Mansfield Park, ch. 3: Find the Lady

Fanny Price, plain and ... of medium height

Credit to flominowa on Deviant Art. I love seeing different illustrations of Fanny.

Mr. Norris dies in the first sentence. We hardly knew ye, Norris. Have fun not being married to Mrs. Norris in heaven.

Once Mrs. Norris moves out of the house, known as a living, Edmund is expected to move in, since he’s so close to becoming a clergyman (like Mr. Norris was).

Or, at least, that was the plan. But eldest son Tom spent so much of his father’s money that a “render [of] a different disposal of the next presentation [was] necessary.” Which means that Sir Thomas has to sell the living to another padre to pay off Tom’s debts, and Edmund can’t move out and start accumulating his own income. I mean, yeah, this is all #firstworldproblems. Edmund will continue to live in his father’s mansion, as will Tom—nothing to sneeze at. But think of how much money Tom must have spent—money that he didn’t earn—for a baronet like Sir Thomas to be in need of some quick cash. Depending on how long the new occupant lives, Edmund has been “robbed … of more than half the income which ought to be his.”

So Dad scolds him. Tom’s response is to be sorry for a little bit before realizing that his debt isn’t as bad as his friends’ debts. Then he reasons that their new neighbor will likely die sooner than later, absolving himself of any wrongdoing. Wonderful. What a brother.

Dr. and Mrs. Grant move in. He likes to eat, while she’s a non-stop people-pleaser. He doesn’t do much, just talk about food and annoy Mrs. Norris, so that’s one check in the plus column. Mrs. Grant is basically the older version of Jane Bennet.

And where’s Mrs. Norris now, you ask? Actually, you’re probably not asking that because you, like me, couldn’t give a shit, but she moved into a smaller but comfortable house in the village. And now that Sir Thomas has his finances to worry about (thanks, Tom), he’s thinking of sending Fanny to live with Mrs. Norris. That way, old aunt Norris will have a helpmate, and he won’t have to be responsible for supporting Fanny any more. Win-win …

Except that fifteen-year-old Fanny is horrified at the thought. After Lady Bertram blithely breaks the news to her, Fanny finds Edmund for emotional support. He’s all for the idea. Now that Fanny’s no longer a frightened little kid, Mrs. Norris will treat her with more respect: “[Y]ou will be important to her.” Fanny deflects (get used to reading that sentence), saying that she’s too awkward and foolish to ever be important to anybody. Edmund offers a stirring counterargument:

“As to your foolishness and awkwardness, my dear Fanny, believe me, you never have a shadow of either, but in using the words so improperly. There is no reason in the world why you should not be important where you are known. You have good sense, and a sweet temper, and I am sure you have a grateful heart, that could never receive kindness without wishing to return it. I do not know any better qualifications for a friend and companion.”

Aw. Edmund Bertram, king of pep talks.

He also thinks moving in with Mrs. Norris is good for Fanny because it will “force” her to speak up for herself. He seems to think that Mrs. Norris’s brittle attitude will help toughen Fanny up (I think most readers would agree that Fanny is majorly lacking in backbone, but we shall see). Edmund thinks that Lady Bertram and Mansfield Park don’t challenge Fanny enough. She reminisces how she was once scared of the pony that she now rides for exercise, pointing out that Edmund himself was the one who talked her out of her fear then (as opposed to Mrs. Norris). Funnily enough, neither Edmund nor Fanny seem to put it together that Edmund’s the one who can help her come out of her shell.

All this comes to nothing, however, when it turns out that Mrs. Norris has no intention of having Fanny come live with her. Why, she only has £600 a year and only the one spare bedroom! “[H]ow can she be of any comfort to me?” she whines. “Here I am, a poor desolate widow … my health gone … my spirits still worse … with hardly enough to support me in the rank of gentlewoman … ” Etc.

Sir Thomas is confused, but he lets it go. What’s funny about this whole episode is that he and Mrs. Norris never sit down and talk face-to-face. All of this back-and-forth is conveyed via the languid Lady Bertram, who listens to Mrs. Norris’s woe-is-me defense and then tells her husband, whoops, you must have been mistaken, dear. And because Sir Thomas is a gentleman, he wouldn’t dream of confronting or contradicting Mrs. Norris—and what’s more, he has nothing to contradict, because Mrs. Norris never told him that she expected Fanny to move in with her at any point. Bizarre. As we will see with Mrs. Grant, it was not unheard of for older relatives to invite their unmarried family members to stay with them for long periods of time. So Mrs. Norris may be ignoring a sort of unspoken rule here; in any case, she’s not exactly thinking of what’s best for Fanny.

It’s business as usual in the neighborhood as the Bertrams get to know the Grants. Mrs. Norris is offended by the hefty paycheck they give their cook—why, it’s as much as the cook at Mansfield Park gets. Yes, really. Lady Bertram is miffed that Mrs. Grant is so “well settled in life” despite not being pretty. Yes, really.

Less than a year later, Sir Thomas has to go check on his estate in Antigua.* He brings along Tom, mostly to keep him out of trouble, and is sure that “Mrs. Norris’s watchful attention” and “Edmund’s judgment” will be enough to guide his daughters. Maria and Julia don’t miss him, and neither does Fanny—although the guilt she has over this lack of grief is just as powerful as if she really did miss him. And when he tells her, before he leaves, that he hopes she’ll show some improvement in character now that she’s sixteen and not ten, she breaks down in tears for real.

Wow. I definitely wouldn’t miss him after that. But then again, I’m not Fanny.

Next time: the Bertram sisters could use a lesson from Fluttershy on the importance of sharing, Maria meets Mr. Right Now, and Mrs. Grant invites her fashionable younger sister to live with her.

*Sir Thomas is either a slave-owner or an abolitionist, and the novel is pretty vague on this point. Slavery was made illegal in Britain in 1807, but he’s going over to the Americas, where slavery stayed legal for a disturbingly long time. It appears that Austen is leaving it up to the reader to decide.** Academics better versed in the subject than I have made arguments for both readings. For the record, there is evidence to support that Austen herself was anti-slavery.

**The 1999 film version depicts Sir Thomas as a slave-owner, and takes it to a really dark place.