The Price of Freedom

“If it had not been for that [Mr. Norris’s sad state of health], we should have carried on the garden wall, and made the plantation to shut out the churchyard, just as Dr. Grant has done...we put in the apricot against the stable wall, which is now grown such a noble tree, and getting to such perfection, sir...Sir, it is a moor park...” - Mrs. Norris
“You were imposed on, ma’am,” replied Dr. Grant; “these potatoes have as much the flavour of a moor park apricot, as the fruit from that tree.” (43)

The footnote states that England’s harsh climate made apricots difficult to grow until the 17th century, when “Sir William Temple cultivated a standard apricot later called the Moor Park” (399). This excerpt has colonist connotations with the terms “plantation” and “moor” (43). Sir Thomas and Mrs. Norris attempted to colonize the exotic, but according to Dr. Grant, have failed. The fruit from the tree is unsavory, although the actual tree has the appearance of nobility and “perfection” (43). Isn’t this the perfect metaphor for the estate of Mansfield Park and Sir Thomas as ineffective master? It also suggests Sir Thomas’s possible loss of power over the Antigua plantation. It’s interesting that a “sad state of health” is linked with loss of power or the inability to see something through (first with Mr. Norris and then with Sir Thomas, who appears thin and exhausted when he returns from Antigua). This is a bit random, but we just finished reading Julius Caesar in my Shakespeare class, and Caesar’s physical weakness and illness foreshadows his downfall and eventual death. I also wonder about the significance of the tree leaning on the “stable wall” (43). Does the stable, stubborn Fanny symbolize the “stable wall,” behind which her horse sleeps? The tree touches and imposes upon the stable, but it does not knock it down.

After I had read the first few pages of Edward Said’s “Jane Austen and Empire,” I assumed that he wrote it in the 1950's, because it seemed so archaic and it neglected even second-wave feminist literary criticism entirely. I was so shocked to discover that it was written in 1993! I was with Susan Fraiman all the way in her 1995 critique of that particular chapter is Said’s book. Doesn’t it make you angry enough to spit when readers or critics completely miss out on Austen’s irony? Just because the narrator is depicting Fanny’s thoughts through free indirect discourse, it does not follow that the narrator is telling us fictional fact. When Fanny compares Mansfield and Portsmouth, we should know after 300 pages of neglect, mistreatment, and corruption that Fanny’s idealized memory of the Park is implausible (“[Portsmouth] only literalizes what at Mansfield is disorder of a more profound and hypocritical kind...Portsmouth is noisy. Mansfield’s greatest evil is its dishonest silence” (Fraiman 810). Fraiman’s point that Austen is “among those who made colonialism thinkable by constructing the West as center, home, and norm, while pushing everything else to the margins,” is definitely difficult to swallow (809). Isn’t this true of what the Bertram family does with Fanny Price when they place her in the East room? Mansfield Park is “center, home, and norm,” but all of these things prove to be morally corrupt. Austen often pushes “problems” of her day into the margins/sub-plots (fallen women, slavery, riots, lower classes), but I think this can simultaneously work as commentary on the “norm” and also, possibly/maybe/hate-to-say-it, falls into the traps of doing what the “norm” does. It was so strange that Fraiman compared Said to Sedgwick because I was thinking the exact same thing, mostly in that Said and Sedgwick are more concerned with making their points than examining Austen’s texts. This isn’t to say that I didn’t like the Said excerpt though, because I found his knowledge of slavery and imperialist history helpful, even if he doesn’t understand Austen’s prose or themes completely.

I hope this isn’t appropriate, but for a very long time, I’ve hoped that Claudia L. Johnson would consent to be the mother of my children (kidding, sorta). I belong to that “other” school of Janeites that read Jane “not for the primness, propriety, or romantic conventionality imputed to her, but for the energy of her satire, for the irreverence and,...even the bitchiness of her wit” (Johnson 16). This is one of the reasons that I love Rozema’s adaptation or rather revision/intervention of Mansfield Park. If Rozema had not read Fraiman while writing her script, I would be very much surprised, for Fraiman offers a feminist critique of Said’s colonial analysis. I missed the trip to Sotherton and the walk in the pleasure-grounds, though I still think the film worked without it, especially since it kept one of the most interesting themes from that scene: the “confinement of women,” particularly within marriage, and its relation to the novel’s references to the “institution of slavery” (‘I can’t get out,’ said the Starling, Fanny’s mentioning slavery to Sir Thomas, and the hovering presence of Antigua/Sir Thomas’s tyranny). I honestly don’t mind the liberties Rozema took with her feminist-colonial revision, because I think she creatively brought metaphors discovered in recent literary criticism of the novel to the surface in plot and dialogue, which is more that can be said for the all the other film adaptations, with their focus on the marriage plot. But I also think this has to do with the fact that a successful and satisfying reading of Mansfield Park depends on a deep understanding of its satire and metaphor, much more so than the other novels (only because I think it’s the most misunderstood of the novels). I wonder if Austen read Cowper’s poem “On Slavery”: “dear as freedom is, and in my heart’s/Just estimation prized above all price” (Cowper, lines 33-34). The movie emphasizes the theme that women, like slaves, can have a price tag attached to them, that they are exchangeable, “displayable commodities,” and that Fanny Price, ironically enough, spurns the price that society tries to place upon her. (Edited to add: I found this quote - "Miss Price had not been brought up to the trade of coming out." - 209)

Edited to add:
Yesterday during class, many people had issues with relating the confinement of women to slavery. For some reason, I don't think the concept of historical context got through. While this idea may be problematic in 21st-century eyes, it does not mean the comparison is not present in an early 19th-century novel. In the 19th century, one of the platforms of first-wave feminists was this very slave/woman comparison and the abolitionist movement helped fuel the feminist movement (just look at Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony--they even had to sacrifice their attempt to get the vote in order to fight the abolitionist cause--and British feminists were even more radical--Pankhursts). Through Jane Austen's letters, we can tell she was in support of the abolitionist cause (reading Thomas Clarkson), and this is very much apparent in Mansfield Park (with words like "plantation" and "trade" being used throughout the novel). Like Fraiman says, the issue comes up in Emma when Jane Fairfax compares the position of the governesses and women to slavery. Are readers not willing to see this comparison because they do not like the comparison? Perhaps Fraiman should have briefly mentioned the slave/woman comparison as being problematic for us (and she does recognize that Jane Austen pushes 'the issues' to the outskirts of the novel), but also addressed its historical importance. This discussion was making me uneasy, because I really don't understand when people disregard historical context in order to satisfy their own ideas of what Austen did or did not write about.

The same thing was happening when discussing whether or not Mansfield Park is an idealistic place. I did like when someone mentioned that she idealizes MP because of Edmund, because her love blinds Fanny to the evils of MP, thinking while she is away that only exist at Portsmouth. MP, with all its faults, is home to Fanny. I hope that in reading nearly 400 pages of jealousy, backstabbing, and selfishness that the reader learns that MP is not at all the moral, ideal home. Part of the confusion here comes from free-indirect-discourse/author mix-up. When in doubt, it's most likely the character's consciousness. Fanny idealizes MP, but Austen/narrator/whatever ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT. Fraiman's analysis of Fanny's idealistic view of MP points out the irony in all of her thoughts (people are neglected both at MP and Portsmouth).

In comparison to Richardson's Pamela, I do think that Mansfield Park, both the estate and the novel, has this veil of morality to conceal the pornographic nature of what's going on. Austen was able to write about all of this "bad behavior" because she created a virtuous heroine that did not want to take part in it, that could be separated from it like the viewer. What's great about Fanny, however, is that unlike Pamela, she is not the one-dimensional virgin. She desires, she spouts off orgasmic 'rhapsodies' about necklaces and nature, experiencing pain and pleasure in her sublime happiness and melancholy. How interesting that the heroine of sensibility does not need to be taught a lesson in this novel, however hard Edmund tries (when he tells Fanny to calm down after she gets too excited). Like a Mary Wollstonecraft heroine, she feels things acutely, and if people chastize her for it, she feels it still more deeply. Fanny, a passionless prig? Are we even reading the same novel?!