Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy (42 page)

om www

“I” of this passage is not the same “I” who declared that Bowles was

no poet. Nor is it clear whether the dashes indicate a new speaker or

pauses in the speech of the same person, although it is clearly Mrs.

Elton who offers her own tolerance of her husband’s “eccentricities”

yright material fr

as evidence that “any woman of real sense” would have put up with

Cop

Byron’s. Her tolerance indicates both pragmatic self-interest and her

own sexuality.37 Presumably, the declaration is that any woman of real

sense, that is, any woman who knew what was good for her, would

put up with a certain amount of kinkiness in order to be comfortably

settled. Mrs. Elton is the character who marries manifestly for the

sake of an establishment and is chosen for her 10,000 pounds after

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian

9780230616301_06_ch04.indd 152

9780230616301_06_ch04.indd 152

10/22/2010 6:04:26 PM

10/22/2010 6:04:26 PM

B o d y D o u b l e s i n t h e N e w M o n a r c h y

153

a perfunctory courtship. Certainly, if she is willing to put up with

“Mr. E’s” eccentricities, how much more ought to be borne by one

married to Lord Byron?

How much indeed? To readers of Byron in 1821, Mrs. Elton’s

phrase “little eccentricities” might have meant anything from incest,

to an interest in Continental boys, to a sophistical justification of

either or both, to the confoundment, to borrow Christensen’s term,

of all of these possibilities in the act of marital sodomy. Christensen

posits that Lady Byron used “confoundment” as a way to evade the

taint of complicity in her allegations against her husband: unable to

produce direct evidence of “brute Byron” she produces instead “the

veConnect - 2011-04-02

direct assertion of confoundment: confoundment in the act, con-

algra

foundment in the telling, confoundment between the telling and

the act” (85). The sexual economy of Mrs. Elton’s speech once again

highlights Lockhart as a reader who knows his Austen, and who can

romso - PT

read her characters out of her fiction. This is the inversion of Lady

Byron’s tactic of confounding her husband and his poems.38 But, by

lioteket i

making Austen’s characters live as naïve readers of Byron, Lockhart

plays out the intertextual implications of commingling “life” and

sitetsbib

“art.” The character in whom he chooses to locate this is Mrs. Elton’s

fictive antithesis, Fanny Price.

The shift from boarding school misses to sexualized women is

registered in the ordering of the speaker’s locatives. The series of

“now tell me’s” is directed first at Mrs. Goddard, headmistress of

the local boarding school for girls, then at Fanny Price and Harriet

Smith, both boarders of a sort, ending with the married Mrs. Elton.

The speaker is relying on his audience’s recognition of Fanny’s fit-

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

ness for this group—the only heroine on his list. Fanny’s uncertain

status throughout most of
Mansfield Park
and her commitment

.palgra

to a nearly unrealizable standard of feminine modesty would seem

to mark her as belonging to this little community, carefully placed

om www

between the respectable widow and the desirable but homeless

ingénue—and at a safe distance from the dashing married woman.

Earnest and studious as well as virtuous, she is the closest in type to

Annabella Milbanke, which ought to make her a better exemplar of

yright material fr

the biographical reader even than Mrs. Elton. But, as Lady Byron

Cop

knew, reading a text for evidence of an author’s life can implicate

reader as well as author. Fanny’s presence in a review of
John Bull’s

Letter
that was published in the July 1821 number of
Blackwood’s

Magazine
registers this risk. The reviewer facetiously attributes

authorship of the letter to Jeremy Bentham. Strout calls this claim

a “smoke screen” designed to “my stify the public” and protect

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian

9780230616301_06_ch04.indd 153

9780230616301_06_ch04.indd 153

10/22/2010 6:04:26 PM

10/22/2010 6:04:26 PM

154

R o y a l R o m a n c e s

Lockhart, who was genuinely worried about his authorship being

discovered.39 “Bentham’s” inability to comment intelligently on

Byron’s poetry (a claim the reviewer tempers by acknowledging that,

like him, “Bentham” recognizes
Don Juan
as his greatest work) is a

feature of his age, which the reviewer repeatedly genders as female:

“Every where we hear him called an old woman—as if old women

were not a respectable portion of society—a driveller, a dotard, and

other opprobrious expressions, which really is very unfair” (421).

Attributing to a “defective memory” common to “very old men”

a habit of repeating the same tropes until their effectiveness has

been lost, the reviewer quotes the
Emma/Mansfield Park
dialogue,

veConnect - 2011-04-02

pointing out that “Bentham” is here using the same “silly mode of

algra

iteration of names” (425) he used in an earlier pamphlet:40

He forgot that he had ever used the phraseology before, and the chime

romso - PT

was still singing in his ears. But he is not to be pardoned, however,

for making such a public use of people’s names. Poor Miss Price is so

lioteket i

much annoyed at being put down as a reader of Don Juan, that she has

written us a long and rather ingenious letter on the subject, in which

she complains bitterly of this conduct, and adds, that the other ladies

sitetsbib

are particularly vexed on the occasion. (495)

“Poor Miss Price” had been put down in the original pamphlet as a

reader of
Childe Harold
, not
Don Juan
. Her inability to recognize

the superiority of the later poem is part of what discredits her and

her circle as readers of Byron. The shift from melancholic romance

to racy satire is telling. The reviewer’s suggestion of ill-usage (Fanny

“complains bitterly of this conduct”) underscores the association

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

with Lady Byron implied in the original and stresses the identifica-

tion of both as naïve biographical readers. Presumably, reading
Don

.palgra

Juan
, like the “public use of people’s names,” is vaguely sexualizing,

threatening the same kind of taint by association that Christensen

om www

argues informed Lady By ron’s accusations. Bentham/Lockhart’s

unpardonable use of her name, like his identification of Byron

and Childe Harold, so commingles public and private identities as

to stress that each is always its opposite. His use of Fanny Price

yright material fr

drags into the limelight a character whose reputation for shy ness

Cop

has already been complicated by her public identity as a fictional

character.

Yet Fanny has at least as much kinship with the moral relativism of

Don Juan
as with the melancholy of
Childe Harold
, given the novel of

which she is heroine.
Mansfield Park
is a novel about the operations

of relativism. Its heroine’s role as a moral bulwark in a community

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian

9780230616301_06_ch04.indd 154

9780230616301_06_ch04.indd 154

10/22/2010 6:04:26 PM

10/22/2010 6:04:26 PM

B o d y D o u b l e s i n t h e N e w M o n a r c h y

155

otherwise driven—and riven—by self-interest is a relative construc-

tion.41 Fanny ’s judgments are vindicated by being directed toward

the stability that novel aims for,42 but they are only sound within the

hothouse cultivation of Mansfield Park, and they are always framed

by her desires. Austen’s treatment of relativism, of the malleability

of judgment by will, is comprehensive. There is in the end no one,

including the narrator, who does not forego principle for interest.43

Her novel demonstrates the same mechanisms of confoundment that

Lady Byron offered in her defense of the separation. It bewilders by

compromising the authority even of those characters designated as

authoritative.

veConnect - 2011-04-02

Austen plots the development of Fanny’s “moral taste”44 to dem-

algra

onstrate that the synchronicity between her judgment and her feel-

ings is produced in part by chance and in part by careful cultivation.

Her non-participation in the episode of the private theatricals appears

romso - PT

to stress a distinction between her and her environment on which

Austen has been insisting since the novel’s opening:

lioteket i

Fanny looked on and listened, not unamused to observe the selfish-

sitetsbib

ness which, more or less disguised, seemed to govern them all, and

wondering how it would end. For her own gratification she could have

wished that something might be acted, for she had never seen even half

a play, but every thing of higher consequence was against it. (93)

Fanny ’s affinity with the narrator—observant and amused, able to

see through all disguises, if not all the way to the end—suggests an

authority that masks the constructedness of her observations, her

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

quick stifling of a desire for “gratification” by the priggish (perhaps

guilty ?) reference to “every thing of higher consequence.” Austen

.palgra

ranks characters according to their ability to detach from their

companions and observe, distinguishing both Edmund and Mary

om www

Crawford by
their
ability to distinguish when Fanny is suffering.

But the contrast between those who notice Fanny and the majority

who neglect her does not constitute a moral economy. Sympathy is

contingent, partial, and always circumscribed by personal will. All

yright material fr

superiority is relative; there is no supremacy. Mary and Edmund are

Cop

kinder than the other characters in the matter of the theatricals, but

never to the point of sacrificing their own gratifications, more often

in their service. Edmund looks at Fanny “kindly” when the others

try to pressure her into joining the play, but is “unwilling to exas-

perate his brother” by any effectual intervention (103). In the next

chapter, he manipulates Fanny into endorsing his decision to play

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian

9780230616301_06_ch04.indd 155

9780230616301_06_ch04.indd 155

10/22/2010 6:04:26 PM

10/22/2010 6:04:26 PM

156

R o y a l R o m a n c e s

Anhalt to Mary ’s Amelia, covering with a reference to his father’s

dislike of outsiders his own jealousy of a potential rival.45 Mary goes

beyond looks, ostentatiously moving her chair closer to Fanny and

talking to her in a “kind low whisper” (103), but the narrator quali-

fies her kindness as an expression of “the really good feelings by

which she was almost purely governed.” The first adverb is an inten-

sifier, but the parallel construction pairs it with the “almost” that

dilutes the purity of her motives. “Really” not only loses its inten-

sifying power; it becomes ironic. Because her motives are not pure,

her goodness is not real. And whether kindness shares space with or

masks self-interest in the end makes no difference. Mary hedges her

veConnect - 2011-04-02

bets. Fanny ’s gratitude is a by-product of what she “really ” wants:

algra

Edmund’s notice and approval. “[T]he really good feelings by which

she was almost purely governed, were rapidly restoring her to all

the little she had lost in Edmund’s favour” (104). Powers of obser-

romso - PT

vation and sympathy do not prevent characters from acting out of

self-interest.46

lioteket i

Fanny ’s detachment in the above passage, however, suggests

that she alone is not governed by the self-interest she remarks in