Mansfield Park

The novel has many autobiographical associations; some of these are indicated in the following sections about critical discussions of important themes. Austen drew considerably on her own experience and the knowledge of her family and friends. Her acute observation of human behaviour informs the development of all her characters. In Mansfield Park, she continues her practice, like that of the portrait miniaturist, of painting on ivory "with so fine a brush".[14] Apart from a day's visit to Sotherton and three months' confinement in Portsmouth, the novel's action is restricted to a single estate, yet its subtle allusions are global, touching on India, China and the Caribbean.

HMS Cleopatra, commanded by Jane Austen's brother Captain James Austen, 1810–1811, and mentioned in ch. 38.

Austen knew Portsmouth from personal experience.[15] She records that Admiral Foote, then Second-in-Command at Portsmouth, was "surprised that I had the power of drawing the Portsmouth-Scenes so well".[16] Her brother, Charles Austen served as a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic Wars. In the novel, Fanny's brother William joins the Royal Navy as an officer, whose ship, HMS Thrush, is sited right next to HMS Cleopatra at Spithead.[17] Captain Austen commanded HMS Cleopatra during her cruise in North American waters to hunt French ships from September 1810 to June 1811. If the novel refers to the ship in its historical context, this would date the main events of the novel as 1810–1811.[17] William's tales of his life as a midshipman recounted to the Bertrams would have indicated to early readers that he had sailed with Nelson to the Caribbean. Lady Bertram requests two shawls if he goes to the East Indies.

William gives Fanny the gift of an amber cross. This echoes the gift of topaz crosses given by Charles Austen to his sisters before he set sail to the Royal Navy's North America stations in Halifax and Bermuda.[17] In Fanny's East room, Edmund speculates from her reading that she will be 'taking a trip into China' in the footsteps of Lord Macartney's pioneering cultural mission.[18]

The first critic to draw attention to the novel's extensive use of symbolic representation was Virginia Woolf in 1913.[19] Three overtly symbolic events are: the visit to neighbouring Sotherton and the ha-ha with its locked gate (ch. 9–10), the extensive preparation for the theatricals and its aftermath (ch. 13–20), and the game of Speculation (ch. 25) where, says David Selwyn, the card game is a "metaphor for the game Mary Crawford is playing, with Edmund as stake".[20][21] 'Speculation' also references Sir Thomas's unpredictable investments in the West Indies and Tom's gambling which causes financial embarrassment to Sir Thomas and reduced prospects for Edmund, not to mention the speculative nature of the marriage market. Also to be found are underlying allusions to Biblical themes of temptation, sin, judgement and redemption. The 'keys' to these are found at Sotherton. Felicia Bonaparte argues that in a striking post modern way, Fanny Price is a realistic figure, but also a figure in a design. She sees Fanny as the 'pearl of great price' in the parable of the Kingdom recorded in Matthew 13:45-46, the 'kingdom' relating to both contemporary society and a kingdom yet to be revealed.[22]^{: 49–50, 57}

Clara Calvo (2005) says that many modern readers find it difficult to sympathise with Fanny's timidity and her disapproval of the theatricals, finding her "priggish, passive, naive and hard to like".[25] Priggishness has been a longstanding criticism of Austen's heroine. Wiltshire (2005) challenges the negative judgement of Fanny suggesting that it is the apparent conservatism of the novel that makes it confronting, and that "many readers cannot get past it".[28]

Portsmouth Point by Thomas Rowlandson, 1811. Popular with sailors on leave from ships moored at Spithead; notorious for lewd behaviour

Tomalin sees Fanny as a complex personality who, despite her frailty, shows courage and grows in self-esteem during the latter part of the story. Her faith, which gives her the courage to resist what she thinks is wrong, sometimes makes her intolerant of the sinners.[27] Fanny, always self-reflective, is intolerant of her own intolerance. Change in her character is most marked during her three months exposure to Portsmouth life. Initially, shocked by the coarseness and impropriety of her parental home and its neighbourhood, she condemns it. Her father's attitude is one that modern readers might also condemn, given the tone of incestuous sexual harassment in a man who scarcely notices her except "to make her the object of a coarse joke".[29] While now recognising she can never be at home in Portsmouth, she gradually overcomes her acknowledged prejudices, recognises the distinctive qualities of her siblings, and works hard not to cause offence. In the wider community, judgement is more even-handed; Fanny does not take to the young ladies of the town and they, offended by the 'airs' of one who neither plays on the pianoforte nor wears fine pelisses, do not take to her.[30] She comes to see that part of her physical frailty stems from the debilitating effect of the internal arguments, conversations and identifications that sap her energy.

Auerbach suggests that Fanny, as the quiet observer, adopts "the audience's withering power over performance". She says, "our discomfort at Fanny is in part our discomfort at our own voyeurism", and that we implicate ourselves as well as Fanny "in a community of compelling English monsters".

Paula Byrne (2014) says, "At the centre of the book is a displaced child with an unshakeable conscience. A true heroine."[12]

Fanny is unique amongst the Austen heroines in that her story begins when she is ten and traces her story up to age eighteen.[31] Byrne says, "Mansfield Park is perhaps the first novel in history to depict the life of a little girl from within".[32] By the beginning of the 21st century, says John Wiltshire, critics, appreciating Austen's highly sophisticated renderings of her character's psychological lives, now understood Fanny, formerly seen as the principled pivot of moral right (celebrated by some critics, berated by others) as "a trembling, unstable entity, [an] erotically driven and conflicted figure, both victim and apostle of values inscribed within her by her history of adoption".[9] Joan Klingel Ray suggests that Fanny is Austen's insightful study of "the battered-child syndrome", a victim of emotional and material abuse in both households.[33] From early on she is seen as mentally and physically fragile, a little girl with low self-esteem, vulnerable and thin-skinned. The rock on which she stands, enabling her to survive, is the love of her older brother William. At Mansfield, her cousin Edmund gradually takes on a similar role; both young men fulfil the essential role of care-giver left vacant by the adults. The East room, which Fanny gradually appropriates, becomes her safe place, her "nest of comforts" to which, though unheated, she retreats in times of stress. Here she reflects on her sufferings; the misunderstanding of her motives, her disregarded feelings, and her understanding undervalued. She considers the pain of tyranny, ridicule and neglect, but concludes that nearly every incident led to some benefit and the chief consolation had always been Edmund.[34]

The trauma of her dislocation at the age of ten is recalled by Fanny eight years later when she is promised a visit to her birth family. "The remembrance of all her earliest pleasures, and of what she had suffered in being torn from them, came over her with renewed strength, and it seemed as if to be at home again would heal every pain that had since grown out of the separation."[35] The pain of separation is as evident as is the idealisation of her former life at Portsmouth, an idealisation that masks the deeper pain of an abandonment soon to be acknowledged. John Wiltshire, returning to the theme in 2014, describes Fanny as "a heroine damaged early by her upbringing, as well as by her quasi-adoption, who experiences intense conflict between gratitude to her adoptive family and the deepest rebellion against them", a rebellion scarcely conscious.[36]

Negative criticism of Fanny sometimes identifies with that voiced by characters in the novel. For some early feminists, Fanny Price was close to being considered, as she was by Mrs Norris, "the daemon of the piece". Many have despised her as "creepmouse", as her cousin Tom does.[9]

Mary Wollstonecraft, contemporary proto-feminist writer, and critic of Rousseau.

Margaret Kirkham (1983) in her essay "Feminist Irony and the Priceless Heroine of Mansfield Park" argued that Austen was a feminist writer who liked complexity and humour and enjoyed presenting puzzles for her readers. Many have missed the feminist irony of the character of Fanny.[37] Austen was a feminist in the sense that she believed women were as endowed with reason and common sense as men, and that the ideal marriage should be between two people who love each other.[38] Ironically, the love match portrayed between Fanny's parents is far from ideal.

Kirkham sees Mansfield Park as an attack on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's popular 1762 work, Emile, or On Education, which depicted the ideal woman as fragile, submissive, and physically weaker than men. Rousseau stated: "So far from being ashamed of their weakness, they glory in it; their tender muscles make no resistance; they affect to be incapable of lifting the smallest burdens, and would blush to be thought robust and strong."[39] The contemporary philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft wrote at length against Rousseau's views in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She also challenged followers of Rousseau like James Fordyce, whose sermons had long been a part of a young woman's library.[40]

At the beginning of the novel, Fanny, with her constant illnesses, timid disposition, submissiveness and fragility, conforms outwardly to Rousseau's ideal woman.[41] Subversively, her passivity is primarily that of a victim determined to survive, the result of the trauma of her dislocation and the internal complexities of her mental well-being. The once beautiful aunt Bertram, in her indolence and passivity, also satirises the stereotype.[42] In the end, Fanny survives by unwittingly undermining prevailing attitudes to propriety as she finds the strength to place conscience above obedience and love above duty. Fanny's refusal to capitulate to Sir Thomas' wish that she marry Henry Crawford is seen by Kirkham as the moral climax of the novel.[43] Through her deep-seated integrity and compassion, her reason and common sense, she is able to triumph, thus challenging the prevailing ideal of femininity (and propriety) in Regency England.[44]

The American literary critic Harold Bloom calls Fanny Price "a co-descendant, together with Locke's association-menaced will, of the English Protestant emphasis upon the will's autonomy".

He draws attention to C. S. Lewis's observation that "into Fanny, Jane Austen, to counterbalance her apparent insignificance, has put really nothing except rectitude of mind, neither passion, nor physical courage, nor wit, nor resource". Bloom agrees with Lewis but argues that he misses the importance of Fanny's "will to be herself" as a causal agent in the plot. Bloom argues that paradoxically it is Fanny's lack of the "will to dominate" that enables her 'will' to succeed. Her struggle just to be herself causes her to exercise moral influence, and this leads her to triumph in the end.[45]

Frontispiece to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, 1831 edition (first published in 1818)

Nina Auerbach recognises an extraordinary tenacity in Fanny "with which she adheres to an identity validated by none of the conventional female attributes of family, home, or love". By so doing, Fanny "repudiates the vulnerability of the waif to the unlovable toughness of the authentic transplant". Fanny emerges from the isolation of the outcast, becoming instead the conqueror, thus "aligning herself rather with the Romantic hero than with the heroine of romance".

To Auerbach, Fanny is a genteel version of a popular archetype of the Romantic age, "the monster", who by the sheer act of existing does not and cannot ever fit into society. In this interpretation, Fanny has little in common with any other Austen heroine, being closer to the brooding character of Hamlet, or even the monster of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (published only four years later). Auerbach says there is "something horrible about her that deprives the imagination of its appetite for ordinary life and compels it toward the deformed, the dispossessed".

Auerbach argues that Fanny defines herself best in assertive negatives. Fanny's response to the invitation to take part in Lovers' Vows is, "No, indeed, I cannot act." In life she rarely acts, only counteracts, watching the world around her in silent judgement. Fanny is "a woman who belongs only where she is not". Her solitude is her condition, not a state from which she can be rescued. "Only in Mansfield Park does Jane Austen force us to experience the discomfort of a Romantic universe presided over by the potent charm of a heroine who was not made to be loved."[23] Auerbach's analysis seems to fall short when Fanny finally experiences the love of her adopted family and, despite its traumas, achieves a sense of home.

The theme of country in conflict with city recurs throughout the novel. Symbolically, life-renewing nature is under attack from the artificial and corrupting effects of city society. Canadian scholar David Monaghan draws attention to the rural way of life which, with its careful respect for the order and rhythm of times and seasons, reinforces and reflects the values of "elegance, propriety, regularity, harmony". Sotherton with its carefully maintained avenue of trees is Austen's reminder of the organic principles which form the basis of society.[47] Austen portrays Mr Rushworth and Sir Thomas as landed gentry who are unable to appreciate the principles that lie beneath received standards, consequently leaving "landed society ... ripe for corruption".[48] Henry Crawford, as an absentee landlord, is portrayed as having no moral appreciation at all.

On a visit to London in 1796, Austen wrote jokingly to her sister, "Here I am once more in this Scene of Dissipation & vice, and I begin already to find my Morals corrupted."[49] Through the Crawfords the reader is given glimpses of London society. They represent London's money-grubbing, vulgar middle class, the opposite of Austen's rural ideal. They come from a world where everything is to be got with money, and where impersonal crowds have replaced peace and tranquillity as the social benchmarks.[50] Austen gives further glimpses of London society when Maria is married and gains what Mary Crawford describes as "her pennyworth", a fashionable London residence for the season. For Monaghan, it is Fanny alone who senses the moral values that lie beneath the old unfashionable manners. It falls to her to defend the best values of English society, despite in many ways being unequipped for the task.[51]

Landscape improvements – Humphry Repton's visiting card showing a typical design with himself surveying the property.

At Sotherton, Mr. Rushworth considers employing the popular landscape improver Humphry Repton, his rates being five guineas a day. Repton had coined the term "landscape gardener"[52] and also popularised the title Park as the description of an estate. Austen is thought to have based her fictional Sotherton partly on Stoneleigh Abbey, which her uncle, Rev Thomas Leigh, inherited in 1806. On his first visit to claim the estate, he took Austen, her mother, and her sister with him. Leigh, who had already employed Repton at Adlestrop, now commissioned him to make improvements at Stoneleigh where he redirected the River Avon, flooded a section of the land to create a mirror lake, and added a bowling green lawn and cricket pitch.[53]

Over family dinner, Mr Rushworth declares that he will do away with the great oak avenue that ascends half a mile from the west front. Mr Rushworth misunderstands Repton. In his book, Repton writes cautiously of 'the fashion ... to destroy avenues', and he parodies fashion that is merely doctrinaire. Rushworth's conversation follows closely that of Repton's parody.[54][55] Fanny is disappointed and quotes Cowper, valuing what has emerged naturally over the centuries.[56] David Monaghan (1980) contrasts Fanny's perspective with that of the others: materialistic Mary Crawford thinks only of the future, willing to accept any improvements money can buy as long as she does not have to experience present inconvenience, and Henry lives for the present moment, solely interested in playing the role of improver. Introverted and reflective Fanny, alone, can hold in her mind the bigger picture of past, present and future.[57]

Henry Crawford is full of his own ideas for improvements when exploring Sotherton's landscape.[58] He is described as the first to go forward to examine the 'capabilities' of the walled garden near the wilderness, hinting at ironic comparison with Repton's celebrated predecessor, Lancelot "Capability" Brown.

Edmund Burke, political theorist, philosopher and member of parliament, widely considered to be the father of modern Conservatism.

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) are part of the novel's hidden background. Calvo, quoting Roger Sales, says Mansfield Park can be read as a Condition-of-England novel that 'debates topical issues such as the conduct of the war and the Regency crisis'.[59] Duckworth (1994) believes that Austen took the landscaping symbol from Edmund Burke's influential book, Reflections of the Revolution in France (1790).[60] Burke affirmed the beneficial "improvements" which are part of conservation, but decried malign "innovations" and "alterations" to society which led to the destruction of heritage.[61] Duckworth argues that Mansfield Park is pivotal to an understanding of Austen's views. Estates, like society, might be in need of improvements, but the changes allegedly advocated by Repton were unacceptable innovations, alterations to the estate that, symbolically, would destroy the entire moral and social heritage. Austen, aware of the fragility of a society uninformed by responsible individual behaviour, is committed to the inherited values of a Christian humanist culture.[62]

The French Revolution was in Austen's view an entirely destructive force that sought to wipe out the past.[63] Her sister-in-law, Eliza, was a French aristocrat whose first husband, the Comte de Feullide, had been guillotined in Paris. She fled to Britain where, in 1797, she married Henry Austen.[64] Eliza's account of the Comte's execution left Austen with an intense horror of the French Revolution that lasted for the rest of her life.[64]

Warren Roberts (1979) interprets Austen's writings as affirming traditional English values and religion over against the atheist values of the French Revolution.[65] The character of Mary Crawford whose 'French' irreverence has alienated her from church is contrasted unfavourably with that of Fanny Price whose 'English' sobriety and faith leads her to assert that "there is something in a chapel and chaplain so much in character with a great house, with one's idea of what such a household should be".[66][67] Edmund is depicted as presenting the church as a force for stability that holds together family, customs and English traditions. This is contrasted with Mary Crawford's attitude whose criticism of religious practice makes her an alien and disruptive force in the English countryside.[66]

Juliet McMaster argued that Austen often used understatement, and that her characters disguise hidden powerful emotions behind apparently banal behaviour and dialogue.[68] This is evident during the visit to Sotherton where Mary Crawford, Edmund Bertram and Fanny Price debate the merits of an ecclesiastical career.[69] Though the exchanges are light-hearted, the issues are serious. Edmund is asking Mary to love him for who he is, while Mary indicates she will only marry him if he pursues a more lucrative career in the law.[70]

To subtly press her point, Austen has set the scene in the wilderness where their serpentine walk provides echoes of Spencer's The Faerie Queene and the "serpentining" pathways of the Wandering Wood.[71] Spencer's "Redcrosse Knight" (the novice knight who symbolises both England and Christian faith) is lost within the dangerous and confusing Wandering Wood. The knight nearly abandons Una, his true love, for Duessa, the seductive witch. So too, Edmund (the would-be Church of England minister) is lost within the moral maze of Sotherton's wilderness.

Others have seen in this episode echoes of Shakespeare's As You Like It. Byrne sees a more direct link with regency stage comedy with which Austen was very familiar, in particular George Colman and David Garrick's highly successful play, The Clandestine Marriage (inspired by Hogarth's series of satirical paintings, Marriage A-la-Mode), which had a similar theme and a heroine called Fanny Sterling. (Sir Thomas later praises Fanny's sterling qualities.)[72]

Henry Crawford visits Thornton Lacey, Edmund Bertram's future estate.

Byrne suggests that the "serpentine path" leading to the ha-ha with its locked gate at Sotherton Court has shades of Satan's tempting of Eve in the Garden of Eden.[12] The ha-ha with its deep ditch represents a boundary which some, disobeying authority, will cross. It is a symbolic forerunner of the future moral transgressions of Maria Bertram and Henry Crawford. Colleen Sheehan compares the scenario to the Eden of Milton's Paradise Lost, where the locked iron gates open onto a deep gulf separating Hell and Heaven.[10]

'Wilderness' was a gardening term used to describe a wooded area, often set between the formal area around the house and the pastures beyond the ha-ha. At Sotherton, it is described as "a planted wood of about two acres ...[and] was darkness and shade, and natural beauty, compared with the bowling-green and the terrace." The alternative meaning of wilderness as a wild inhospitable place would have been very familiar to Austen's readers from several uses in the King James Version of the Bible, such as the account of the testing of the Israelites through the wilderness - John Chapter 3 links this story ("as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness ...") with redemption through Jesus.

The characters themselves exploit Sotherton's allegorical potential.[73] When Henry, looking across the ha-ha, says, "You have a very smiling scene before you", Maria responds, "Do you mean literally or figuratively?"[74] Maria quotes from Sterne's novel A Sentimental Journey about a starling that alludes to the Bastille. She complains of being trapped behind the gate that gives her "a feeling of restraint and hardship". The dialogue is full of double meanings. Even Fanny's warnings about spikes, a torn garment and a fall subtly suggest moral violence. Henry insinuates to Maria that if she "really wished to be more at large" and could allow herself "to think it not prohibited", then freedom was possible.[73] Shortly after, Edmund and Mary are also "tempted" to leave the wilderness.

Later in the novel, when Henry Crawford suggests destroying the grounds of Thornton Lacy to create something new, his plans are rejected by Edmund, who insists that although the estate needs some improvements, he wishes to preserve what has been created over the centuries.[75] In Austen's world, a man truly worth marrying enhances his estate while respecting its tradition: Edmund's reformist conservatism marks him out as a hero.[76]

Lovers' Vows, 1796 edition. The controversial play is rehearsed at Mansfield Park during Sir Thomas Bertram's absence.

Returning unexpectedly from his plantations in Antigua, Sir Thomas Bertram discovers the young people rehearsing a production of Elizabeth Inchbald's Lovers' Vows (adapted from the German August von Kotzebue). Scandalized, he halts the play and burns the rehearsal scripts. Fanny Price is astonished that the play was ever thought appropriate, and considers the two leading female roles as "totally improper for home representation—the situation of one, and the language of the other so unfit to be expressed by any woman of modesty".

Claire Tomalin (1997) says that Mansfield Park, with its moralist theme and criticism of corrupted standards, has polarised supporters and critics. It opposes a vulnerable young woman with strong religious and moral principles against a group of worldly, cultivated, well-to-do young people who pursue their pleasure and profit without principle.[78]

Jonas Barish, in his seminal work, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (1981), adopts the view that by 1814 Austen may have turned against theatre following a supposed recent embrace of evangelicalism.[79] Austen certainly read and, to her surprise, enjoyed Thomas Gisborne's Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex, which stated categorically that theatricals were sinful, because of their opportunities for "unrestrained familiarity with persons of the other sex".[80] She may well have read William Wilberforce's popular evangelical work that challenged the decadence of the time and also expressed strong views about theatre and its negative influence on morality.[81]

However, Tomalin argues that Austen is not known to have condemned plays outside Mansfield Park.[78] Austen was an avid theatregoer and a critical admirer of the great actors. In childhood her family had embraced the popular activity of home theatre. She had participated in full-length popular plays (several written by herself) performed in the family dining room at Steventon (and later in the barn), supervised by her clergyman father.[82] Many elements observed by the young Austen during family theatricals are reworked in the novel, including the temptation of James, her recently ordained brother, by their flirtatious cousin Eliza.[80]

Paula Byrne (2017) records that only two years before writing Mansfield Park, Austen had played with great aplomb the part of Mrs Candour in Sheridan's popular contemporary play The School for Scandal.[83] Her correspondence shows that she and her family continued as enthusiastic theatre-goers. Byrne also argues that Austen's novels, particularly Mansfield Park, show considerable theatricality and dramatic structure which makes them particularly adaptable for screen representation. Calvo sees the novel as a rewrite of Shakespeare's King Lear and his three daughters, with Fanny as Sir Thomas's Regency Cordelia.[84]

Eight chapters discuss anti-theatrical prejudice from shifting points of view. Edmund and Fanny find moral dilemmas, and even Mary is conflicted, insisting she will edit her script. However, theatre as such is never challenged. The questions about theatrical impropriety include the morality of the text, the effect of acting on vulnerable amateur players, and performance as an indecorous disruption in a respectable home.[85] Fanny's anti-theatrical viewpoint goes back as far as Plato, and continued to find expression into the 20th century.[86]

Austen's presentation of the intense debate about theatre tempts the reader to take sides and to miss the ambiguities. Edmund, the most critical voice, is actually an enthusiastic theatre-goer. Fanny, the moral conscience of the debate, "believed herself to derive as much innocent enjoyment from the play as any of them". She thought Henry the best actor of them all.[87] She also delighted in reading Shakespeare aloud to her aunt Bertram.

Stuart Tave emphasises the challenge of the play as a test of the characters' commitment to propriety.[88] The priggish Mrs. Norris sees herself as the guardian of propriety. She is trusted as such by Sir Thomas when he leaves for Antigua, but fails completely by allowing the preparation for Lovers' Vows.[89] Edmund objects to the play, believing it somehow improper, but fails to articulate the problem convincingly.[90] His intense objection to an outsider being brought in to share in the theatricals is not easy for the modern reader to understand. Mr Rushworth's view, that "we are a great deal better employed, sitting comfortably here among ourselves, and doing nothing", is affirmed only by Sir Thomas himself.[91]

Fanny alone understands the depth of impropriety in what is proposed; she knows from her penetrating observations of the household that the acting will dangerously inflame the emotions of the actors, but she lacks the strength to persuade the others.[92] During rehearsals, Fanny observes the ongoing flirtation between Henry and the about-to-be-married Maria, "Maria acted well, too well."[87] She also sees the sexual tension and attraction between Edmund and Mary as they play the part of the two lovers. This fills her with misery but also jealousy.[93] Later, Mary describes to Fanny her favorite episode, playing the dominant role of Amelia with Edmund as Anhalt her besotted admirer. "I never knew such exquisite happiness ... Oh! it was sweet beyond expression."[94]

Tave points out that, in shutting down Lovers' Vows, Sir Thomas is expressing his hidden hypocrisy and myopia. His concern is with an external propriety, not the principles that motivate moral behaviour. He is content to destroy the set and props without considering what had led his children to put on such a play.[95] Only later does he come to understand his shortcomings as a parent.

Another classical anti-theatrical theme is the need for sincerity in everyday life, avoiding pretence and hypocrisy.[86] Fanny is often criticised because she 'does not act', but beneath her timid surface is a solid core.

Henry Crawford, the life of any party, is constantly acting; he has many personas but no firm character or stable principles. Thomas Edwards says that even when Henry tries to please Fanny by denouncing acting during a discussion about Shakespeare, he is still performing. He measures his every word and carefully watches the reaction on her face.[96] He is a man who constantly reinvents himself in the pattern of those around him: he considers a career as a minister after encountering Edmund, and as a sailor after meeting William.[97] At Sotherton, Henry acts the part of a landscape improver, a role he later reprises for Thornton Lacey, though he lacks the consistency to manage effectively his own Norfolk estate. At the first suggestion of a theatre at Mansfield Park, Henry, for whom theatre was a new experience, declared he could undertake "any character that ever was written". Later still, in reading Henry VIII aloud to Lady Bertram, Henry impersonates one character after another,[98] even impressing the reluctant Fanny with his skill.[99] When Henry unexpectedly falls in love with Fanny, he enthusiastically acts out the part of devoted lover, but even the hopeful Sir Thomas recognises that the admirable Henry is unlikely to sustain his performance for long.

Edwards suggests that the inherent danger of Lovers' Vows for the young actors is that they cannot distinguish between acting and real life, a danger exposed when Mary says, "What gentleman among you am I to have the pleasure of making love to?"[100]

David Selwyn argues that the rationale behind Austen's apparent anti-theatricality is not evangelicalism but its symbolic allusion to Regency political life. Mansfield Park is a book about the identity of England. Tom, whose lifestyle has imperilled his inheritance, and the playboy Henry are Regency rakes, intent on turning the family estate into a playground during the master's absence. If the Regent, during the King's incapacity, turns the country into a vast pleasure ground modelled on Brighton, the foundations of prosperity will be imperilled. To indulge in otherwise laudable activities like theatre at the expense of a virtuous and productive life leads only to unhappiness and disaster.[101]

In several set pieces, Austen presents debates about significant challenges for the Georgian church.[105] She discusses clerical corruption, the nature of the clerical office and the responsibility of the clergyman to raise both spiritual awareness and doctrinal knowledge.[106] Topics range from issues of personal piety and family prayers to problems of non-residence and decadence amongst the clergy. Dr Grant, who has the living at Mansfield, is portrayed as a self-indulgent clergyman with very little sense of his pastoral duties. Edmund, the young, naive, would-be ordinand, expresses high ideals, but needs Fanny's support both to fully understand and to live up to them.

Locations for these set pieces include the visit to Sotherton and its chapel where Mary learns for the first time (and to her horror) that Edmund is destined for the church; the game of cards where the conversation turns to Edmund's intended profession, including conversations about Thornton Lacey, Edmund's future 'living'.

Austen often exposed clergy corruption through parody.[22]^: 54 Although Mary Crawford's arguments with Edmund Bertram about the church are intended to undermine his vocation, hers is the voice that constantly challenges the morality of the Regency church and clergy. Edmund attempts its defence without justifying its failures. On the basis of close observations of her brother-in-law, Dr Grant, Mary arrives at the jaundiced conclusion that a "clergyman has nothing to do, but be slovenly and selfish, read the newspaper, watch the weather and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine."[107]

In the conversation at Sotherton, Mary applauds the late Mr Rushworth's decision to abandon the twice daily family prayers, eloquently describing such practice as an imposition for both family and servants. She derides the heads of households for hypocrisy in making excuses to absent themselves from chapel. She pities the young ladies of the house, "starched up into seeming piety, but with heads full of something very different—specially if the poor chaplain were not worth looking at".[108] Edmund acknowledges that long services can be boring but maintains that without self-discipline a private spirituality will be insufficient for moral development. Although Mary's view is presented as a resistance to spiritual discipline, there were other positive streams of spirituality that expressed similar sentiments.

Mary also challenges the widespread practice of patronage; she attacks Edmund's expectation for being based on privilege rather than on merit. Although Sir Thomas has sold the more desirable Mansfield living to pay off Tom's debts, he is still offering Edmund a guaranteed living at Thornton Lacey where he can lead the life of a country gentleman.

In the final chapter, Sir Thomas recognises that he has been remiss in the spiritual upbringing of his children; they have been instructed in religious knowledge but not in its practical application. The reader's attention has already been drawn to the root of Julia's superficiality during the visit to Sotherton when, abandoned by the others, she was left with the slow-paced Mrs Rushworth as her only companion. "The politeness which she had been brought up to practise as a duty made it impossible for her to escape." Julia's lack of self-control, of empathy, of self understanding and of "that principle of right, which had not formed any essential part of her education, made her miserable under it".[109] She was a prisoner of duty, lacking the ability to appreciate either duty's humanity or its spiritual source.

Hannah More, schoolteacher, abolitionist, member of the Evangelical Clapham Sect and philanthropist. Also a bestselling novelist, her writings, unlike Austen's, overtly promoted Christian faith and values.

To what extent Austen's views were a response to Evangelical influences has been a matter of debate since the 1940s. She would have been aware of the profound influence of Wilberforce's widely read Practical Christianity, published in 1797, and its call to a renewed spirituality.[81] Evangelical campaigning at this time was always linked to a project of national renewal. Austen was deeply religious, her faith and spirituality very personal but, unlike contemporary writers Mary Wollstonecraft and Hannah More, she neither lectured nor preached. Many of her family were influenced by the Evangelical movement and in 1809 Cassandra recommended More's 'sermon novel', Coelebs in Search of a Wife. Austen responded, parodying her own ambivalence, "I do not like the Evangelicals. Of course I shall be delighted when I read it, like other people, but till I do, I dislike it." Five years later, writing to her niece Fanny, Austen's tone was different, "I am by no means convinced that we ought not all to be Evangelicals, and am at least persuaded that they who are so from Reason and Feeling, must be happiest and safest."[110] Jane Hodge (1972) said, "where she herself stood in the matter remains open to question. The one thing that is certain is that, as always, she was deeply aware of the change of feeling around her."[111] Brodrick (2002) concludes after extensive discussion that "Austen's attitude to the clergy, though complicated and full of seeming contradictions, is basically progressive and shows the influence of Evangelical efforts to rejuvenate the clergy, but can hardly be called overtly Evangelical".[112]

In a scene in chapter 34 in which Henry Crawford reads Shakespeare aloud to Fanny, Edmund and Lady Bertram, Austen slips in a discussion on sermon delivery. Henry shows that he has the taste to recognise that the "redundancies and repetitions" of the liturgy require good reading (in itself a telling criticism, comments Brodrick). He offers the general (and possibly valid) criticism that a "sermon well-delivered is more uncommon even than prayers well read". As Henry continues, his shallowness and self-aggrandisement becomes apparent: "I never listened to a distinguished preacher in my life without a sort of envy. But then, I must have a London audience. I could not preach but to the educated, to those who were capable of estimating my composition." He concludes, expressing the philosophy of many a lazy clergyman, maintaining that he should not like to preach often, but "now and then, perhaps, once or twice in the spring". Although Edmund laughs, it is clear that he does not share Henry's flippant, self-centred attitude. Neither (it is implied) will Edmund succumb to the selfish gourmet tendencies of Dr Grant. "Edmund promises to be the opposite: an assiduous, but genteel clergyman who maintains the estate and air of a gentleman, without Puritanical self-denial and yet without corresponding self-indulgence."[112]

Edmund recognises that there are some competent and influential preachers in the big cities like London but maintains that their message can never be backed up by personal example or ministry. Ironically, the Methodist movement, with its development of lay ministry through the "class meeting", had provided a solution to this very issue.[113] There is only one reference to Methodism in the novel, and there it is linked, as an insult, with the modern missionary society. Mary in her angry response to Edmund as he finally leaves her, declares: "At this rate, you will soon reform every body at Mansfield and Thornton Lacey; and when I hear of you next, it may be as a celebrated preacher in some great society of Methodists, or as a missionary in foreign parts."

When Mary learns at Sotherton that Edmund has chosen to become a clergyman, she calls it "nothing". Edmund responds, saying that he cannot consider as "nothing" an occupation that has the guardianship of religion and morals, and that has implications for time and for eternity. He adds that conduct stems from good principles and from the effect of those doctrines a clergyman should teach. The nation's behaviour will reflect, for good or ill, the behaviour and teaching of the clergy.

Rampant pluralism, where wealthy clerics drew income from several 'livings' without ever setting foot in the parish, was a defining feature of the Georgian church. In chapter 25, Austen presents a conversation during a card evening at Mansfield. Sir Thomas's whist table has broken up and he draws up to watch the game of Speculation. Informal conversation leads into an exposition of the country parson's role and duties. Sir Thomas argues against pluralism, stressing the importance of residency in the parish,

"... and which no proxy can be capable of satisfying to the same extent. Edmund might, in the common phrase, do the duty of Thornton, that is, he might read prayers and preach, without giving up Mansfield Park; he might ride over, every Sunday, to a house nominally inhabited, and go through divine service; he might be the clergyman of Thornton Lacey every seventh day, for three or four hours, if that would content him. But it will not. He knows that human nature needs more lessons than a weekly sermon can convey, and that if he does not live among his parishioners, and prove himself by constant attention their well-wisher and friend, he does very little either for their good or his own."

Sir Thomas conveniently overlooks his earlier plan, before he was forced to sell the Mansfield living to pay off Tom's debts, that Edmund should draw the income from both parishes. This tension is never resolved. Austen's own father had sustained two livings, itself an example of mild pluralism.[114]

In his 1993 book, Culture and Imperialism, the American literary critic Edward Said claimed Mansfield Park demonstrated Western culture's casual acceptance of the material benefits of slavery. He cited Austen's failure to mention that the estate of Mansfield Park was made possible only through Bertram's ownership of a slave plantation. Said argued that Austen created the character of Sir Thomas as the archetypal "good master", ignoring the immorality of slavery by failing to cast Bertram's ownership of slaves as a blight on his character.[119] He accepted that Austen does not talk much about the plantation owned by Sir Thomas, but contended that Austen expected the reader to assume that the Bertram family's wealth was due to profits produced by the sugar worked by their enslaved property. Said further claimed that this reflected Austen's own assumption that such a fact was merely "a natural extension of the calm, the order, the beauties of Mansfield Park".[120]

Paradoxically, Said acknowledged that Austen disapproved of slavery:

All the evidence says that even the most routine aspects of holding slaves on a West Indian sugar plantation were cruel stuff. And everything we know about Jane Austen and her values is at odds with the cruelty of slavery. Fanny Price reminds her cousin that after asking Sir Thomas about the slave trade, "there was such a dead silence" as to suggest that one world could not be connected with the other since there simply is no common language for both. That is true.[121]

The Japanese scholar Hidetada Mukai noted the Bertrams were a nouveau riche family whose income depends on their plantation in Antigua.[122] The abolition of the slave trade in 1807 had imposed a serious strain on the West Indian plantations. Austen may have been referring to this crisis when Sir Thomas leaves for Antigua to deal with unspecified problems on his plantation.[122] Hidetada further argued that Austen made Sir Thomas a planter as a feminist attack on the patriarchal society of the Regency era, noting that Sir Thomas, though a kindly man, treats women, including his own daughters and his niece, as disposable commodities to be traded and bartered for his own advantage, and that this would be parallelled by his treatment of slaves who are exploited to support his lifestyle.[122]

Said's thesis that Austen was an apologist for slavery was again challenged in the 1999 film based on Mansfield Park and Austen's letters. The Canadian director, Patricia Rozema, presented the Bertram family as morally corrupt and degenerate, in complete contrast to the book. Rozema invented numerous scenes not present in the book, including one where Fanny is approaching the Bertram estate and hears the cries from Africans on board a slave ship off the coast. She asks her coachman what is happening. In addition, Fanny also condemns slavery in the film, unlike the book.[123]

Gabrielle White also criticised Said's characterisation of Austen's views on slavery, maintaining that Austen and other writers admired by Austen, including Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke, opposed slavery and helped make its eventual abolition possible.[124] The Australian historian Keith Windschuttle argued that: "The idea that, because Jane Austen presents one plantation-owning character, of whom heroine, plot and author all plainly disapprove, she thereby becomes a handmaiden of imperialism and slavery, is to misunderstand both the novel and the biography of its author, who was an ardent opponent of the slave trade".[125] Likewise, the British author Ibn Warraq accused Said of a "most egregious misreading" of Mansfield Park and condemned him for a "lazy and unwarranted reading of Jane Austen", arguing that Said had completely distorted Mansfield Park to give Austen views that she clearly did not hold.[126]

Margaret Kirkham points out that throughout the novel, Austen makes repeated references to the refreshing, wholesome quality of English air. In the 1772 court case Somerset v Stewart, where Lord Mansfield declared that an enslaved person could not be transported out of England against his will (something which was incorrectly interpreted by the British public to be explicitly outlawing slavery in England), one of the lawyers for James Somerset, the slave in the case, had said that "England was too pure an air for a slave to breathe in". He was citing a ruling from a court case in 1569 freeing a Russian slave brought to England.[127] The phrase is developed in Austen's favourite poem:

I had much rather be myself the slave
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home – then why abroad?
And they themselves, once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free,
They touch our country and their shackles fall.

— William Cowper, "The Task", 1785

Austen's references to English air are considered by Kirkham to be a subtle attack upon Sir Thomas, who owns slaves on his plantation in Antigua, yet enjoys the "English air", oblivious of the ironies involved. Kirkham claimed Austen would have read Clarkson and his account of Lord Mansfield's ruling.[127]

Austen's subtle hints about the world beyond her Regency families can be seen in her use of names. The family estate's name clearly reflects that of Lord Mansfield, just as the name of the bullying Aunt Norris is suggestive of Robert Norris, "an infamous slave trader and a byword for pro-slavery sympathies".[12]

The newly married Maria, now part of a family with a greater income than that of her father, gains her London home in fashionable Wimpole Street at the heart of London society, a region where several West Indian planters had established their town houses.[128] This desirable residence is the former home of Lady Henrietta Lascelles whose husband's family fortune came from the notoriously irresponsible Henry Lascelles. Lascelles had enriched himself with the Barbados slave trade and had been a central figure in the South Sea Bubble disaster. His wealth had been used to build Harewood House in Yorkshire, landscaped by "Capability" Brown.[13]

When William Price is commissioned, Lady Bertram requests that he bring her back a shawl "or maybe two" from the East Indies and "anything else that is worth having". Said interpreted this line as showing that the novel supports, or is indifferent towards, profiteering by Europeans in Asia. Others have pointed out that the indifference belongs to Lady Bertram and is in no sense the attitude of the novel, the narrator or the author.[13]

Commentators have observed that Fanny and Mary Crawford represent conflicting aspects of Austen's own personality, Fanny representing her seriousness, her objective observations and sensitivity, Mary representing her wit, her charm and her wicked irony. Conversations between Fanny and Mary seem at times to express Austen's own internal dialogue and, like her correspondence, do not necessarily provide the reader with final conclusions. Responding in 1814 to her niece's request for help with a dilemma of love, she writes, "I really am impatient myself to be writing something on so very interesting a subject, though I have no hope of writing anything to the purpose ... I could lament in one sentence and laugh in the next."[132] Byrne takes this as a reminder that readers should be very hesitant about extracting Austen's opinions and advice, either from her novels or her letters. For Austen, it was not the business of writers to tell people what to do.[133] Even Fanny, when Henry demands she advise him on managing his estate, tells him to listen to his conscience: "We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be".[134] In Mansfield Park, Austen requires the reader to make their own moral judgements. For some time after its publication, she collected readers' reactions to the novel. The reader's response is part of the story. Says Sheehan, "The finale of Mansfield Park is indeterminate, fully in the hands of the audience. Of all of Austen’s daring innovations in her works, in Mansfield Park she takes the ultimate risk."[10]

Trilling took the view that uneasiness with the apparently simplistic moral framework of the novel marks its prime virtue, and that its greatness is 'commensurate with its power to offend'.[135] Edwards discusses the competing attraction of those with lively personalities over against those with the more prosaic quality of integrity.[136]

The attractive Crawfords are appreciated by fashionable society, their neighbours and the reader, yet they are marred by self-destructive flaws. Edmund and Fanny, essentially very ordinary people who lack social charisma, are a disappointment to some readers but have moral integrity. Edwards suggests that Austen could have easily entitled Mansfield Park, 'Conscience and Consciousness', since the novel's main conflict is between conscience (the deep sensitivity in the soul of Fanny and Edmund) and consciousness (the superficial self-centred sensations of Mary and Henry).[137]

Sheehan says that "the superficial Crawfords are driven to express strength by dominating others. There is in fact nothing ordinary about them or their devices and desires. They are not only themselves corrupted, but they are bent upon dominating the wills and corrupting the souls of others. Rich, clever, and charming, they know how to captivate their audience and "take in" the unsuspecting."[10]

The superficiality of the Crawfords can be demonstrated by their outward appearance of morality which, together with their charm and elegance, disguises uneducated passions, and ultimately victimizes others as well as themselves. Henry Crawford can be seen as the dissimulator par excellence. He boasts of his ability to act and makes it clear that he takes being a clergyman to consist in giving the appearance of being a clergyman. Self is almost dissolved into the presentation of self, which in Austen's world is a symptom of the vices. MacIntyre identifies the depiction of the Crawfords as Austen's preoccupation with counterfeits of the virtues within the context of the moral climate of her times.[138]

Henry is first attracted to Fanny when he realises she does not like him. He is obsessed with 'knowing' her, with achieving the glory and happiness of forcing her to love him. He plans to destroy her identity and remake her in an image of his own choosing.[139] Following his initial failure, Henry finds himself unexpectedly in love with Fanny. The shallowness of Henry Crawford's feelings is finally exposed when, having promised to take care of Fanny's welfare, he is distracted by Mary's ploy to renew his contact in London with the newly married Maria. Challenged to arouse Maria afresh, he inadvertently sabotages her marriage, her reputation and, consequently, all hopes of winning Fanny. The likeable Henry, causing widespread damage, is gradually revealed as the Regency rake, callous, amoral and egoistical. Lane offers a more sympathetic interpretation: "We applaud Jane Austen for showing us a flawed man morally improving, struggling, growing, reaching for better things—even if he ultimately fails."[140]

Social perceptions of gender are such that, though Henry suffers, Maria suffers more. And by taking Maria away from her community, he deprives the Bertrams of a family member. The inevitable reporting of the scandal in the gossip-columns only adds further to family misery.[141]

Mary Crawford possesses many attractive qualities including kindness, charm, warmth and vivacity. However, her strong competitive streak leads her to see love as a game where one party conquers and controls the other, a view not dissimilar to that of the narrator when in ironic mode. Mary's narcissism results in lack of empathy. She insists that Edmund abandon his clerical career because it is not prestigious enough. With feminist cynicism, she tells Fanny to marry Henry to 'pay off the debts of one's sex' and to have a 'triumph' at the expense of her brother.[142]

Edwards concludes that Mansfield Park demonstrates how those who, like most people, lack a superabundance of wit, charm and wisdom, get along in the world.[143] Those with superficial strength are ultimately revealed as weak; it is the people considered as 'nothing' who quietly triumph.