My "AHA!" HA-HA moment about Fanny Price, Mary Crawford AND Maria Bertram as the THREE Faces of Cressidas in Mansfield Park

This post is in followup to my post a few days ago about Fanny Price & Mary Crawford, in which I asserted that these two young women, while seemingly diametric opposites in personality (one the ultimate moralizing Shrinking Violet, the other the ultimate relativist Big Mouth), were intended by JA to be seen by the Shakespeare-savvy reader as the two Cressidas who briefly war with each other, just before Cressida decides to sleep with Troilus. 

That allusion by JA, I further claimed, leads to seeing Mary and Fanny metaphorically as two sides of the same female soul, a soul split apart by familial abuse that each of them has suffered during their respective youthful lives, with Mary yearning to be "reunited" to Fanny, a yearning that ultimately is NOT fulfilled.

Well, today, I noticed another very sly wrinkle to that same veiled allusion in Mansfield Park to the two Cressidas in Shakespeare's play, which makes me add Maria Bertram to the list of Cressidas in MP, thus bringing us to a total of THREE, hence my Subject Line!

First, to recap, I noticed 5 years ago that the following notorious and controversial passage in MP....

[MARY CRAWFORD] "....Certainly, my home at my uncle's brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices I saw enough.
Now DO NOT BE SUSPECTING ME OF A PUN, I ENTREAT."
Edmund again felt grave, and only replied, "It is a noble profession."
END QUOTE

...was a veiled but, to me, unmistakable allusion to the following less well known passage in Troilus & Cressida:

CRESSIDA: Did not I tell you? Would he were knock'd i' the head!
[Knocking within]
Who's that at door? good uncle, go and see.
My lord, COME YOU AGAIN INTO MY CHAMBER:
YOU SMILE AND MOCK ME, AS IF I MEANT NAUGHTILY.
TROILUS Ha, ha!
CRESSIDA Come, you are deceived, I think of no such thing END QUOTE

I.e., I say that Mary Crawford is intentionally channeling Cressida's apparent sexual Freudian slip, because we know that Mary does very much "mean naughtily" in her broad wink at her uncle's dissolute circle of admirals, and their abusive practices (which, Mary thereby tries, unsuccessfully, to warn Fanny, gravely endanger William Price's sexual integrity).

But it was only this morning that I had another "Aha!" moment about JA winking at Cressida's and Troilus's bawdy exchange--now i see that JA winked at it a second  time in Mansfield Park, and my realization was like coming upon an actual ha-ha and seeing the hidden depths that had only a moment before been invisible. I.e., this allusion I will be unpacking the rest of this post is one of Jane Austen's most inspired literary ha-has!

And here it is, Chapters 9 & 10, i.e., only a few chapters after Mary's very naughty pun, when the young people arrive at the gates of the Edenic wilderness at Sotherton:

Ch. 9:
"A few steps farther brought them out at the bottom of the very walk they had been talking of; and standing back, well shaded and sheltered, and LOOKING OVER A HA-HA into the park, was a comfortable-sized bench, on which they all sat down.
"I am afraid you are very tired, Fanny," said Edmund, observing her; "why would not you speak sooner? This will be a bad day's amusement for you if you are to be knocked up. Every sort of exercise fatigues her so soon, Miss Crawford, except riding."
"How abominable in you, then, to let me engross her horse as I did all last week! I am ashamed of you and of myself, but it shall never happen again."
"Your attentiveness and consideration makes me more sensible of my own neglect. Fanny's interest seems in safer hands with you than with me."
"That she should be tired now, however, gives me no surprise; for there is nothing in the course of one's duties so fatiguing as what we have been doing this morning: seeing a great house, dawdling from one room to another, straining one's eyes and one's attention, hearing what one does not understand, admiring what one does not care for. It is generally allowed to be the greatest bore in the world, and Miss Price has found it so, though she did not know it."
"I shall soon be rested," said Fanny; "to sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment."
After sitting a little while Miss Crawford was up again. "I must move," said she; "resting fatigues me. I have LOOKED ACROSS THE HA-HA till I am weary. I must go and look through that iron gate at the same view, without being able to see it so well."

&

Ch. 10:
[Maria] "Naturally, I believe, I am as lively as Julia, but I have more to think of now."
[Henry] "You have, undoubtedly; and there are situations in which very high spirits would denote insensibility. Your prospects, however, are too fair to justify want of spirits. You have a very smiling scene before you."
"Do you mean literally or figuratively? Literally, I conclude. Yes, certainly, the sun shines, and the park looks very cheerful. But unluckily that iron gate, THAT HA-HA, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. 'I cannot get out,' as the starling said." As she spoke, and it was with expression, she walked to the gate: he followed her. "Mr. Rushworth is so long fetching this key!"
"And for the world you would not get out without the key and without Mr. Rushworth's authority and protection, or I think you might with little difficulty pass round the edge of the gate, here, with my assistance; I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and could allow yourself to think it not prohibited."
"Prohibited! nonsense! I certainly can get out that way, and I will. Mr. Rushworth will be here in a moment, you know; we shall not be out of sight."
"Or if we are, Miss Price will be so good as to tell him that he will find us near that knoll: the grove of oak on the knoll."
Fanny, feeling all this to be wrong, could not help making an effort to prevent it. "You will hurt yourself, Miss Bertram," she cried; "you will certainly hurt yourself against those spikes; you will tear your gown; you will be IN DANGER OF SLIPPING INTO THE HA-HA. You had better not go."
Her cousin was safe on the other side while these words were spoken, and, smiling with all the good-humour of success, she said, "Thank you, my dear Fanny, but I and my gown are alive and well, and so good-bye."


Do you hear the echo? Troilus says "Ha, ha!" and the above passages in MP refer to the ha-ha (technically, the recessed landscape design element that created a vertical barrier between parts of the Sotherton wilderness while preserving views). So my "Aha!" moment was in realizing that JA meant for her Shakespeare-savvy reader to hear Troilus's laughter in these two dialogs about the Sotherton ha-ha.

Of course, I do not claim to be the first to seeing a sexual meaning in the Sotherton ha-ha.  It was Jill Heydt-Stevenson, in 1999, who launched the first really successful, widely publicized scholarly attack on that part of the Myth of Jane Austen which claimed that there was no sexual innuendo in JA's novels. In JHS's article, which she fittingly entitled "Slipping into the Ha-Ha", she brilliantly unpacked the over the top Freudian symbolism of the sexually drenched innuendoes implicit in not only the obvious iron gate and key, but also the ha-ha, the sexual meaning of which is not at first obvious, but which is, upon further consideration, even more powerfully sexual--after all, a woman's vagina is very much like a landscape ha-ha, in that a significant portion of the land within the wilderness comprises hidden depths, with two parallel borders, depths which are not visible from a distance, but which can be fully perceived once the gate is opened with an appropriate key, and the observer is standing in the right spot, and with the right perspective. I mean, really---could this  innuendo be more sexual?

And now look again at the passage in Troilus & Cressida, which ALSO involves a personification of a non-human physical object--a chamber, or living space, as a symbol for the vagina, which, as Troilus's laughter makes explicit, is a "chamber" into which a man may "come" and then, after a while, "come again". 

John Wiltshire has eloquently written about how Jane Austen did not slavishly allude to Shakespeare, she "recreated" (in both the sense of a new creation, and also of artistic play) Shakespeare, and this is a perfect example. This is the very opposite of the kind of heavy-handed obvious allusion that many literary scholars seem to consider as the only ones "proven" to be intentional, and therefore worth noticing--this allusion hides in plain sight, like a ha-ha! It is obvious only to the reader who recognizes JA's winks as intentional, has an    "Aha!"  moment, and then explores, from a fresh perspective, the relevant passages in Mansfield Park and in Troilus & Cressida, and then puts the pieces together, and recognizes the full significance of this hidden parallelism.

But please also note that JA played fair with the reader, and added one other wrinkle as an insurance policy, another textual portal through which the reader's attention to the parallel might be drawn. JA has Mary add the part about not suspecting her of a pun, because this is exactly what Cressida, in different words, does in her embarrassed (yet titillated?) response to Troilus's crudely sexual laughter.

And that brings us to Maria Bertram as the third Cressida of MP. In Shakespeare, Cressida is torn between keeping her virtue intact or giving her body to the man she has secretly yearned for, and then she is the butt of laughter when he jilts her not long after. And isn't that exactly what goes on with Maria Bertram vis a vis Henry Crawford during the course of their forbidden relationship? That ha-ha gives Maria a feeling of restraint and hardship, and so she does allow Henry to slip into HER ha-ha, only to be jilted by him in the end as well. 

And, in closing, to those who claim I have exaggerated the significance of all of the above, you should have by now suspected my reply, which echoes Troilus: 

Ha, Ha!


Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Tysoe Hancock’s IMpolite Conversation With MISS Freeman

I did a little more digging last night, as I remained intrigued by Tysoe Hancock's elaborate epistolary conceit on a clearly fictitious attempt by two young ladies to hang him with the garters that Miss Freeman sent him. Was he being salacious, sharing a moment of mutual flattery with a fellow valetudinarian, or sharing a bit of Shakespeare with a fellow Bardolater?

My further digging presented yet another possibility. I found the following snippet of “polite conversation” in a book published and then widely read in England when Tysoe Hancock was still a young man still living in his native country, long before he left for India:

MISS: I defy you, Mr. Neverout; nobody can say. Black's my Eye.

NEVEROUT: I believe, you wish they could.

MISS: Well ; but who was your Author? Come, tell Truth, and shame the Devil.

NEVEROUT: Come then, Miss; guess who it was that told me; come, put on your Considering-cap.

MISS: Well, who was it?

NEVEROUT: Why, one that lives within a Mile of an Oak.

MISS: Well, go hang yourself in your own Garters; for I'm sure, the Gallows groans for you.

NEVEROUT: Pretty Miss, I was but in Jest.

MISS: Well, but don't let that stick in your Gizzard.

Of course, as you might have guessed from my hint about a book widely read in England during the 1730’s, containing “Polite Conversation” that was anything but polite, the book I believe Tysoe Hancock might well have not only read, but perhaps had taken with him to India and kept in his home library there, was by the author whom I have long believed was Jane Austen’s most significant allusive touchstone for her own subversive, ironic put-ons:

“Wikipedia: A Complete Collection of genteel and ingenious Conversation, according to the most polite mode and method now used at Court, and in the best Companies of England, commonly known as A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation, or more simply as Polite Conversation, is a book by Jonathan Swift offering an ironic and satirical commentary on the perceived banality of conversation among the upper classes in early-18th century Great Britain written in the form of a reference guide for those lacking in conversational skill. It was completed in 1731, but may have been conceived of as early as 1704.”

So, when Miss ____ tells Mr. Neverout to go hang himself in his own Garters, because the Gallows groans for him, it begins to sound to me as if Shakespeare and Swift gave birth to a spicy insult which readers like Tysoe Hancock helped spread through their network of friends and correspondents into the pool of idioms in use among literate English folk who liked to spice up their conversation—literati like (as Diane pointed out yesterday) Jane Austen herself!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

The Austen Papers: Tysoe Hancock Avoids Hanging in Thisbe’s Garter?

“Dear Miss Freeman,                                                                                   Calcutta 29^th March 1772.

Your favor dated March 28, 1771 was not delivered to me till the 30^th of last December. I was then at Dinner with two young Ladies who some times honor me with their agreeable Company—Opening the Pacquet in great Haste, unluckily the garters fell out, the Ladies snatched them up immediately, declared they were sent me by some Lady who granted me, as the only favor I delivered [deserved] the honor of being hanged in her Garters. They laid violent hands on me and declared they would suspend me to the Tester of my own Bed. I believe they would have executed their Thanks (Threats] had I not been rescued by some of my elder Guests, who thought it better to eat a few more Suppers with me than to see me hanged in jest and dye in earnest. My narrow escape has as yet prevented my wearing the Garters. I now can look at them, I think them too good to be worn by such a decrepit Old Fellow as I am grown and therefore have given them a place among my most Valuable Curiosities. In return I send you some of my Manufacture, if you will allow that name to what I cause to be made. It is directed to Mrs. Hancock who knows better how to get it on shore than you: even she may fail in the attempt.”

After reading the above letter several times, and considering the entire context as revealed in this chapter of The Austen Papers, my best guess is that Hancock and Miss Freeman must have enjoyed a playful sort of correspondence in which (as Darcy famously notes in Lizzy) they each say things they don’t really mean, as part of a mutually agreeable joking long-distance, glacially-unfolding repartee. As my Subject Line suggests, it appears that Hancock and his distant  (in both senses) cousin may have crossed a boundary or two in their correspondence, to get them both through the long lonely nights alone.

First, here are a few observations which may be significant:

ONE: The date of Miss Freeman’s “favor” to Hancock is March 28, 1771, which just happens to be a year and a day before the date of Hancock’s letter—so, is he intentionally writing on a virtual anniversary of the letter he is responding to, or is that just a coincidence of dates?

TWO: The date Hancock states Miss Freeman’s letter-cum-garters was delivered to him was Dec. 30, 1771—was a nine month delay normal for such a pacquet to be delivered from England to India?

THREE: We see in Hancock’s letter dated December 6, 1771, to his wife Philadelphia that he must have received the package with the garters from Miss Freeman at least a month before he claims he received it, unless….Miss Freeman made a habit of writing to him and enclosing garters in each letter!

So, either Hancock has told a white lie to Miss Freeman, as an excuse for why he is so late writing back; or it’s part of their mutual joking to bend the calendar as their wit dictates.  

FOUR: Here is that earlier letter from Hancock to Philadelphia, which referred to the earlier delivery of the garters, and which, perhaps not by coincidence, refers to being married as equivalent to being hung!:

“My regard for Miss Freeman took its origin from what you had frequently told me of her kind Behaviour to you when your Situations were different…On Mrs. Stanhope’s account the News of her Husband’s Death gives me Pleasure; she has had so much of Matrimony that I imagine she will be cautious of trusting her Neck in the Noose again…Miss Freeman has written to me a more agreeable friendly Letter and has sent me a Pair of Garters manufactured by Herself, which to save a sheet of Paper, she enclosed in her Letter—Oh Oeconomy would I had been twenty years ago blest with thee!”

FIVE: And finally and perhaps most intriguingly, why does Hancock seem to channel Falstaff and Theseus from Shakespeare, in concocting an absurd account about himself as a man in danger of being hung by a garter? Now we arrive at the key point:

Right after the end of the play within a play and just before the every end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Theseus replies to Bottom’s request for direction as to the next part of the evening’s entertainment:

“No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excuse. Never excuse; for when the players are all dead, there needs none to be blamed. Marry, if he that writ it had played Pyramus and HANGED HIMSELF IN THISBE’S GARTER, it would have been a fine tragedy: and so it is, truly; and very notably discharged. But come, your Bergomask: let your epilogue alone.”

Is Hancock suggesting that he and Miss Freeman are like Pyramus and Thisbe, tragic lovers separated by insurmountable physical barriers (a wall in the play, a couple of oceans in real life)? If they shared a love of Shakespeare, that would be a really clever code to use which would be opaque to any third party reading the letter who did not get the sly reference. I find this a very strong possibility.

But there may be a second Shakesepearean source behind Hancock’s conceit. In Henry IV, Part One, Act 2, Scene 2, per Wikipedia’s handy synopsis, “Prince Hal enjoys insulting his dissolute friend [Falstaff] and makes sport of him by joining in Poins’ plot to disguise themselves and rob and terrify Falstaff and three friends of loot they have stolen in a highway robbery, purely for the fun of watching Falstaff lie about it later, after which Hal returns the stolen money.”

Here is the relevant dialog:

FALSTAFF  I prithee, good Prince Hal, help me to my horse, good king's son.

PRINCE HAL  Out, ye rogue! shall I be your ostler?

FALSTAFF  Go, HANG THYSELF IN THINE OWN HEIR-APPARENT GARTERS! If I be ta'en, I'll peach for this. An I have not ballads made on you all and sung to filthy tunes, let a cup of sack be my poison: when a jest is so forward, and afoot too! I hate it.

That does not seem to fit the Hancock-Freeman exchange nearly as well as the Pyramus & Thisbe. But… it’s also true that the theme of hanging is constantly repeated during the early stages of the play, most of all by Falstaff, and a big deal is constantly made in the play about his being old and physically disabled (by age and girth). So that does fit with Hancock’s closing self-depreciation as to his own decrepitude.

Are there any other literary allusions in Hancock’s letters? That would be quite relevant, obviously, to determining if he really had Theseus’s speech about Thisbe in mind as he wrote to Miss Freeman.

In any event, I am glad that you brought this little tidbit to our attention, Diane, as it does open an interesting portal into the personality of Tysoe Hancock.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Fanny Price the “Special Victim” of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, and Mary Crawford the “Detective” who solves Fanny’s “Case” and (almost) wins Fanny’s heart

In the leadup to the JASNA Annual General Meeting to be held in Montreal beginning in less than three  weeks, there’s been a wonderful series of guest posts about MP at Sarah Emsley’s Austen-themed blog   www.sarahemsley.com . In today’s entry by Laurel Ann Nattress, mistress of www.Austenprose.com,  Lauren Ann commented on the passage at the beginning of Chapter 22 of Mansfield Park when Fanny gets caught in the rain outside the Parsonage:

“This short passage is so telling for me. Mary Crawford is bending Fanny’s will, as she does to so many in the novel. She speaks authoritatively, decisively and officiously to Fanny, dismissing her observation of the rain having let up. “South or north, I know a black cloud when I see it; and you must not set forward while it is so threatening.” Like a spider to the fly, Mary has drawn poor Fanny into her web and made her stay longer than she wants to. When Fanny, the keen observer of nature, and the moral compass of the novel, expresses her opinion of the weather clearing as an exit cue to her hostess, she is dismissed by Miss Crawford, a character who reveals her controlling, selfish, and arrogant nature by stating that she knows a black cloud when she sees one, yet has not looked out the window. Screeching halt! Giant red flag! Austen has cleverly revealed that manipulative Mary and gentle Fanny are as opposite as black and white in their view of the world. Mary knows a black cloud when she sees one, because she is one. Her presence and opposing opinions will continue to dampen her encounters throughout the novel, and Fanny, who sees only the truth before her, will remain true to her own principles and our hearts.” END QUOTE

I respond as follows:

Laurel Ann, your seeing Mary as controlling, manipulative, and selfish toward Fanny is indeed one valid and plausible way of interpreting the interaction between these two young women in Chapter 22 of MP. However, I suggest to you today that an equally plausible, and perhaps an even more emotionally compelling interpretation, of that scene, is one that was implicitly put forward by Rozema in her 1999 film MP--i.e., that Mary in this scene subtly, subversively but benignly COURTS Fanny's blossoming romantic heart, seeking a "romantic friendship" with Fanny. Mary’s end game is not selfish, but is that of any honorable romantic wooer, which is the uniting of two true lovers in “marriage”.

And what makes this interpretation so powerful, I suggest, is that not only is Mary courting Fanny, but it can be clearly discerned if you read between the lines of Chapter 22 from that perspective (just try it and see!), that Fanny's responsive desire for Mary wells up immediately and powerfully, however much Fanny's internalized repression keeps her from conscious awareness of her intense attraction to Mary. There’s a struggle going on in Fanny’s unconscious, as she is both drawn to Mary and yet is also desperate to deny that longing, so Fanny’s mind keeps generating rationalization after rationalization.

I’ll be speaking at the upcoming JASNA AGM about the hidden Shakespeare in Mansfield Park—the plays which other Austen scholars have not detected in the allusive subtext of this most Shakespearean of Austen novels----and one of those hidden allusions to Shakespeare I stumbled across 5 years ago is to the most problematic of the Bard’s “problem plays”, Troilus & Cressida. I’ll never forget how, as I stood at the foot of the stage at the Globe Theatre in London in July 2009 looking up at the performers, I suddenly became aware that the enigmatic Cressida was a key allusive source for both Fanny and Mary in MP!

I first noticed the allusion as the audience erupted in laughter at Cressida’s Freudian slip when she  invites Troilus "the morning after" in Act IV:

CRESSIDA: Did not I tell you? Would he were knock'd i' the head!
[Knocking within]
Who's that at door? good uncle, go and see.
My lord, COME YOU AGAIN INTO MY CHAMBER:
YOU SMILE AND MOCK ME, AS IF I MEANT NAUGHTILY.
TROILUS Ha, ha!
CRESSIDA Come, you are deceived, I think of no such thing  END QUOTE

I not only laughed along with my fellow groundlings at Shakespeare’s crude but hilarious bawdy, but I was also likely the only person in the audience who also heard that scene as a key source for the following even more famous bit of parallel sexual repartee in Mansfield Park:

[MARY CRAWFORD] "....Certainly, my home at my uncle's brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices I saw enough. Now DO NOT BE SUSPECTING ME OF A PUN, I ENTREAT."
Edmund again felt grave, and only replied, "It is a noble profession." END QUOTE

And catching that allusion primed me to also especially notice the scene in T&C when Cressida’s personality famously, temporarily splits into two selves who are at war with each other over whether she should respond to Troilus’s amorous advances or not. I realized instantly that such scene must have been a touchstone for MP—JA had, I was sure, conceived of Fanny and Mary from the start as two halves of a soul fractured by emotional trauma. In that sense, a romantic friendship between Mary and Fanny can be seen as a kind of reuniting of those two selves who have been split off from each other by sexual abuse.

Mary is then, in this interpretation, a young yet sexually experienced bisexual woman, who has intuitively and accurately sensed the sexually repressed Fanny's reciprocal yet totally unconscious and involuntary lesbian attraction. JA artfully conveys Mary's insight into Fanny’s deeply repressed sexual tendencies when JA’s narrator repeatedly plays on Fanny’s being “wet” with over-the-top obvious sexual overtones (which Rozema so famously picked up on):

“Fanny, having been sent into the village on some errand by her aunt Norris, was overtaken by A HEAVY SHOWER close to the Parsonage; and being descried from one of the windows endeavouring to find shelter under the branches and lingering leaves of an oak just beyond their premises, was forced, though not without SOME MODEST RELUCTANCE on her part, TO COME in. A civil servant she had withstood; but when Dr. Grant himself went out with an umbrella, there was nothing to be done but to be very much ashamed, and to get into the house as fast as possible; and to poor Miss Crawford, who had just been contemplating the dismal rain in a very desponding state of mind, sighing over the ruin of all her plan of exercise for that morning, and of every chance of seeing a single creature beyond themselves for the next twenty-four hours, the sound of a little bustle at the front door, and the sight of Miss Price DRIPPING WITH WET in the vestibule, was delightful. The value of an event on A WET DAY in THE COUNTry [think of how we pronounce the first syllable of  “country”] was MOST FORCIBLY brought before her. She was all alive again directly, and among the most active in being useful to Fanny, in detecting her to be WETTER THAN SHE WOULD AT FIRST ALLOW, and providing her with dry clothes; and Fanny, after being OBLIGED TO SUBMIT to all this attention, and to being assisted and waited on by mistresses and maids, being also obliged, on returning downstairs, to be fixed in their drawing-room for an hour while THE RAIN CONTINUED, the blessing of something fresh to see and think of was thus extended to Miss Crawford, and might carry on her spirits to the period of dressing and dinner.”

And then we have Fanny, whose principal objection to staying longer at the Parsonage is not some worthy purpose, but merely is Fanny’s vague paranoid, self-denying belief, internalized by Fanny after a decade of sadistic oppression by Mrs. Norris. Fanny cannot help fighting against the happiness she is feeling at the Parsonage with Mary and Mrs. Grant, a happiness that Fanny believes she does not deserve. She does not feel entitled to spend a few pleasant hours on a rainy day, free from the duties of a domestic servant, free to relax and be pampered by two cultured women who cater to her every unspoken creature comfort, and (most important) make her feel welcome and noticed as a person.

Recall that at Mansfield Park, in Chapter 22, Fanny still remains a non-identity, a cipher, and so she requires a great deal of subtle coaxing in order to feel safe and entitled enough to actually show her real self to others, and not to keep it locked up in her books and transparencies in the attic which has been her refuge. So, does this make Mary’s tricking Fanny into staying longer an act of selfishness, or an act of mercy? Food for thought!

Plus there’s one more layer to this intricate emotional web, which demonstrates another facet of JA’s astonishingly modern psychological insight—it is not just Fanny who has survived a childhood of abuse, it is also Mary—that circle of perverted admirals that her uncle took part in, was no picnic to spend one’s later teenaged years among, you can be sure. Mary is a victim, too, just as surely as Fanny is, even if Mary’s reaction to being abused is so very different from Fanny’s-each has found a very different strategy for survival—Fanny by hiding in the attic, Mary by hiding in plain sight.

My wife and I have become fans during the past year of the long running TV show "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit", and I imagine Mary having acutely observed Fanny’s situation at Mansfield Park for a period of time, exactly the way that the empathic and savvy SVU detective Olivia Benson, played so powerfully and convincingly by Mariska Hargitay, quickly intuits the psychology of the varied victims of sexual crimes whom she tries to protect from abuse. Much of the drama and satisfaction of watching that show is that we believe we are seeing a truthful and healing process enacted for us, when Benson repeatedly finds ways to induce the victims, who are most often young women or children, to trust her, when they have never before trusted anyone, because they were betrayed and abused by those who were supposed to care for them.

And here’s the most telling parallel---what makes Olivia Benson so uniquely qualified to serve as a Special Victims detective, is that she herself was the victim of abuse, and was a child born of rape. It is because she has suffered, and has turned her suffering in the noblest of directions, that she can repeatedly connect to the victims of the awful crimes Benson seeks to solve.  

And that’s how I see Mary Crawford in Chapter 22. I see Mary as having seen right through the abuse that Fanny suffers at Mansfield Park on a daily basis, and then Mary courageously intervenes on Fanny’s behalf, in a very subversive but decisive manner. Unlike Edmund, that spineless self-deluder, who NEVER steps up to defend Fanny from abuse by Mrs. Norris, Mary finds a way to get Fanny away from that abuse, and keep her away, and encourage Fanny to spread her heart’s wings for the first time and fly.

So, yes, Mary is undeniably manipulative in that scene in Chapter 22, but, as with SVU Detective Benson, it is a benign and helpful form of manipulation, one that is necessary under the pragmatic exigencies of the situation, in order to induce a victim to gain the courage and trust necessary to begin to demand an end to abuse and oppression.

But of course it’s not exactly the same, because Benson does not fall in love with the crime victims she seeks to protect and get justice for, whereas Mary is more complicated even than that, she seeks her own fulfillment from Fanny.

Viewed in that prudential light, Mary is a heroine, not a villain—and, like Cressida, a tragic heroine, because in the end Mary does not wind up with Fanny, she is maneuvered out of that outcome by the actions of third parties.

But as I said at the beginning, the above analysis does not nullify Laurel Ann’s interpretation, it only shows that there are two very different ways of validly interpreting that scene in Chapter 22. And how brilliant of Jane Austen to create both of these interpretations with equal power and validity, so that, like the two Cressidas in Shakespeare’s problem play, they are both there for the reader to find. In this way,  I argue, JA, like Shakespeare, showed that life is deeply ambiguous, and it is possible to look at the same scene and see two very different possible realities, and so we must learn to dig deeper, to keep probing until we determine which reality is closer to the truth.

We must learn not to be so overpowered by our first impressions of a scene that we fail to keep probing for alternative explanations for what we (think we) see. Beneath every overt story we encounter in Jane Austen’s novels, there is a shadow story waiting to be discovered, if we only are willing to come into Jane Austen’s chamber of literary illusion—and you are free to think as naughtily as you like about that.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter