Mansfield Park, ch. 46: Homecoming (part 3)

Credit to the lovely Darya Shnykina once again.
Hugs are important, you guys.

The last episode in our “Homecoming” miniseries of Mansfield Park.

Can I be a millennial for one second and rant about how incredibly frustrating it must have been to communicate via letters? Every time I imagine myself being alive back in 1815, three little words always pop into my head: carpel tunnel syndrome. I’d probably be as lazy as Mary, come to think of it.

But our city girl is struck with a sudden … enthusiasm, as Fanny receives an unsolicited note from her barely a week later. This note contains the not-at-all-suspicious message that there’s some nasty rumor flying around about Henry, Maria, and Rushworth that Fanny should totally not believe in any way, because Henry is still totes in luv with Fanny, so there’s no reason why she should tell anyone about it, k thanx bi. Because Mary is cagey with pronoun usage, Fanny assumes that Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth had to ski-daddle to Mansfield because Henry was getting too friendly again.

Is this the best Mary Crawford can do when it comes to damage control? Because all she’s doing is tipping Fanny off that there is a rumor in the first place—one that revolves around a group of people who have an unsavory history. Fanny pointed out to Mary that she’s had a front row seat to their shenanigans, too. Mary’s sloppy denial has just ensured that the least suspicious person in the world, who “had begun to think [Henry] really loved her, and to fancy his affection for her something more than common,” now believes that “there must have been some strong indiscretion, since her correspondent [Mary] was not of a sort to regard a slight one.”

Credit to Diana Pusztai

Unfortunately for everyone, Portsmouth has gossip columns just as much as London does. The truth is that Maria has run away from her marital home with Henry in tow. I don’t know if it’s meant to be significant that Mr. Price is the one who literally shoves the truth in front of Fanny’s face. It does make for some juicy irony: the unfit father sitting next to his well-bred daughter as he rails against a well-bred father’s bad parenting skills. Fanny’s initial rejection of the alleged adultery and her “instinctive wish of delaying shame” signals where her alliance lays: with the Bertrams. Tossing and turning that night, she pores over “the simple, indubitable family misery which must envelop all, if it were indeed a matter of certified guilt and public exposure. The mother’s sufferings, the father’s; there she paused. Julia’s, Tom’s, Edmund’s … ” Though she struggles to accept the “barbarism” of adultery, she seems more shocked than surprised.

Instead of a letter from Lady Bertram, Fanny soon hears from Ed himself: with Sir Thomas in London trying to find his eldest daughter and (🎵 sur-prise) his youngest suddenly eloping with amateur actor Mr. Yates, Fanny is needed at Mansfield Park. And here is where Sir Thomas begins his redemption arc: he explicitly invites our own beloved Susan to Mansfield as well. It’s all hands on deck, people.

Fanny, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, knows that she’s “in the greatest danger of being exquisitely happy, while so many were miserable.” Susan is pumped to be Mansfield-bound. The Price parents are probably looking forward to having one less mouth to feed. There’s no love lost here, is what I’m getting at.

Ed arrives in a kind of frenzy, embracing Fanny with emotion, calling her “my only comfort now.” He’s too jittery to take much notice of anything or talk with her, hinting that the comfort Fanny provides has more to do with her presence and her preference for silence. When he sees that she’s looking a bit rough around the edges, he bursts out, “No wonder— you must feel it—you must suffer. How a man who had once loved, could desert you! But yours—your regard was new compared with——Fanny, think of me!” Though again he shows an almost willful misreading of Fanny’s emotional state, he’s not totally off-base. Fanny has indeed given a couple thoughts to Henry, but only in terms of his role in running off with Maria. Fanny considers that “[h]is unsettled affections, wavering with his vanity” and lack of “sufficient principle” are strong (if circumstantial) evidence that Henry is capable of the worst. She doesn’t regret losing him because she never wanted him in the first place. Ed’s plea at the end is ironic, given how prominent he is in Fanny’s thoughts. That sound you hear is that of a shoe dropping. We’ll pick it up later.

During the trip home, Fanny grows anxious about how she will be received in the midst of the Bertrams’ “humiliation.” Given that Lady Bertram’s letters have shown her that she, at least, wants Fanny beside her, I think Fanny’s anxiety stems from facing the sheer enormity of the downfall. But once her “eye fell everywhere on lawns and plantations of the freshest green” of the park, her anxiety is soothed. Lady Bertram’s rushing to embrace her is a fitting coda to the end of Fanny’s search for her actual family. Fanny has arrived home.

Chapter the next: The Bertram family circle has been altered for better and worse, Fanny gets filled in on the schism between Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth, and Ed breaks his silence.