Jane Austen For Dummies (56 page)

Notice how at times pride and prejudice are
good
things.

Mr. Collins exemplifies unpleasant, even ridiculous pride because he is proud of Lady Catherine's “condescension” to him. While “condescension” in Austen's day had a positive meaning in referring to how higher class people could be pleasant to lower class people, Lady Catherine's “condescension” is more like the typical use of the word today: patronizing people, acting towards your inferiors in a way that shows you think they're inferior and you're a lot better than they are. Collins is proud that Lady Catherine gave him a church living. He brags of having Lady Catherine's patronage and praises her “condescension” to him. This condescension turns out to include advising him to marry, as well as to rearrange the furniture in his house and install shelves in his upstairs closets. But Collins is too stupid to take any offense at her being a busybody. That he gratefully accepts her interference in his personal life was probably why she selected him for the church living he now occupies. The Collins–Lady Catherine relationship is Austen's subtle way of telling her contemporary readers — who knew all about how the Anglican Church gave out its local jobs — that selecting priests for a parish by private patronage might lead to giving spiritually and intellectually unqualified men the responsibility for many innocent souls. Austen's treatment of Collins is certainly merciless. For example, when he writes to the Bennets after Lydia's disgrace, advising them to turn her away from their family, Mr. Bennet dryly comments, “‘
That
is his notion of Christian forgiveness!'” (PP 3:15). From that, the reader can only think, “His poor parishioners, having Collins as their spiritual adviser.” (For details on church livings, see Chapter 10.)

It's uncomfortable to watch Fanny because she's the victim of abuse. Her Aunt Norris, whom the Bertrams allow to have free reign at Mansfield Park, constantly berates her. She gives her a room with the maids and tells the little girl that she will never be equal to her cousins. She prohibits the maids from lighting a fire in Fanny's study on even the coldest days, and she makes Fanny walk back and forth between her home and Mansfield Park on the hottest day. Aside from this physical abuse, Aunt Norris practices psychological abuse on Fanny, making demeaning comments about her to her face or to others while Fanny is in the room. The abuse is uncomfortable to witness, even on the page of a book.

Likewise, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram are abusers, but they're passive. By handing over their respective parental responsibilities to Aunt Norris, they allow her to get away with what she does. As readers, you may sometimes want to tap Sir Thomas on the shoulder and say, “Why don't you call Aunt Norris on this?” But you have to take yourselves out of the novel and read with what 19th-century poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge called “a willing suspension of disbelief.”

Coming as she does between Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse, each of whom is anything but passive, Fanny Price's passivity can be surprising and even irritating to the reader. Yet when she reasserts her passivity by insisting that she can't “act” during the scenes when everyone pressures her to be in the play, she, ironically, is acting here. She is claiming for herself the right not to act which — ironically — is an act of will.

However, reading about the way people treat Fanny is painful. Many readers say that Fanny is the last Austen heroine with whom you'd want to have dinner! But Fanny is also the Austen heroine who endures the most misunderstanding, thoughtlessness, and abuse from others. How can you not be happy when Edmund marries her at last?

Not since
Northanger Abbey
have the readers of Austen's novels encountered such an intrusive narrator as they hear in
Mansfield Park.
Austen begins the final chapter saying, “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest” (MP 3:17). Austen could not be more obvious in showing who is in charge of the novel! And she then talks of “My Fanny,” showing her affection for and attachment to her heroine.

The first time you read it, you may be duped by Frank Churchill's behavior and have little or no suspicion about why he behaves the way he does.

Subsequent readings have readers marveling at the way Austen plants her clues and hints about Frank Churchill all along the way. Each reading uncovers another clue, and the book puts the reader in the role of detective. (Notice that I am not giving away the surprise here!)

Austen sets up her heroine for error in the opening line:

The line promises a delightful heroine, suffering none of the problems and pains that her chronological predecessor Fanny Price did. But Austen slips in the word “seemed,” tipping the reader that the rest of the novel may not be smooth sailing for Emma.

By the end of the third paragraph, the reader discovers that Emma has been “directed chiefly by her own” judgment. And then Austen drops the heavy shoe, saying, “The
real
evils,
indeed,
of Emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself.” (I have italicized the words “real” and “indeed” to call attention to the way Austen tells of Emma's big problem: Her egoism is a real evil, and Austen underscores that by using the intensifying word “indeed.”) So the reader knows why Emma makes the blunders she does from the outset.

Austen uses Mrs. Elton (the former Augusta Hawkins) for at least four reasons:

So Austen gets a lot of mileage out of this obnoxious character, who, ironically, gets the last lines of speech in the novel as she criticizes Emma's wedding for having “‘Very little white satin, very few lace veils.'” But doesn't it always seem like the pushiest people get the last word?