#but on the other hand. Austen had the Bible. everyone of her time period did. she should have known better | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

francesderwent · 2 months ago

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Mansfield Park paints a very vivid picture of a world convicted of sin but without any access to or even imagination of grace or forgiveness. Edmund, whose morals are held up as impeccable, is literally ordained to the priesthood in the course of the novel—but where, in all his principles, is Jesus? is redemption? is the Cross? Fanny is held up as Henry’s salvation, but she can only guarantee the right guidance of his future actions, there is no repentance or forgiveness for his old ways. and if there is no way for his former sins to find their place in the story of his salvation (if I’d chosen differently I never would have met you! o happy fault!), is it any wonder he falls back into them?? there is no Christ figure, there is only Victorian duty. it leaves everyone but the perfect out in the cold.

#it’s Austen’s most PITILESS novel and it’s chilling #on the one hand I know I’m applying an anachronistic lens to the novel #but on the other hand. Austen had the Bible. everyone of her time period did. she should have known better #like the finality of Loss of Virtue is so extremely unChristian!!!!!#read the Gospels and maybe you’ll calm down!!!!!!!!#the problem with Mansfield isn’t that it’s moralizing. it’s that its morals are wrong #obviously what Henry and Maria do is wrong! but just as Mary chalking the whole thing up to folly is wildly incomplete #so Edmund and Fanny and the whole society washing their hands of them and almost treating it as inevitable is incomplete #cate reads

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