Defending Fanny Price

[osprey_archer]

Even 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.

Comments

[ursula]

Have you read the play? The edition of Mansfield Park I grew up with has the text of Lovers' Vows in the back (and the internet has it too, these days). Once you read the play, which is full of illegitimate children, the HORRIBLE BAD IDEA AWKWARDNESS of the casting becomes really apparent.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I've always thought that Mansfield Park should come with a copy of the play in the back, or at least a summary of it, so that readers can see what all the fuss is about.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

I haven't! But the movie version made it clear that it was something horrible and shocking, and Mary was just so gleefully outre about the whole thing.