Mansfield Park, Ch. 1: Sister Act

I'd be happy if you read along. This is going to get intense.

We start with a history lesson about the Ward sisters, who quickly drop their maiden names when they each marry three different men. The most beautiful snags Sir Thomas Bertram, a rich land-owning gentleman. The eldest sister, having always felt unpretty, is “obliged” to marry a clergyman, Mr. Norris. And the rebel, Frances, runs off with a guy in the navy with no title and little money, becoming Mrs. Price.

Let’s pause to consider the context.

In this world, women of a certain social standing--the land-owning gentry--were expected to get married and land a husband hovering around the same social standing (some of these men merely rented land, some lived in London, so there’s a bit of wriggle room). If they could snag a rich guy, all the better. You know that famous line, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife”? That’s Jane Austen, and she’s talking about the tension between a rich single guy and a prospective bride--about how marrying well is a job for both men and women. Mansfield Park demonstrates the flip-side of that:

“There certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.”

Just like with all of Austen’s writing, the truth is hilarious and painful.

So the two sisters did the whole 1. Marry well, 2. ???, 3. Profit! thing the correct way, but the middle sister did it the wrong way. This creates a rift in their relationship for the next several years, during which Lady Bertram and Mrs. Price reproduce. A lot. Mrs. Norris does not. Because Jane Austen is a Lady, she lets the readers infer on their own what this might imply about the Norrises’ marriage.

Anyway, Lady Bertram is rich enough to have as many kids as she wants (she stops at 4). Mrs. Price has 9, and during this her husband is “disabled for active duty,” so he’s not bringing anything home except alcohol breath. Mrs. Price writes to the Bertrams and asks if they could take her eldest son as a pseudo-adoption kind of deal. Reality check: this happened all the time in Austen’s era, a young boy moving in with wealthy relations who can give him an education and access to a higher social sphere. So this isn’t necessarily neglect on Mrs. Price’s part--she later is proven to be a careless mom with a short attention span.

And then the plot kicks in when Mrs. Norris, who lives in the neighborhood parish, suggests instead that they take in the eldest girl: a nine-year-old named Fanny. Sir Thomas doesn’t think this is a good idea, because what if this girl grew up and either of his sons fell in love with her?

For those of you still with me, yes, Fanny is their cousin, and no, cousins falling in love and getting married wasn’t considered a taboo--unless they were of different social standing. Fanny’s dad is an experienced ex-sailor. Sir Thomas’s eldest son will inherit Mansfield Park and all the land farmed by the tenants. Not the same thing.

(If you’re starting to think that this sounds awfully similar to Downton Abbey, well, first of all you’ve come to the right blog. Second of all, the landed gentry class in Britain has lasted for centuries and is frankly too stubborn to change that much. The social norms that guided the people in Austen’s time were the same that shaped the lives of Mary, Edith, and Sybil. Including the whole cousin-marriage.)

Okay, I’ve been stalling, because next up is Mrs. Norris’s first of many speeches in this book. Her task here is to convince Sir Thomas that it’ll be perfectly acceptable to raise a girl instead of a boy. And despite her conviction that she’s “a woman of few words and professions,” she clearly loves the challenge of convincing Sir Thomas that she’s in the right. Cousins falling in love, she says, “is the least likely thing to happen; brought up as they would be, always together like brothers and sisters? It is morally impossible. I’ve never seen an instance of it.”

Ahem. A-hem-hem. A-HEM.

Oh, sorry, I'm just clearing my throat. Let's get back to it.

They are both worried, or at least Sir Thomas is, that Fanny won’t find a husband when she’s old enough. This means that they’d be stuck with her for a long time. He still wants to go through with it, though (how generous), and Mrs. Norris agrees at once. “I am always ready enough to do for the good of those I love … I should hate myself if I were capable of neglecting her.” In the same breath, as she’s planning how to get Fanny to Mansfield, she says she’ll send her servant to fetch her, and that they can rely on “some reputable tradesman’s wife or other going [to Northampshire]” on the way back. To be clear, neither Mrs. Norris nor Sir Thomas feel it is their duty to bring Fanny back personally.

They both get to feel proud of themselves for a bit. Mrs. Norris, the narrator tells us, is a spend-thrift whose “love of money was equal to her love of directing” and knows “how to save her own as to spend that of her friends.” So she hangs around her wealthy sister and thinks up benevolent schemes with her brother-in-law, happy to have “the credit of projecting and arranging so expensive a charity.” When Sir Thomas learns that Mrs. Norris has no intention of having Fanny stay with her, he is surprised--she’s a clergyman’s wife, after all. But she claims that her husband’s poor health takes up too much of her time and energy, so it’s up to Sir Thomas to take Fanny in.

Now, he’s really forced, for the first time, to think about who Fanny is. He assumes that “we must prepare ourselves for gross ignorance, some meanness of opinions, and very distressing vulgarity of manner.” You know, because Fanny’s so poor. He also hopes that his daughters’ grace and manners rub off on Fanny, since they’re both older than her and all three will have the same governess. Meanwhile, Mrs. Norris is generously making suggestions such as having Fanny’s room be in the attic, close to the servants.

Then Sir Thomas makes his first real mistake of the novel. In trying to make sure that Fanny, a lowly relation who should be “sensible of her uncommon good fortune” (Mrs. Norris’s words [again, actually more common than not]), he doesn’t want his niece to grow up thinking of herself as a “Miss Bertram.” Instead of being treated as equals, “[the Bertram sisters’] rank, fortune, rights, and expectations will always be different.” And then he asks Mrs. Norris to help them “choose exactly the right line of conduct.”

Mrs. Norris promises him that she will.

And with that, the stage is set.

Chapter Two includes: a little girl's introduction into high society, a bunch of adults unequipped to be around kids, and "second son, but better than second-best" Edmund Bertram.