Mansfield Park, ch. 6: When the Cat's Away

Tom exits stage left to go gamble on horse races, leaving Mary Crawford with no one but Edmund to dazzle. Since he’s horrible at flirting, she doesn’t anticipate having any fun with him. At this point, she’s still gunning for Tom, but the wording here implies that she’s bored enough to flirt with his younger brother, if he happened to be charming.

Hey—Edmund has his good points.

Mr. Rushworth comes back into the Mansfield fold and starts talking about what improvements he’s going to make to his country estate, Sotherton. And he won’t. Stop. Talking about it.

Having secured herself as the center of Mr. Rushworth’s attention while also having a “conscious superiority” that she’s better than him, Maria Bertram gets to assume the role of queen bee. Sotherton will soon be hers—a comfort that “prevented her from being very ungracious” toward her future husband.

I’m starting to think that a woman named Maria pissed Jane Austen off, because Austen takes every opportunity to remind us that this Maria is a horrible little snot.

Anyway, Mr. Rushworth is complaining that Sotherton looks like a “dismal old prison” and wants someone to help him redo the landscape. Mrs. Norris jumps in to claim that a) if it were her, she’d spare no expense in improving her own humble house and yard, b) Sir Thomas paid for the improvements that were made when she lived at the Parsonage, and c) he also paid for the apricot tree that was planted before the Grants moved in. Dr. Grant is like, too bad the apricots are tasteless, and Mrs. Norris responds, well, it was expensive (and therefore the fruit should be awesome), and Dr. Grant is like, no, the guy who sold you that tree tricked you, because those apricots suck.

I’m so petty for loving this moment the way I do. It just reinforces the creed that the Bertrams and Mrs. Norris live by: that money equals quality, and no one is allowed to question the math.

Fanny expresses awe at the picture that Mr. Rushworth paints of Sotherton—it was built during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign and sits on a beautiful piece of land. She mentions to Edmund that she’d like to visit it and take a tour of the grounds. Edmund describes it for Mary Crawford’s benefit and tries to put a positive spin on Mr. Rushworth’s “modern” ideas for improvement (which include cutting down a bunch of trees[!]). Mary admires Edmund’s good breeding in having to deal with a simpleton like Mr. Rushworth.

We stay with the threesome of Edmund, Fanny, and Mary. Mary tells a story about her uncle, calling him “not my first favorite” and revealing that he bought a house and invited them down before all the improvements had even begun. Edmund isn’t comfortable hearing Mary talk “freely” about her uncle (one wonders if he can sense any bitterness in her tone). But once she changes the subject to the difficulty of hiring a horse and cart to ship her harp, she wins him over again.

I feel like I’ve been doing a bad job of illustrating Mary Crawford’s charm. Because she is charming—here’s her story about trying to get her harp shipped to the Parsonage:

To want a horse and cart in the country seemed impossible, so I told my maid to speak for one directly; and as I cannot look out of my dressing–closet without seeing one farmyard, nor walk in the shrubbery without passing another, I thought it would be only ask and have, and was rather grieved that I could not give the advantage to all. Guess my surprise, when I found that I had been asking the most unreasonable, most impossible thing in the world; had offended all the farmers, all the labourers, all the hay in the parish!

To me, this is one of the first, if not the first, relatable things that Mary does in the novel. It makes sense that a city girl might not realize that the farmers, horses, farmhands, etc. might not be at her disposal. Arrogant, maybe, but relatable. And you can hear the delight in her voice as she imagines how she had offended “all the hay in the parish.” She pokes fun at herself. She’s cool.

Then she follows it by claiming that “the true London maxim” is that “everything is to be got by money,” which doesn’t appear to be a joke, but rather a rule she lives by.

The topic moves on to Fanny’s brother, William the sailor, who Fanny needs only a little nudge from Edmund to talk about. And this is where the Joan Rivers-approved anal joke rears its head shows up: Edmund asks Mary if she’s been acquainted with any navy captains, to which she replies, with “an air of grandeur,” “Certainly, my home at my uncle’s brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices I saw enough. Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.”

Hoo boy. I … I kind of don’t know where to start. Mansfield Park: An Annotated Edition by Deidre Shauna Lynch sums it up best: “Of course, despite her demurral, Mary’s auditors must suspect her of punning … Mary, moving between rear admirals and admirals’ rears, might be alluding knowingly to the frequency of the floggings suffered by the ships’ crews or even to those sailors’ notorious association with sodomitical practices.” Regardless of what precisely Mary is cracking wise about, as an unmarried young woman, neither subject is appropriate for her to bring up in mixed company. Even worse, the subject of her joke might potentially be William himself (as a midshipman, he is of low ranking in the navy, and most likely to be the victim of … um, let’s go with floggings).

Edmund becomes “grave” again and hastily changes the subject. Fanny doesn’t appear to have caught the nature of the pun, which is frankly almost adorable, but also in character.

Meanwhile, Julia and Mrs. Grant are urging Henry Crawford to help Mr. Rushworth plan his improvements. Maria encourages the notion, asserting that “it was infinitely better to consult with friends and disinterested advisers, than immediately to throw the business into the hands of a professional man”—which is hilarious on multiple levels. First, what did a professional anything ever do to you, Maria? Secondly, how long has Mr. Rushworth known Henry? Long enough to be called his “friend”? Austen has a thing or two to say about hastily-formed friendships (see Northanger Abbey). Thirdly, it will soon be obvious that there is nothing “disinterested” about Maria inviting the man she’s crushing on to her fiance’s house.

Mr. Rushworth agrees, and invites Henry Crawford to visit Sotherton. Then Mrs. Norris butts in to invite herself, Maria, Julia, and Edmund along. Fanny can stay at home with Lady Bertram, even though Fanny was the first and, before Henry was the guest of honor, only one who expressed a wish to see the place. Just thought I’d remind everyone.

Coming soon: Edmund becomes a fan of the harp, Mary gets taken for a ride, and more of Fanny the indentured servant. Fun!