Critical Theory - Structuralism

Though not many would consider Mansfield Park a gothic novel, Jane Austen uses many of the genre’s codes and conventions. In late 18th-century and early 19th-century England, the gothic form was widely recognized as a space for writers to comment on the culture of revolutionary paranoia and the crumbling political establishment; a reaction against conservative critics (like Edmund Burke) who idealized feudal values (Chiu). A typical gothic novel would be set in medieval, Catholic Europe and center on a family containing the following stock characters: the idle mother/aunt, the tyrannical father/uncle, the foolish eldest son, the virtuous younger son, and the victimized daughter (Chiu). Mothers become ineffectual, practically non-existent human beings under the power of the father, a comment on Burke’s idealization of the beautiful/feminine and the sublime/masculine (Chiu). The characters of the eldest and younger son point out the injustice of laws of primogeniture and entailment, which are not based on reason, but instead on ancient ideals (Chiu).

Every single one of these conventions or paradigmatic elements shows up in Mansfield Park. Lady Bertram idles away the day on the couch, the overpowering uncle Sir Thomas tyrannizes, the rakish elder brother Tom makes horrible decisions for himself and the family, the “virtuous” Edmund preaches to the ladies, and the victimized Fanny hides away in her attic space. Why, then, is Mansfield Park not widely considered to be a gothic novel? Austen subverts expectations we have of this genre by setting her novel in contemporary, Protestant England and substituting the bloodshed of gothic novels (“alarms of romance”) for the emotional terror in our everyday interactions with others (“anxieties of common life”). Austen’s commentary is not as explicit here as it is in one of her earlier novels, Northanger Abbey, which has its characters discussing and living gothic novels and conventions (much like the characters in the film Scream discuss and live slasher flick conventions). Yet the structure of Mansfield Park still looks an awful lot like a gothic novel. The irony here is more subtle.

In this excerpt, we can see one more way Austen subverts gothic conventions. The virtuous younger son, Edmund, is not so virtuous as he would like to think. I cannot say that Austen places moral value on the improper behavior of her characters, since everyone here behaves improperly. Fanny Price holds her fellow players to Burkean moral and gender codes, while she cannot live up to them herself. The commentary in Mansfield Park (and in all of Austen’s novels, I would argue) is about the impossibility of the structure at large, rather than on any one particular character or their failings. The use of free-indirect discourse in this passage reveals Fanny’s passion, intensity, anger, jealousy and delusion, all improper emotions for a young lady in the 18th/19th centuries, hell, even in our own! Fanny is the internal focalizer, and Mary and Edmund are the focalized. Fanny’s perspective also reveals the morally inappropriate behavior of the focalized. They flirt as Edmund teaches Mary to ride a horse.

Horse riding lessons are used as a metaphor for sexual education. This interaction is culturally coded as erotic, as Fanny is well aware. Fanny’s erotic reading of this scene also displays some sexual awareness of her own: “and to Fanny’s timid nature it was most astonishing to see how well she [Mary] sat.” Why else should Fanny be so embarrassed? Mary’s body-language is a metonymy for her boldness and sexual knowledge. Mary does not need Edmund to give her a lesson in sex ed because riding is already so natural to her. Unlike Mary, horse riding initially terrifies Fanny to the point where she is stubborn to ride at all. Fanny aligning herself with the mare towards the end of the passage is telling, as the men in the novel feel she must be broken like a horse to the idea of riding a horse, or rather to “the idea of being worth looking at.” This mirrors the situation in the novel’s second half, in which Fanny stubbornly refuses (like a colt) to be broken to the male gaze and to marry a man she does not love, thereby disobeying her uncle, the tyrannical patriarch. Filial disobedience is another convention of gothic novels, representing political disobedience and revolution. The commentary on patriarchal structure is both political and personal. Fanny Price must rebel against the structure which holds her and everyone else to unrealistic expectations. Refusing to submit to gender codes is a violation of a gender code, which means that people (women in particular) are placed in a double-bind. They are given one choice (to submit), which really isn’t a choice at all.