In the
first enacted scene of MP in Chapter 1, we read an exchange between Mrs. Norris
and Sir Thomas about the pros and cons of having Fanny grow up in the Bertram
household around Tom and Edmund:
“…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.”
“There
is a great deal of truth in what you say,” replied Sir Thomas, “and far be it
from me to throw any fanciful impediment in the way of a plan which would be so
consistent with the RELATIVE SITUATIONS of each.”
On the
surface, Sir Thomas, by “relative situations”, refers to Tom and Edmund being
higher-born Bertrams, whereas Fanny is a lower-born Price, relative (or
compared) to the “situations” (within the family hierarchy) of her cousins. But
the pun arises from the subject which is being discussed --- the Bertram boys
and Fanny are, literally, “relatives” by reason of that same “situation”! So,
Fanny is, in effect, a relatively low relative!
This especially
reminds me of the pun I recently wrote about in Emma, (which I found
after my fellow Austen sleuth Diane Reynolds noted the pun involving “reign” and “rain” in Mr. Elton’s charade):
“The
weather continued much the same all the following morning; and the same
loneliness, and the same melancholy, seemed to reign at Hartfield—but in the
afternoon it cleared..”
This is
truly the high art of hiding in plain sight. But, back to MP-- here’s the best
part -- Austen revisits this identical pun at the very end of the novel,
in Chapter 48, again with Sir Thomas, again thinking about a subordinate female
relative (but this time, his daughter, Maria). This makes, in effect, a literal
pair of punning “bookends” on the word “relative”!:
“As a
daughter, he hoped a penitent one, she should be protected by him, and secured
in every comfort, and supported by every encouragement to do right, which
their RELATIVE SITUATIONS admitted; but FARTHER than that he
could not go. Maria had destroyed her own character, and he would not, by a
vain attempt to restore what never could be restored, by affording his sanction
to vice, or in seeking to lessen its disgrace, be anywise accessory to
introducing such misery in another man’s family as he had known himself.”
This
passage requires more thought to decipher accurately than the first one. What
exactly is Sir Thomas thinking? On the surface, it seems to me, he’s thinking
of the totality of the relative disparity in both power and
respectability between a father (and that’s why I also put the word ‘farther”
in all caps!) with supreme familial authority who believes himself to be
morally upright, on the one hand, and a daughter, Maria, who is in a weak and
disgraced situation, relative to his, as an adulterous wife in
need of his mercy to bail her out and, in his mind, to give her a courtship reboot.
And the pun arises, as in Chapter 1, from the same subject being discussed – i.e.,
Sir Thomas and Maria are, obviously, in a “relative situation”, because they
are father and daughter – they are relatives who are relatively different in
power and morality!
And,
the following sentence about Maria having destroyed her own character further
subtly emphasizes the parallel to the Chapter 1 passage, because the “bridge
too far” for Sir Thomas would be to follow Mrs. Norris’s advice and receive
Maria back home, thereby giving her a second shot at landing a rich husband
under his sponsorship. He clearly is thinking of the contrast between the
success of his having introduced Fanny into his own family in Chapter 1, and
the misery he might cause if he sponsored Maria as an eligible belle to be
introduced into another man’s family in the aftermath of Chapter 48!
Great
stuff, right?
After a
bit of online searching, I cannot find any prior sighting of this pun in the
usual databases, and that is, perhaps, not surprising, given that Austen does
nothing to telegraph this pun, to make it obvious. And actually, what I love
about Austen’s puns -- which I have found are everywhere in her writing -- is
that she invariably shows impeccable tact and taste in her paranomosia. She never
pushes them in the reader’s face, or overdoes them – and yet, like the best
crossword puzzle clues, once you see them, you groan and smack your forehead,
because they were always there, hiding in plain sight.
My
favorite from her letters, which I first spotted in July 2008, is this LOL gem:
“As
for Mr Floor, he is at present rather low in our estimation”
What
makes it great is that it is invisible to those with a blind eye for puns, such
as Deirdre Le Faye, whose Biographical Index entry for “Mr. Floor” in her 4th
edition still reads, as it did in her 3rd:
"Tradesman
in Southampton--perhaps a dyer?"
She may
as well have included an entry for “Santa Claus”: “Itinerant Peddler & p/t
Chimney Sweep”!
And
even when Austen, on rare occasion, does explicitly flag a pun, as she
does with Mary Crawford’s infamous “rears and vices”, Austen, through Mary’s
teasing voice, explicitly winks at it – so as to invite the reader to try to interpret
its cryptic meaning – and in this case, I’ve long maintained that Mary has a
deadly serious message hidden beneath the smile – she’s hinting to Fanny at the
‘price’ William will pay (for his promotion) – he’ll have to offer up his
“rear” to satisfy the “vices” of Admiral Crawford’s circle.
A
Possible Sighting After All?
Even
though I didn’t find any explicit prior scholarly sighting of JA’s pun
on “relative” before myself, I have my suspicions that I’ve been preceded in
this discovery by a sharp elf who read MP many decades ago. I refer to none
other than Vladimir Nabokov, who, it is well known, was rather over-the-top and
Shakespearean in the frequency and elaborateness of his own punning. For
example, Humbert Humbert refers to Lolita (real name Dolores Haze) as “my
dolorous and hazy darling”. Throughout the entire novel, in fact, Humbert (and
perhaps also Nabokov?) reveals himself as too clever by half in his
narcissistic compulsive, ticcing wordplay.
What I
find intriguing is that, in his famous lecture on MP, Nabokov actually quotes
and briefly discusses the above Chapter 1 speech by Sir Thomas, as he describes
how Austen sometimes achieves “characterization through directly quoted speech”:
“A good
example is to be found in Sir Thomas’s speech: [the first “relative situations”
quotation]. He is speaking of the plan to have his niece, Fanny, come to
Mansfield Park. Now, this is a ponderous way of expressing himself…”
Surprisingly,
even though Nabokov’s eye is sensitive enough to catch the awkward
ponderousness of Sir Thomas’s speech pattern, he seems to fail to spot the pun,
and therefore seems to fail to realize that Sir Thomas’s awkward syntax also provides
a better set-up for the “relative situations” pun.
Bu what
if Nabokov didn’t miss that pun after all? I was already aware, from research I
had last worked on in 2015, that MP is a key allusive source for Lolita,
including a punning connection relative (ha ha) to the word “grave”. For
example:
“…[Lolita’s]
mother was hospitalized, that the situation was GRAVE, that the child should
not be told it was GRAVE…”
Per Jessie Thomas Lokrantz,
in her dissertation The Underside of the Weave: Some Stylistic Devices Used
by Vladimir Nabokov (1973), “Humbert and the readers know that Charlotte is already dead
and therefore a new meaning is given to the word ‘grave’. The irony of the
situation is emphasised by using the word twice.”
Nabokov
repeats “grave’ and ‘gravity’ (and even “gravel”) many times in Lolita ---and
guess what? the words “grave” and
“gravity” are also used much more frequently in MP than in all of Austen’s
novels (except for S&S, which comes close) -- and the main reason is that
these particular words are used most often to describe Sir Thomas in MP, and
Colonel Brandon in S&S, respectively.
I suggest this is part of a delicate
mosaic of wordplay, by which Nabokov is connecting Humbert Humbert, his witty
pedophile, to Sir Thomas Bertram, the ponderous patriarch (and I claim, also, pedophile)
of Mansfield Park. In 2015, I went through a number of echoes of MP that I see
in Lolita, which suggest that Nabokov recognized the darkest,
Rozema-esque subtext of MP, with Sir Thomas as a sexual predator, long before
anyone else.
In that vein, I close with an
extended quotation from Lolita, which discusses the legal aspects of the
ambiguous relationship between Humbert and Lolita – reminding us once again of
that Chapter 1 tete a tete between Sir Thomas and Mrs. Norris. That ambiguous
relationship, you’ll recall, involves a middle aged man who assumes the role of
a quasi-father to a pubescent girl– and, also as I claim re Sir Thomas as well
as Humbert, sexually abusing his young vulnerable, manipulable “relative”. Just
think about how Sir Thomas responds when he returns to Mansfield after a long
absence, and takes pointed notice of Fanny’s body.
As always, Humbert is waxing
verbosely (albeit with a style that utterly eludes Sir Thomas) about his one
and only topic – Lolita. Note the word that he focuses on, and see if you also spot
the other winks at Jane Austen that I believe Nabokov hid in this passage --
two ‘easter eggs’ of appreciation to the author (and that author’s heroine) who
particularly inspired him in writing Lolita:
“At
this point I have a curious confession to make. You will laugh--but really and
truly I somehow never managed to find out quite exactly what the legal
situation was. I do not know it yet. Oh, I have learned a few odds and ends.
Alabama prohibits a guardian from changing the ward's residence without an
order of the court; Minnesota, to whom I take off my hat, provides that when
a RELATIVE assumes permanent care and custody of any child under fourteen,
the authority of a court does not come into play. Query: is the stepfather of a
gaspingly adorable pubescent pet, a stepfather of only one month's standing, a
neurotic widower of mature years and small but independent means, with the
parapets of Europe, a divorce and a few madhouses behind him, is he to be
considered a RELATIVE, and thus a natural guardian? And if not, must I, and
could I reasonably dare notify some Welfare Board and file a petition (how do
you file a petition?), and have a court's agent investigate meek, fishy me and
dangerous Dolores Haze? The many books on marriage, rape, adoption and so on,
that I guiltily consulted at the public libraries of big and small towns, told
me nothing beyond darkly insinuating that the state is the super-guardian of
minor children. Pilvin and Zapel, if I remember their names right, in an
impressive volume on the legal side of marriage, completely ignored stepfathers
with motherless girls on their hands and knees. My best friend, a social
service monograph (Chicago, 1936), which was dug out for me at great pains from
a dusty storage recess by an innocent old spinster, said "There is no
principle that every minor must have a guardian; the court is passive and
enters the fray only when the child's situation becomes conspicuously
perilous." A guardian, I concluded, was appointed only when he expressed
his solemn and formal desire; but months might elapse before he was given
notice to appear at a hearing and grow his pair of gray wings, and in the
meantime the fair demon child was legally left to her own devices which, after
all, was the case of Dolores Haze. Then came the hearing. A few questions from
the bench, a few reassuring answers from the attorney, a smile, a nod, a light
drizzle outside, and the appointment was made. And still I dared not. Keep
away, be a Mouse, curl up in your hole. Courts became extravagantly active only
when there was some monetary question involved: two greedy guardians, a robbed
orphan, a third, still greedier, party. But here all was in perfect order, and
inventory had been made, and her mother's small property was waiting untouched
for Dolores Haze to grow up. The best policy seemed to be to refrain from any
application. Or would some busybody, some Humane Society, butt in if I kept too
quiet?”
Did you see them?
“My best friend, a
social service monograph (Chicago, 1936), which was dug out for me at great
pains from a dusty storage recess by an innocent old spinster, said "There
is no principle that every minor must have a guardian; the court is passive and
enters the fray only when the child's situation becomes conspicuously
perilous."
That “innocent old
spinster” would be Jane Austen, the (anything but) innocent old spinster, whose
“monograph” Nabokov “dug out at great pains from a dusty storage access”; and
Fanny Price, whose self-protective motto at Mansfield Park could have been “Keep
away, be a Mouse, curl up in your hole.” – and hope that neither Sir Thomas nor
Henry Crawford will make a hole in your heart!
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
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