Mansfield Park ch. 5: In and Out

This energetic imagining of the cast of Mansfield Park was drawn by
Liz Monahan. She's drawn several Jane Austen characters and even published
a fully-illustrated version of Pride and Prejudice!

The moment we’ve been waiting for: the Bertrams meet the Crawfords! Mary is wearing the (blood) orange dress and Henry is the guy giving little ol' Fanny the side-eye.

Well, I’ve been waiting for it.

Since Maria and Julia are so self-centered, they decide that Mary Crawford is merely a “sweet, pretty girl” and therefore poses no threat to them. It takes them three meetings with Henry to warm up to him, but they decide that he’s “the most agreeable young man [they] had ever known.” Julia is “quite ready to be fallen in love with,” and figures that the smooth-talking Henry will oblige her. Maria, on the other hand, has more ambiguous feelings: “Mr. Crawford must take care of himself,” she thinks. After all, she’s too important and too engaged to another man to worry about having some good-looking, charismatic young Londoner go falling in love with her.

Right.

Austen’s description of the neighborhood the Bertrams socialize within is hard for a modern reader to picture. But let me run down some facts: Maria and Julia are the daughters of a baronet (the highest ranking for a commoner, above “knight”), Maria has attracted a man who makes the most money of any Austen novel, and the Crawfords (each with a sizable fortune) are quickly adopted into their social circle. Additionally, Mr. Rushworth is from out of town (we’ll see his country house in a few chapters). From all this and the sisters’ attitudes, I think we can assume that they’re used to being admired by the same smallish group of people, and that they’re more than ready to expand their social circle by associating with people who are attached to wealth. There’s a recurring theme here of the Bertrams equating “wealth” with “importance.”

Henry is a different “admirer” because of his city-boy background and his engaging manners - and because he sets out to play with their feelings. The narrator clues us in: “he began with no object but of making them like him.”

He did not want them to die of love; but with sense and temper which ought to have made him judge and feel better, he allowed himself great latitude on such points.

After teasing his sisters about which Bertram girl he likes better, he happily remarks that “an engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion.” Mrs. Grant, the good cop, is worried that Henry might mistake Maria Bertram’s “powers of pleasing” for feelings of love. We’ll put a pin in that.

Mary Crawford chimes in that “[e]verybody is taken in at some period or other [...] [i]n marriage especially.” Mary had “a bad school for matrimony” in London, starting with her scoundrel of an uncle and continuing with her friends, who all got married thinking that their prospective partners had something special, a talent or a quality that set them apart from the rest. Mary has watched each of these friends as they grew disappointed with their marriages in real time.

That doesn’t mean Mary is against marriage. In fact, she has her sights set on Tom Bertram, who’s already well-known in London and the first son of a baronet—two qualities that she happens to prize in a future husband. Tom is somewhat more interested in betting on horses than flirting with her, but she’s willing to bide her time.

But eventually, the subject turns to Fanny. We find out that she thinks Mary is pretty, but Henry is less attractive, and that she doesn’t say much when they’re around. This prompts Mary to ask if Fanny is out.

Ahem.

“Coming out” meant something wayyyyy different in 1815 than it does now. Back then, to be eligible for marriage, a young woman had to be officially “out”—no longer a kid, no longer being tutored, basically being treated as an adult. Here, Mary observes that young women who are not “out” ought to act reservedly and dress modestly, both of which apply to Fanny. Edmund can’t give her a clear answer, and Tom unhelpfully goes on a tangent about some woman in London who surprised him by flirting with him.

Mary then criticizes the overzealous mothers of these not-not “out” young women. “I do not pretend to set people right,” she declares, “but I do see that they are often wrong.” This is a very … interesting statement coming from her. Taken by itself, it’s a perfect encapsulation of one of her defining traits. She has an ambivalent attitude regarding morality; one of the most attractive things about her is how self-assured she is about this. But in this context—judging the parenting skills of this group of mothers—it seems like she’s expressing a deep dislike for a mother-daughter relationship. Like it’s her against this world of scheming mothers and daughters. I’ve never really thought about Mary Crawford as a daughter, mostly because she never takes on the role in the novel. She grew up with an aunt who loved her, whose death was followed by a swift change in address (she can’t keep living with her uncle while he’s shacked up with his mistress). Could Mary be bitter about not having a mother to help her scheme to get a husband? She’s definitely bitter about marriage: to her, it appears to be “a maneuvering business.”

I don’t want to end on some Freudian observation and leave it at that. Mary is not alone among Austen women who have become disillusioned with love and courtship (see: Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, Emma in Emma). These are just nuggets to keep in mind as I’m combing through these chapters. I might find a completely new angle on Mary in the next page.

Anyway, it turns out that Edmund has offered a reason for this phenomenon: bad parenting (duh). The young women “[act] upon motives of vanity,” he suggests. Whether or not he may be thinking of his sisters at this point is left up to the reader’s imagination. Mary has some trouble accepting this line of reasoning, although she does declare that girls who are not out but who “take the same liberties as if they were” to be “quite disgusting!” This is one of the few times that the usually cool-headed and witty Mary remarks so passionately on a given subject.

Tom then shares another story about his incapability to discern the “out” women among the not-“out,” using a pair of sisters he met as an example. I’m starting to think that he’s just not that great at talking to women. Mary blames the mother right away, apparently taking a cue from Edmund’s response up above. Hmm.

Finally, Edmund points out that Fanny has never attended a ball, and Mary Crawford decides that settles the question: “Fanny Price is not out.”

True. Fanny’s so far out that she barely appears in this chapter.

Next up: Mr. Rushworth talks landscaping, Dr. Grant annoys Mrs. Norris, and Mary Crawford channels Joan Rivers’ comedy routine.