I never
realized till this moment how much Jane Austen meant it when she famously wrote,
at the end of MP: “Let other pens dwell
on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to
restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and
to have done with all the rest.” Now I see that this oft-quoted line is not
just about leaving out almost all of the details of what happens in the rushed,
unromantic ending of the novel; it’s reminding us, looking ahead to the next
rereading, that it has been that way from the very first page, so keep an eye
out for the guilt and misery which has not been dwelt on, but which has
nonetheless been given just enough emphasis not to be ignored.
Still
skeptical? Then, before I close, let me show you a few other passages in MP, in
which the word “particularity” has that same subtly suggestive connotation of
sexuality:
Chapter
12: “I dare say he did, ma’am. Mr. Rushworth is never remiss. But dear Maria
has such a strict sense of propriety, so much of that true delicacy which one
seldom meets with nowadays, Mrs. Rushworth—that wish of avoiding PARTICULARITY!...”
Chapter 32:
“You must have been aware,” continued Sir Thomas presently, “you must have been
some time aware of a PARTICULARITY in Mr. Crawford’s manners to you. This
cannot have taken you by surprise. You must have observed his attentions; and
though you always received them very properly (I have no accusation to make on
that head), I never perceived them to be unpleasant to you. I am half inclined
to think, Fanny, that you do not quite know your own feelings.”
“Oh yes, sir! indeed I do. His
attentions were always—what I did not like.”
Chapter 36: [Fanny to Mary] “…As to your brother’s [i.e., Henry’s]
behaviour, certainly I was sensible of a PARTICULARITY: I had been sensible of
it some little time, perhaps two or three weeks; but then I considered it as
meaning nothing: I put it down as simply being his way, and was as far from
supposing as from wishing him to have any serious thoughts of me….”
And so,
when I think of Sir Thomas’s little smile when he is getting ready to exile
Fanny to Portsmouth, to teach her to renounce her “disgusting” “independence of
spirit”, and now think about how Fanny is only Sir Thomas’s latest family
victim, it makes me “quite hate him” even more than before.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
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