Mansfield Park, ch 30: Put A Ring On It

Thanks once again to the amazing Fernando Vicente.
Henry does, after all, have a brain. Now if he only had a heart ...

The chapter that begat hundreds, if not thousands, of Hanny shippers.

We open with Mary walking back to the Parsonage with a spring in her step (Ed isn’t interested in anyone else, though he’s still avoiding her). She runs into her brother, back from London, who runs over to Mansfield for a quick “hi” … that turns into a full ninety minutes. On his return, he confesses to Mary that he’s “quite determined to marry Fanny Price.”

!!!

In so many ways, the conversation that follows serves as an interesting bookend to the conversation between the Crawford sibs in chapter 24. Only now, they talk about Fanny in more positive terms: she’s “sweet,” “all gratitude and devotion,” with “a steadiness and regularity of conduct” and “a high notion of honor,” whose “observance of decorum” is so strong as to convince anyone of her “faith and integrity.” That is one hell of a list. Fanny is no longer an unsuspecting dupe with a “young, unsophisticated mind,” no longer the plaything of Henry’s brutal mind games. He has taken the pawn off the chessboard … and put her on a pedestal instead.

Let’s back up. The reason why so many readers join Team Henry is because Henry recognizes the ways in which Mansfield Park has mistreated Fanny. “Now she is dependent, helpless, friendless, neglected, forgotten,” he scorns. “Was there one of the family, excepting Edmund, who had not in some way or other continually exercised her patience and forbearance?” And how thrilling it is to imagine that he might be “the person to give the consequence so justly her due.” I mean, this sounds like a hell of a deal for Fanny! (Mary outright exclaims, “Lucky, lucky girl! [W]hat a match for her!”) Henry sounds like karma in human form. It is so seductive.

And he clearly believes that he’s in love. He regrets his former “idle designs” and vows that he’ll give Fanny all that she could want as a way of making up for them. That whole speech about the little strand of hair falling into Fanny’s face as they were chatting earlier that morning … oh, yeah. This guy has it bad.

But here’s where I have to step in with a bucket of cold water to pour over those dreams of Hanny.

Henry is in love with an idea, not a person. Mansfield Park: An Annotated Edition’s Lynch (in the footnote for this section of the chapter) quotes another prolific Austen scholar, Claudia I. Johnson, to put Henry’s actual desire in context: “Henry’s dependence on Fanny’s steadiness, honor, decorum, faith, and integrity adds up to the singularly important confidence that she will be above the temptation of adultery. … Henry has ‘too much sense’ to omit forfending against the disgrace in his own home, even though he has been taught to consider the disgrace virtually inevitable” (from Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel).

Henry Crawford, insatiable flirter and generally careless hot-shot city boy, has found a super-cute shut-in blessed with incorruptible pure pureness and decided that this is his best shot at the institution of marriage. And if you’re not convinced of that interpretation, let me offer up a few snippets: “I am the doer of it,” “that is what I want,” “What can Sir Thomas and Edmund together do, what do they do for her happiness, comfort, honour, and dignity in the world, to what I shall do?”

It’s all about him. He gets the sweet little wife and brownie points for being her savior. He gets to be the hero without having to suffer the trials of, say, a midshipman. All he has to do is ask a question. Easiest thing in the world.

And about Mary … well, it’s kind of sweet that she’s happy for him. It’s a change of pace for her. It’s only too bad that the moments when she seems to value Fanny the most don’t happen when Fanny is in the room. And that little slip of the tongue—“[S]ettle in Northamptonshire! That is pleasant! Then we shall all be together!”—demonstrates that Ed is still prominent in her thoughts and that she wants her brother to live close by. God damn, that’s bittersweet.

But Henry, at least, proves himself to be an asshole with his uncalled-for parting shot at the Bertram sisters. “They will now see what sort of woman it is that can attach me … I wish the discovery may do them any good,” he sniffs.

These are not the words of a man who seeks forgiveness for his past behavior. And unfortunately for him, this will prove to be a sticking point with Fanny.

Chapter the next: Henry presents Fanny with his good deed for the year, an important question is popped, and the trials of correspondence.