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peonymoss · 6 years ago

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“Mansfield Park”: Vol. 1, Chapters 1-5

Some quick takes:

Chapter 1

The discussion of the Price sisters and their expectations is so very transactional: how much husband can a pretty face and seven thousand pounds expect to fetch?

Alas, Miss Ward sits another six years on the market. Did she set her sights too high, a victim of inflation? Or are potential suitors looking for more than just a pretty face and seven thousand pounds? The part about her being “obliged to be attached” herself cracks me up — the “obliged” suggests resignation (nobody else came along, and nobody else is likely too; better go with Mr. Norris) and the “to be attached” is so utterly passive, as if someone else is sticking her to him like a button to a coat — button and coat are interchangeable to each other — there’s no volition suggested on her part at all, not even her act of accepting him. (And she couldn’t even land him on her own; sounds like her brother-in-law set them up)

never wrote to her family on the subject till actually married — hee! And, Gretna Green? Mrs. Norris’s “spirit of activity” — such a contrast to that “being attached” —oh dear, and that part about “as Mrs. Norris could not possibly keep to herself” — tattletale.

(I could just spend this whole chapter cracking up at Mrs. Norris’s characterization.)

Chapter 2

Poor Fanny. And she’s brought all the way up from Portsmouth to Northampton by servants. (Thus, Lady B. and Mrs. Norris deprive themselves of the opportunity to physically see their sister after eleven years.) A lot of attention to her looks, and she’s only ten. And then Mrs. Norris harping into her ear about how she ought to Be Grateful, and Fanny’s taking it all to heart and feeling guilty about her (natural) unhappiness.

Chuckling at Maria thinking she’ll know everything she needs to know when she’s seventeen.

Chapter 3

I love the way JA presents Tom’s mental list in its ordered points.

Another big chapter for Mrs. Norris, between her choice of house and her opinions of the Grants. “They had their faults, and Mrs. Norris soon found them out.”

Sir Thomas means well, but he just doesn’t get people. What a way to say good-bye to Fanny.

Chapter 4

Clever Edmund, figuring out a way around his mother’s procrastination and his aunt’s determination to keep Fanny from having something for her own sake.

I think Rushworth is the richest suitor in any of the six novels, with his twelve thousand to Darcy’s ten.

So Mary and Henry have something in common with Fanny: they were raised by an aunt and uncle. Their aunt and uncle are more affectionate to them than Fanny’s are to her.

Chapter 5

More of that transactional approach to marriage: Mrs. Grant has decided who Henry will marry; Mary’s decided who she wouldn’t mind marrying; Henry’s decided that he wants both Bertram sisters to like him. Some of it’s tongue in cheek, but....

I was really struck on this reading at how lacking in empathy all the Ward sisters seem to be, and how they either don’t understand or pretend they don’t understand human attachment — specifically, a ten-year-old girl’s attachment. People in this society may have been more accustomed to long, necessary separations (the Bertram boys going to boarding school, Lt. Price and then William going to sea) but still, people are people, and people naturally grow attached to homes and to other people, and they suffer when those attachments are disrupted.

So when Fanny first arrives, it takes a while for it to finally occur to Mrs. Norris that this ten-year-old child might be homesick: ”with all its faults, it was her home....” But Mrs. Norris is focused on the material advantages of Mansfield Park: “....and she cannot as yet understand how much she has changed for the better.” She doesn’t seem to worry about Fanny missing the people she’s left behind.

(Edmund gets it, though. When he catches Fanny crying on the stairs, he realizes she misses her mother — and he praises her for it. He asks about her brothers and sisters; he helps her write to William, and honors her connection to William by joining in it himself.)

Later on, when Lady Bertram is talking to Fanny about moving in with Mrs. Norris, she says, “It can make very little difference to you, whether you are in one house or the other.” One house is as good as another, because they’re all better than Portsmouth, right? It doesn’t occur to Lady Bertram that Fanny might miss her and the rest of the Bertram family.

And then there’s Mrs. Price. She favors the boys; she wonders why her sisters want to take in Fanny when they could have one of the boys; and at the end of Chapter 2 we learn that “nobody at home seemed to want [Fanny.]”

(Interesting that in the name of helping Mrs. Price, Mrs. Norris fixes on taking a child who doesn’t need as much constant attention and who is able to help out around the house. But then Mrs. Price goes along with it. Maybe she didn’t recognize how helpful Fanny was.)

And what does Fanny want? She wants to feel like she’s important to somebody. Back in Portsmouth she’d been “important” to her brothers and sisters “as play-fellow, instructress, and nurse.” In Chapter 3 Fanny tells Edmund “...it would be delightful to feel myself of consequence to any body!” And in Chapter 4, when Maria and Julia are out in society, Fanny enjoys being useful to Lady Bertram.

It’s interesting how the life of Mansfield Parsonage is intimately intertwined into the life of Mansfield Park. First we have the Norrises - Mr. Norris is a friend of Sir Thomas, a good enough friend that Sir Thomas gives him the living, and Mrs. Norris is Lady Bertram’s sister. The Norrises are connected by blood and friendship to the Park (and Mrs. Norris is always over at the Park and in the Bertrams’ business.)

The connection between the Park and the Parsonage should have become even closer with Edmund’s taking the living, but instead the living is bought by the Grants (instead of being given to a friend or a son). The initial connection is commercial.

The Grants become connected to the Park — they socialize with the Bertrams; Mrs. Norris brings gossip about them to the Park — and then Mrs. Grant’s relatives start becoming more deeply intertwined into life at the Park. Mrs. Grant, of course, hopes that through marriage the Grants and Crawfords will be as close - or closer - to the Park as the Norrises were.

Meanwhile, the residents of the Parsonage don’t exactly seem to be models of conjugal felicity. Was Mrs. Norris telling the truth about Mr. Norris being in poor health? (It seems that he was not an old man when he died.) JA takes note of the age gap between the Grants; while he indulges his love of eating, is Dr. Grant neglecting other obligations? Two marriages with fussy, needy husbands — and with no children. Both Mrs. Norris and Mrs. Grant strike me as being bored and lonely. Mrs. Norris discharges her excess energy by going over to the Park to meddle help her sister with her children; Mrs. Grant decorates her sitting room, tries to keep her husband happy, and is delighted to finally have company.

Mrs. Norris! I could write a book about how awful she is, and how precisely JA shows us how awful she is.

Sir Thomas is otherwise a sensible man; why did he marry Maria Ward, and why does he permit Mrs. Norris to have such influence over Mansfield Park?

Why did Mrs. Norris fixate on bringing Fanny to Mansfield Park? It would have made more sense for she and Mr. Norris to take in one of the younger boys: it would have relieved Mrs. Price of the care of one of the younger children, and it would have provided the Norrises with an heir and a potential support in their old age. (Of course, it would also mean genuine generosity on their part, especially on Mrs. Norris’s part, and genuine helpfulness to Mrs. Price.)

Some spoilery thoughts behind the cut:

I would love to know how exactly Miss Maria “captivated” Sir Thomas. Money isn’t his only consideration — he’s not a fortune hunter — was her beauty really enough for him to overlook her indolence? Or did that trait emerge later?

That first sentence of the book, with its emphasis on MIss Maria’s gaining the “comforts and consequences of a handsome house and a large income” — foreshadowing of Maria Bertram’s focus on Sotherton and the house in town she so craved?

#east room mansfield park #east room mansfield park: vol. 1 chapters 1-5

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