Defending Fanny Price
Aug. 10th, 2012 09:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerEven though it goes off at the end, Mansfield Park is my favorite Austen novel. This is partly on the strength of its own virtues – Mansfield Park is exquisitely well-observed and well-written – and partly because I feel it needs a champion: everyone else seems to despise the novel and its heroine, Fanny Price. What kind of heroine, they ask, can such a weak little nothing be?
Fanny Price is not weak. Lady Bertram is a weak character: guided in everything by those around her, without a thought of her own in her head. Fanny Price, downtrodden though she may be, knows her own mind. Everyone else may love the Crawfords, but Fanny knows they have no principles.
Readers seem to forget this fact, on the grounds that the Crawfords are so entertaining that their trail of destruction doesn’t matter. But really they’re rotten people, though they do it with panache. For goodness’ sake, Henry Crawford’s favorite amusement is making girls fall in love with him and then leaving them flat! This would be nasty enough in modern times, but given how few men girls met back then, he’s doubtless ruining some of their chances at marriage and happiness. Even if he hadn’t run off with her at the end, Mr. Crawford already pretty thoroughly wrecked Maria’s life.
Admittedly, she helped him out by engaging herself then marrying a man she knew she didn’t love, but that doesn’t excuse Henry Crawford from being a base cad. The idea that Henry Crawford isn’t so bad seems to rest on the ugly assumption that girls like Maria and Julia somehow deserve his machinations, because they were too silly to see through his scheming ways.
He might, in his way, have remained devoted to Fanny; but how long do you think that would have kept him from his favorite amusement of breaking women’s hearts? And how long could Fanny have borne to watch her husband flirt with and discard other women? I think the lack of consideration toward her, and the lack of principle in general, would have hurt her very much. She was right to refuse him.
And that refusal, again, shows Fanny Price’s strength. When she refuses the extremely eligible Mr. Crawford, the entire world falls on her head in condemnation. Her Aunt Norris sneers at her. Her frightening uncle lectures her on her ungratefulness till she cries, and when that doesn’t work, he sends her away from Mansfield Park with no definite date of return. Even Edmund, usually her champion, thinks her refusal is ridiculous. A weak person would crumple under such universal opposition.
Fanny doesn’t waver.
So Fanny Price is not weak. But she lacks entirely the two other stigmata of a modern heroine: feistiness and rebellion. No matter how outrageous her relations’ claims may seem, Fanny remains demure and obedient as long as none of her principles are threatened, and that drives modern readers up the wall.
I think it’s too bad. One thing I like about Austen is that her heroines are so different from each other: I like that Fanny Price, though less immediately winning than Elizabeth Bennett, can be a heroine too.
Fanny Price is not weak. Lady Bertram is a weak character: guided in everything by those around her, without a thought of her own in her head. Fanny Price, downtrodden though she may be, knows her own mind. Everyone else may love the Crawfords, but Fanny knows they have no principles.
Readers seem to forget this fact, on the grounds that the Crawfords are so entertaining that their trail of destruction doesn’t matter. But really they’re rotten people, though they do it with panache. For goodness’ sake, Henry Crawford’s favorite amusement is making girls fall in love with him and then leaving them flat! This would be nasty enough in modern times, but given how few men girls met back then, he’s doubtless ruining some of their chances at marriage and happiness. Even if he hadn’t run off with her at the end, Mr. Crawford already pretty thoroughly wrecked Maria’s life.
Admittedly, she helped him out by engaging herself then marrying a man she knew she didn’t love, but that doesn’t excuse Henry Crawford from being a base cad. The idea that Henry Crawford isn’t so bad seems to rest on the ugly assumption that girls like Maria and Julia somehow deserve his machinations, because they were too silly to see through his scheming ways.
He might, in his way, have remained devoted to Fanny; but how long do you think that would have kept him from his favorite amusement of breaking women’s hearts? And how long could Fanny have borne to watch her husband flirt with and discard other women? I think the lack of consideration toward her, and the lack of principle in general, would have hurt her very much. She was right to refuse him.
And that refusal, again, shows Fanny Price’s strength. When she refuses the extremely eligible Mr. Crawford, the entire world falls on her head in condemnation. Her Aunt Norris sneers at her. Her frightening uncle lectures her on her ungratefulness till she cries, and when that doesn’t work, he sends her away from Mansfield Park with no definite date of return. Even Edmund, usually her champion, thinks her refusal is ridiculous. A weak person would crumple under such universal opposition.
Fanny doesn’t waver.
So Fanny Price is not weak. But she lacks entirely the two other stigmata of a modern heroine: feistiness and rebellion. No matter how outrageous her relations’ claims may seem, Fanny remains demure and obedient as long as none of her principles are threatened, and that drives modern readers up the wall.
I think it’s too bad. One thing I like about Austen is that her heroines are so different from each other: I like that Fanny Price, though less immediately winning than Elizabeth Bennett, can be a heroine too.
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-10 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-10 09:04 pm (UTC)I'm so sad it got canceled early. Not only did it mean that there were no more show, but it really messed up the pacing in season 2.
Um, but back to the actual topic. Yes! I love that Fanny remains principled, even though the deck is sometimes so firmly stacked against her. Her reservations about the theatrical scheme seem a little silly nowadays, but as she has them, I admire that she sticks by them.
I haven't seen a movie version of Mansfield Park yet, because I've heard they all rather vary from the book, but the 1999 version is the one I'd watch if I did. Fanny actually looks sweet and demure on the cover, rather than giving the camera a come-hither look like poor miscast Billie Piper on the 2007 cover.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-10 09:22 pm (UTC)And of course the historical aspect (with the annotations by the consulting historian) is quite interesting to me. In between S1 and S2 I listened to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcasts, and shored up my knowledge of the factors behind and the events leading up to the fall of the Roman Republic, and so I am feeling a bit better educated than I was before (and no longer have to say that everything I know about classical history I learned from HBO).
I am ordinarily much more of a book person than a visual-media person, but with Mansfield Park I had so much confusion as to who was who in the book, and got so bored with the play part, and the movie did a good job of ironing these things out. Fanny is really presented as being a Good Person, and one can't help but like her and want things to go well for her.
Also, if you need more incentive, there is a bit of Mary/Fanny subtext (er, Mary coming on to Fanny, who is oblivious) in the movie. I don't know if that was in the book! And there are a number of actors I recognized from other things, not just the two I mentioned. Sometimes it feels as though there are only a dozen actors who do BBC costume dramas (just as it felt as though there are only a dozen Canadian actors, back when I was in the Greater Canadian Fandom), but they are all good.
And of course, just as in Rome, there are women with elaborate hairstyles and drapy clothes, and there are horses. (There is considerably less nudity, though.)
no subject
Date: 2012-08-11 03:02 am (UTC)I also have a thing for Vorenus/Marc Antony, in a total terrible trainwreck kind of way.
Mary/Fanny subtext? Now this I have to see. No, it's not in the book (unless they've found one of Mary's lines that can have an interesting twist put on it...which would not surprise me. She's a very knowing girl.)
And I know what you mean about the BBC costume drama actors.
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Date: 2012-08-11 03:54 am (UTC)Also, I have friended you, because it appears we have Things in Common.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-11 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-15 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-15 12:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-15 10:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-15 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-15 12:34 pm (UTC)I love Emma Woodhouse as well as Fanny Price, though I don't think I exactly identify with either of them. Actually, I'm not sure I identify with any Austen heroines; I'm not sure if its because they're so very well-rendered, very much themselves, that there isn't a lot of room for identification, or the fact that they're written so long ago (and thus have an appealing but nonetheless very different set of values) gets in the way.
I've been meaning to do a series of posts about Austen novels since, like, the beginning of time. Possibly I should get on that.