Mansfield Park, ch. 47: The Facts Were These

Credit to Emily Yendle.

Back (finally!) at chez Bertram, Mrs. Norris is inflicting her own acute misery onto everyone else’s, compounding the gloom that Fanny et al must wade through. Our Regency-era wannabe, it turns out, is completely ineffectual when times get tough. I’d argue that her attachment to Maria is based more on ego than love, but we’ll look at this again in the last chapter. Lest we think that Mrs. Norris’s most odious traits are gone for good, the narrator informs us that she blames Fanny for Maria running off with Henry. And I should point out that either Mrs. Norris has moved into Mansfield ostensibly to take care of her sister and nephew, or she’s walking up there every day just to mope. Neither scenario is a good look for her.

Lady Bertram, in taking her cue from her husband, “could see [the affair] only in one light, as comprehending the loss of a daughter, and a disgrace never to be wiped off.” I stand by my musings from chapter 33 that the relationship between mother and daughter is on the superficial side, but that doesn’t detract from Lady Bertram’s present suffering. I think her current despair shows her desire for family unity; the tragedy here is that she took those (her desire and the unity) for granted. Luckily, she has Fanny (patient as the grave) and a carbon-copy in Susan, who she accepts without question.

Fanny pieces together the whole story through correspondence to and from Sir Thomas. With Mr. Rushworth and Julia gone, Maria met up with Henry at a mutual friend’s house over the course of several weeks. These meetings were not planned. They failed to keep their growing flirtation on the down-low, which is why Sir Thomas’s friend in London wrote to him. The feud between the mother-in-law and Maria (like who didn’t see that coming) led to an indignant maidservant tattling on Maria and a dumbfounded Mr. Rushworth getting caught in the middle. Maria peaced out before her dad arrived in London. Two days later, the affair was dutifully reported in the gossip rags.

There’s been a lot of emphasis placed on reputations being ruined and “disgrace[s] never to be wiped off,” and that was (and still is, in a way) really important in this society. It was especially important for women to keep their reputations pristine and untouchable, because their reputations were their social currency. With Maria’s general unlikeability and selfishness, we can forget that this is a loss for the Bertrams, and not just socially. Look at how her siblings and parents are reacting: Tom is worse off thanks to the extra stress, Lady Bertram breaks into tears “after hearing an affecting sermon,” and Sir Thomas gloomily assumes that Julia’s elopement will lead to “the worst probabilities of a conclusion hereafter like her sister’s.”* They’re not just mortified. They’re grieving.

Fanny’s main concern, other than the bereaved Ed, is for Sir Thomas. Though Henry’s despicable actions means that she’s in the clear, she realizes that this is cold comfort to the Bertram patriarch. She instead sees Ed as being the only comfort for Sir Thomas … which isn’t the whole story. Sir Thomas is aware of what Ed lost, as well—and it’s painful to him. “[W]ith a view to [Edmund’s] relief and benefit, no less than theirs,” Sir Thomas suggested to Ed fetch Fanny from Portsmouth. This is a small detail, but I like how it illustrates a kind of synergy at work between the characters: both Sir Thomas’s kind intentions and his practicality help Ed; Ed finds “relief” in having something to do and reuniting with, I’m just gonna say it, his best friend; Fanny is transported to the place where she is most needed, and the place where she most wishes to be.

And from there, we move on to Mary. Diedre Shauna Lynch (Mansfield Park: An Annotated Edition), in her footnote, stresses that “in being confined to Edmund’s vantage point and being subjected to Edmund’s understanding of what is and isn’t ‘fit to be repeated’ to Fanny, we are not getting the full story.” This is true! Our reading of Mary in their break-up scene cannot be truly accurate due to the author’s exclusion of her point of view. With that in mind, we can still theorize and draw conclusions based on what we know of Mary, and more specifically, of Ed’s blind spots when it comes to Mary’s personality. Keep in mind as well that, until this final meeting, Ed has been heavily biased in her favor, to the point of ignoring obvious hints about her sense of morality. If anything, the most shocking thing here is that Mary feels that this is a battle meeting rather than Ed saying goodbye to her. If Ed’s prejudice does get in the way of our full understanding of Mary, then Mary’s lack of situational awareness appears to get in her way of fully understanding Ed.

The first tip-off Mary gives is her repeated use of the word “folly.” This doesn’t jive with Ed’s view of his sister’s adultery, which now casts a black mark on her reputation (not to mention his family’s). Mary’s language and attitude display “[n]o reluctance, no horror, no feminine … no modest loathings”—previously, these were the very attributes Ed was in such a rush to ascribe to her. And dwelling on the lack of finesse in hiding one’s affair instead of the affair itself is yet another way in which Mary completely fails to read the room. She’s speaking to a clergyman!

Then she digs herself deeper with some Fanny-bashing: “‘It is all her fault. Simple girl! I shall never forgive her. Had she accepted him as she ought … Henry would have been too happy and too busy to want any other object.’” She immediately subverts this claim by painting a picture of a “standing flirtation” between Henry and Maria after Hanny’s marriage. Ed recognizes this for the line of bullshit it is, declaring that “the charm” that has been over him “is broken.” Note that he declares his deception has ended only after hearing Mary pile on Fanny. Mary calls her stupid, attributes the fault of another person to her, and dictates what she should be doing/have done … don’t you think Mary reminds him of a certain demanding, mentally abusive aunt? Major turn-off.

And what encounter with Mary would be complete without some unsolicited advice? She draws up a plan to make Henry marry Maria and use both her “influence” and the support of the Bertrams to keep them afloat in society. “[T]here is, undoubtedly, more liberality and candour on those points than formerly,” she asserts. From what little I’ve read, there seems to be some truth to this (and Mary never lies, she just has a warped view of the world). I think what matters here, though, is that Austen never shows those people in a good or sympathetic light. I don’t think she even shows them as people (think of Lady Stornaway or Mrs. Fraser—they’re just names on a page). The Bertrams’ world, as portrayed by Austen, doesn’t include such people, much less need them. Tom only escaped his group of classless friends due to falling ill. (Spoiler alert, he ain’t gonna be hanging out with them in the future.)

And let’s keep in mind that this plan of hers involves manipulating her brother into staying with Maria, demonstrating once again that fraternal love really can be worse than nothing.

After all of this, Ed lets her have it (politely, obviously—he’s still a gentleman). Listening to her scheming and her lack of “feminine loathings” has “convinced” him that he’s made a big mistake: “I had never understood her before … [I]t had been the creature of my own imagination, not Miss Crawford, that I had been too apt to dwell on for many months past.” Yay, Ed! Breakthroughs, they happen! Mary appears to rely on her sense of humor to carry her through the shock of this, after “half a sense of shame” passes over her features. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of joke that turns Ed into the punchline. Ed’s rendition of it makes it sound like a graceless goodbye. And when she switches tactics, it’s her “saucy smile” that drives him away for good.

Back in the present, Ed is still despondent over Mary, moaning over the potential goodness she once possessed. Fanny doesn’t pass up the opportunity to tell him about the contents of Mary’s most ruthless letter, which, look, he needs to know if he insists on going on about Mary. Maybe it’s a bit too convenient that this duty falls to Fanny, but you know what? She’s the best messenger: Ed has to believe her. He is left with the “consoling thought” that Mary was really into him instead of just … into him, and neither one seem to deal with the fact that Mary acted the way she did because she was angling to be the mistress of Mansfield. Ed remains convinced that he’ll never get over Mary.

Excuse me while I excessively clear my throat.

And in the last chapter: it’s Jane Austen’s world—we’re just living in it.

*Involuntary sex work.