Come one, come all, to the Jane Austen Fight Club, where the very best from Jane’s world and the very best from everywhere else match wits and fists for all to see! The prizes: pride, honor, and the adoration of Jane fans everywhere, or a “The first rule of fight club is, we don’t talk about Mr. Darcy” t-shirt and possibly some Regency medical care for all your combat-induced wound-care needs!
Today’s contestants: Mr. William “Pride” Darcy, disastrous proposer and saver of family reputations, and Gilbert “Slatehead” Blythe, who knows now not to resort to name-calling. Both won over the high-spirited ladies of their dreams, but who gets the upper hand in this Clash of the Dreamboats?
In their corners:
Darcy’s handsome, wealthy, good-hearted, and determined (but not so determined that he won’t let it go…and then pi
ne heroically forever and ever). He proposes awkwardly, but then saves the Bennets but doesn’t want them to know about it. He’s nice to his little sister, but calls Caroline Bingley out on whatever it is she’s doing. And we love him. LOVE HIM.
Gilbert’s handsome, not very wealthy, good-hearted, and determined. He saves Anne Shirley from drowning by Tennyson, gives up his job so she can have it, outwaits Roy Gardner (SIGH), then becomes a doctor and has lots of kids, and it’s wonderful, okay? WONDERFUL.
Handicaps:
Darcy is…how do we put this? Awkward. Rude at parties. Sometimes a giver of bad advice to his BFF. In fact, you kiiiind of can’t take him anywhere.
Gilbert, well, he did call the girl of his dreams Carrots. I guess he’s pretty full of himself as a kid, but he gets over it. Right?
Decision:
Um, are you asking me to make a DECISION? Have we met? AM I NOT HUMAN? DO I NOT HAVE A HEART, AND OVARIES?
Readers, help me out! Which literary unicorn of handsomeness wins this fight? Leave your explanations in the comments.
This is a public service announcement.
I know we just told you what you want this holiday season, but let’s just add one more thing to the list. You want a Penelope Fitzgerald novel. I haven’t read enough of her work to know which one yet, so I’ll let you choose. I’m nice like that.
Here’s what happened: I recently got my hands on a lovely Everyman’s Library volume of three Fitzgerald novels—The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels, and The Blue Flower. I blazed through The Bookshop and I’m halfway through The Gate of Angels, and I am on the brink of buying many many copies and forcing them into the hands of my book-loving friends. And maybe a few enemies. Or…wait. Is it possible I’m behind the curve on this? Have you read her entire canon, and been talking about them, and not told me about it? Have you been holding out on me?
(Quick facts: Penelope Fitzgerald, 1916-2000, first novel published 1977. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize shortlist for The Bookshop, 1978; won for Offshore, 1979.)
I’ve been thinking about Fitzgerald and how she fits into the post-Austen world—not because I compare every writer to Austen, but because they share a certain scope and wryness, and because if you are writing small-town British romantic dramas and novels of ideas, well, Austen is there. It’s all in the lack of sentimentality, I think; like Austen, Fitzgerald writes about people and relationships with grace and sometimes affection, but also with honesty and irony and a willingness to make fun. I suppose these aren’t strictly Austenian traits, but within the genre, the resemblance is noticeable—and I can’t help thinking there’s a literary inheritance there. She’s certainly more Austen than Bronte, or Waugh, or Wodehouse. (How she approaches romance, I can’t say: The Gate of Angels is shaping up to be a love story, but frankly, I’m not convinced that requited and realized true love is where this train is heading. Will report back.)
The other voice I hear echoed in Fitzgerald’s work is that of Margaret Atwood, which may be a function of time and age—middle-aged to older women writing in the last quarter of the twentieth century—or may simply be a massive compliment to both sides. I find in Fitzgerald’s writing a prickliness that is not unlike Atwood’s, and also a sense of realism when it comes to the inner lives of women. Both have a keen eye for struggle, particularly female struggle, though the fight to hang on to the tongue of an elderly English plow horse during a dental procedure (IT’S A METAPHOR, GUYS!) reads differently than, say, dystopian robot alien lady overlords disguised as everyday Canadian life. (I’ll let you guess who’s who in those scenarios.)
In any case, Austen Nation, can I recommend Penelope Fitzgerald to you? Her writing is lovely and sharp, sad and funny, atmospheric and pragmatic. What more can I say?
We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
This is Joan of Arc. She comes up if you search for “fiction mission” on Flickr.
Good job, guys! According to a study by people who track library loans, Pride and Prejudice is the most loaned classic in the UK! (Wuthering Heights is #2.) Jane takes three more of the top 20 spots as well:
- #8 Emma
- #11 Sense and Sensibility
- #17 Northanger Abbey
The Telegraph‘s article says, “The study involves a comparison of lending data from Britain’s libraries for 50 classics by British and Irish authors from the literary canon from the early 1990s, a decade ago, and last year.”
Mission #1: People of Britain, read more Austen! I want to see Persuasion and Mansfield Park on this list next time too. We can’t leave Anne Elliot out in the cold and Fanny Price sitting on her bench, now can we?? And let’s get those other numbers up, too. (Special Sneak Preview: Austenacious will do our part by hosting another read-a-long soon!) People of Not Britain: don’t think I’m not watching you too!
Also according to The Telegraph, “Works by Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and EM Forster have seen their popularity plummet over the last two decades . . ..”
I’m not going to say a word for Thomas Hardy. (Anyone want to take that on in the comments?) But, EM Forster, you guys! I love EM Forster. A Room With a View, anyone? Howards End? So beautiful! So smart! The article says maybe Austen got more popular because of the adaptations, and because of her “rather too light, bright, sparkling tone.” (Though George Orwell also got more popular, and he’s, like, super-funny, right?)
Forster is comic, just as much as Austen, so maybe we need more adaptations? I love the 1985 version of A Room with a View—Helena Bonham Carter, before she was crazy! Naked guys! … Good lord, has it really been that long? IMDB says there’s also a 2007 version, which I completely missed. Have any of you seen it? Thoughts? We could do better, though, right?
For Howards End there’s just the 1992 version with Emma Thompson. I’m conflicted here—I really don’t think this book is adaptable. But if anyone wants to have a go, feel free!
Then there’s our girl George Eliot. I’ll admit I’ve only ever read Middlemarch, and I only read that because of the 1994 version. (See, TV adaptations pay off!) Middlemarch is pretty awesome—though it’s not as joyous as Austen and Forster, it does have depth, without being as, um, self-conscious as the Brontës. Do we want a new Middlemarch adaptation? But Rufus Sewell and Colin’s brother Jonathon are so cute… Juliet Aubrey is so Dorothea…. I don’t know. What do you all think?
Mission #2: People of Britain and Not Britain, read more Forster! Read more Eliot! Demand quality adaptations, or make your own crazy vlogs! Or both! Think, live, breathe fiction!
And… go!
P.S. (Mission #3: Contemplate Colin Firth’s legs.)
Photo credit: dbking. Used under Creative Commons licensing.
Hi, my name is Miss Osborne. I’m a rage-aholic. But only when I have to sit in traffic! (Or when people mangle grammar.) And this summer, I’ve had many, many hours sitting in traffic. My 50 miles of good road is not a very easy distance. It’s actually only 13 miles, yet it can take an hour and a half to travel. Oh the pains of commuting across a city and over a bridge! I’ve found that I can subvert the rage if I keep myself occupied. First, you have to keep snacks around. I know it’s not the best idea to have food at your fingertips when you’re bored and trapped in your car, but being hungry ensures a lightning-fast downward spiral. Second, have music, audio books, or podcasts at the ready. Listening to the radio is fine, but listening to a musical allows you to follow a story and sing, sing, sing like you’re Norma Desmond ready for her close-up. (Side note: You are sure to entertain other poor suckers who are stuck in traffic when they see and hear you crooning your favorite ballad! Everybody wins!)
I’m not always a big a fan of listening to audiobooks because the quality varies depending on the narrator. Miss Ball and I—both fans of Sarah Vowell—nearly drove off the road from the sleepiness induced by listening to audio version of The Wordy Shipmates while on a cross-country road trip. But I recently listened to Simon Pegg narrate Nerd Do Well, and I smiled the entire commute for a few days.
If you’ve got a soul-sucking commute, here are some recommendations to pass the time:
• BBC’s A History of the World in 100 Objects podcasts—The director of the British Museum talks about artifacts from the museum in the context of the state of the world when that object was made. I bought the book a few months ago, and I’ve been reading about a few objects every night. But listening to the podcasts is interesting because you have to picture the object based on the description, and they vary the audio with interviews and sounds.
• Audiobooks of Jane Austen novels—Okay . . . what I was really hoping for was a novel narrated by Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, or Patrick Stewart . . . you get where I’m going here. Unfortunately, not all of the audiobooks listed on Amazon state the name of the reader. However, there is a version of Pride & Prejudice read by Lindsay Duncan that sounds promising. (Who, strangely enough, is exactly the face I saw in my head when I was reading Lady Susan. Perhaps because she often plays really unlikeable people in her TV appearances.)
• When Love Speaks CD—Speaking of listening to the delightful sounds of British voices, I bought this CD when I was in the middle of an Alan Rickman obsession. (My library had a copy of Return of the Native narrated by Alan Rickman, but even though I love listening to him speak, the thought of twenty bazillion hours of Thomas Hardy prevented me from borrowing it.) Take turns imagining you’re Marianne Dashwood and Willoughby reading sonnets to each other on a cold, rainy day sitting by the fire! When Love Speaks is a set of Shakespeare sonnets read by the likes of Alan Rickman, Diana Rigg, Juliet Stevenson, Ralph Fiennes, Ioan Gruffud, and more. I promise, hearing Colonel Brandon say, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” is swoon-worthy. Just remember, you’re driving! Keep your eyes open!
• If Alan Rickman doesn’t rock your world, perhaps Loki is more to you liking? Tom Hiddleston’s the new British sexy! And he’s narrated The Red Necklace. One fan says, “I have been listening to The Red Necklace audiobook as read by Tom Hiddleston, and oh, my lord, my ears are pregnant now.” Could you ask for a better recommendation than that?
• The End of the Affair, read by Colin Firth. I wasn’t going to list this, but then I started listening to the audio on YouTube, and I figured you just can’t lose listening to Colin Firth for six and a half hours.
• Believe It!—You know that old guy who plays Gaius on the so-bad-it’s-enjoyable Merlin? That’s Scottish actor Richard Wilson. He’s best known for his ten-year run in the BBC sitcom One Foot in the Grave. Anyway, he’s the main star of the BBC radio show Believe It! And for an extra special bonus, you get David Tennant, too.
I’m sad to say, no one has made an audio book of Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women. But if you’ve got any other recommendations to keep us sad commuters smiling while we drive, please chime in!
Photo Credit: Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/153778544/
North and South: check!
It was pretty great, you guys.
I maintain what I said before: the comparisons between North and South and Austen’s work, especially Pride and Prejudice, are inevitable, but Gaskell remains a handy and entertaining shorthand for the progression of the novel in the approximate first half of the nineteenth century. (I love that this novel was published by Charles Dickens. Elizabeth Gaskell: Bringing generations together since 1837. Awww!)
Warning: SPOILERS, SWEETIE.
The most obvious parallel between Austen’s work and North and South is the relationship between Margaret and Mr. Thornton: it’s decidedly Bennet/Darcy-ish, from the initial distaste to the first botched proposal to Margaret’s growing desire to regain his respect to the passionate final proposal. This happens all the time, of course; somebody tells a good story and suddenly it’s everywhere, slightly tweaked. Nobody seems to know whether Gaskell was familiar with Austen’s work, and far be it from me to accuse Gaskell of being the Sugar and Spice to Austen’s Bring it On, but ultimately it doesn’t matter that much—the similarities are striking, but Margaret and Mr. Thornton’s relationship stands on its own merits. It’s fabulously romantic, for one thing; I’d also point out that Margaret’s saving of Marlborough Mills creates a nice contrast to Darcy’s saving of the Bennet family honor. And do we really need fewer stories about people respecting each other and then falling in love?
Also, let’s be honest: Margaret is, by Austenian standards, practically the Angel of Death. A LOT of people die in North and South, which just doesn’t happen in Austen; she tends to kill people before the action starts and go from there. In a sense, though, that’s appropriate: this novel is so much more about the wide world than any of Austen’s work that it doesn’t seem out of place. In fact, before the grim and unsympathetic backdrop of Milton, where people live cheek-by-jowl and are forced to be so up-front about their poverty, to ignore the high mortality rate would be almost disingenuous—which I suppose is how you know the Victorians have arrived. (Mr. Boucher’s suicide especially surprised me. Can you imagine, in Austen?)
I was also intrigued by Gaskell’s treatment of parents, who of course tend (with a few notable exceptions) to get less-than-sympathetic treatment from Austen. Mrs. Hale is by far the most Austenian—her “I married below my station and can’t stop telling you about it” shtick places her squarely in Austen Mom Land—but she isn’t that ripe for mocking, because…well, she’s about to die a slow and painful death. (But then, Gaskell doesn’t enjoy making fun of her characters as much as Austen does—she was, after all, pals with the Brontes.) I also see a place for Mr. Hale in Austen, not because he’s silly, but because he’s so un-forceful in his many conflicts. Mrs. Thornton, though, strikes me as decidedly un-Austenian, mostly by virtue of being a strong and somewhat imperious mother figure who isn’t necessarily a villain—I suppose the closest analog would be some kind of semi-reasonable nouveau-riche Lady Catherine (which, of course, wouldn’t be Lady Catherine at all).
All this to say, if you haven’t read North and South, you have something good awaiting you. It’s entertaining, it’s romantic, it’s oddly suspenseful, and there’s a pirate mutiny. And if that doesn’t sell you on it, I’m not sure we can really be friends. So go.
(P.S. I know you’re all wondering, so: I will, in fact, be watching the miniseries directly. Richard Armitage may be hot alongside sweet Mr. Bates, Labor Organizer, whenever the fancy strikes.)
When you’re right, Austenacious readers, you are right.
We talked a bit about Elizabeth Gaskell earlier in the summer (check the comments!), and here I am, about a third of the way through North and South. And, you guys, it’s awesome.
I know: this site is not called Gaskellacious. But! The Jane is strong in this one: it’s like a bridge, chronologically and thematically, between Austen and the Victorians. Published by Charles Dickens in his periodical Household Words, I like to think of North and South as a handy metaphor for (early-to-mid-) 19th-century British literature as a whole: drawing room romance, drawing room romance, drawing room romance, and then—BAM!—Industrial Revolution.
(At least, I think this is how it goes. A word about the edition I’m reading: it is one of exactly two copies in the possession of my local public library system, and I am pretty sure somebody—DigiReads, apparently—printed it off the internet and hand-glued it into a vaguely Victorian-print paperback cover, in much the way my junior-high self used to print out X-Files fanfiction and store it in three-ring binders for optimum access at key future moments. It’s riddled with errors, mostly missing punctuation. GoodReads tells me it’s a professional edition, but Penguin Classics, where are you and your air of publishing legitimacy when I need you? [Answer: Checked out.])
Anyway, North and South starts like Austen—in the titular South, with a stroll in a country garden and a surprise proposal. Its heroine is decidedly Austenian: eighteen and a clergyman’s daughter, a lover of nature, unprepared for romantic love and sometimes socially misunderstood. Its primary love story is built around a clearly Pride and Prejudice-esque relationship, in a “Boy, she’s haughty”/”Boy, he’s mean to the poor”/”Wellll, maybe we had it all wrong I love you I love you” kind of way. (I assume I know where this is going. OR DO I?) Then comes the North, and things change. Suddenly the subject matter is far more Dickensian—smoky air, factory girls, death by industrial accident—but only the subject matter. The voice remains all post-Austen, all the time: it’s the third-person narrative of a young lady and her parents, a couple of not-very-interesting suitors, one very interesting eventual-suitor, some impoverished neighbors, and her lucky girl cousin who got married and moved to Corfu instead of the gross but unexpectedly nuanced industrial town. And this is why I like North and South: it isn’t the urban melodrama of Dickens (though I like a wackily-named poorhouse as much as the next girl) and it isn’t the moody saga of the moors, like Gaskell’s pal and biography subject, Charlotte Bronte (though not much beats a crazy wife in the attic). It’s early Victoriana—the voice of the Regency confronted with a whole new modern world, and still working through the repercussions. Do we know what Jane would have done in the face of factory labor and slavish working conditions? We do not. But Gaskell might give us a hint.
Further reports as the story progresses; watch this space.
Better yet, go find yourself a nice social novel/romance and call me in the morning.
I love Jane Austen.
You know this.
The thing is, I also love a lot of other books. Books of all genres! Books of all lengths! Books of all colors! Books for all!
We can’t all read Jane all the time—sometimes I think Mrs. Fitzpatrick tries, but eventually there are other things out there. And it’s summer, when we’re all supposed to pack up a few thick novels and cart them off to the beach or the mountains or the nearest fire escape with a glass of pink wine. And who am I to fail to support you all in the pursuit of excellent, Jane-esque summer reading? But must we stray from the path of Jane completely?
I say no.
Here, dear readers, are a few non-Austen books for an Austen frame of mind.
Middlemarch, by George Eliot
I read Middlemarch way back in the Beloved Sisters’ early days of cooking and watching period pieces on Friday nights, back when Austenacious was just a twinkle in our collective eye, and let me tell you: George Eliot knows people. She knows the ways in which they’re funny, and the ways in which they’re devious, and the ways in which they’re well intentioned (or not), and the ways in which they handle life (or don’t), and I love her for it. And where is there a better heroine than Mary Garth (and a cuter ne’er-do-well than Fred Vincy)? Nowhere. That’s where.
One disclaimer: About two-fifths of the way through, you may find yourself persisting through a dry section regarding who will become the Middlemarch town doctor, and you will slog through because you are a conscientious reader and you think it is important to the plot. It isn’t. If you can do it without massive reader’s guilt, I hereby give you permission to skip to the next section and enjoy every other single word about these people. Be free! Read like the wind!
The Solace of Leaving Early, by Haven Kimmel
It isn’t funny, mostly—for that, you’d have to go to Kimmel’s childhood memoir, A Girl Named Zippy—but for a flawed and headstrong heroine and (eventual) true love between mismatched equals, this is a good place to go.
84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff
Once upon a time, Miss Osborne and I went to London. I demanded that we find and pay our respects at 84 Charing Cross Road, where we found only a plaque and it became clear that Miss Osborne had no idea what we were doing or why she was being hurried around the city by a crazy person fixated on a single address not occupied by the Prime Minister. We came back to the States, I forced my copy into her hands, she read it and fell in love, and we all lived happily ever after, forcing many of our friends to read the greatest, funniest, saddest nonfiction epistolary book about books of all time. The End.
Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons
Cold Comfort Farm is not about the Regency period, but it IS the hilarious story of a plucky young lady and her country relatives, AND—bonus!—it’s a satire of a now-dead genre of Gothic literature about girls wandering the moors. (Fun fact: I just typed “Wandering the Moors,” but that is not the same at ALL.) There is nothing about this of which Jane would not have approved, except perhaps for the oversexed cousin named Seth (or Reuben, because there’s always an oversexed cousin named Seth or Reuben).
I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith
I never quite understand why Cassandra Mortmain and her sister Rose don’t really rate in the canon of coming-of-age heroines. They live in a CASTLE! And they’re poor, but trying not to be, and they have adventures and misadventures on the path to love and self-actualization, and isn’t that what coming of age is all about? Why the author of 101 Dalmatians wrote a combo young-adult novel/treatise on Modernism isn’t entirely clear, but it’s wonderful and worth a read.
What am I missing, readers? What’s Janelike but not exactly Jane?
Come one, come all, to the Jane Austen Fight Club, where the very best from Jane’s world and the very best from everywhere else match wits and fists for all to see! The prizes: pride, honor, and the adoration of Jane fans everywhere, or a “The first rule of fight club is, we don’t talk about Mr. Darcy” t-shirt and possibly some Regency medical care for all your combat-induced wound-care needs!
Today’s contestants: Elizabeth “Fine Eyes” Bennet, who’s spunky and sparky and holds a grudge like nobody’s business, and Katniss “I’m Super Scary” Everdeen, who will shoot you in the heart. Literally. THIS IS NOT A METAPHOR, PEOPLE.
In their corners:
Lizzy’s a smart cookie with a dirty hem, a healthy cardiovascular system (who knew Jane was so into running?), and, for all we know, a collection of survival books at the ready. Some say she battles the undead, but that’s ridiculous.
Katniss is an accidental teenage revolutionary who caused, directly or indirectly, the violent demises of a number of her competitors during a life-or-death gladiatorial reality show, then brought the oppressive government of her people to its knees. So there’s that.
Handicaps:
Lizzy may have a sharp tongue, but that’s about it. Maybe she could sic her mother on Katniss, if Mrs. Bennet stopped talking long enough to hear her? Otherwise, she’ll have to make a run for it, and whatever shoes she has are likely not Capitol-approved.
Katniss has a keen sense of guilt and an occasional tendency to make poor decisions; if Lizzy can make her do something stupid (probably by posing as an authority figure), then make her feel super bad about it, she might have a chance.
Decision:
You guys, it’s a fight. What’s Lizzy going to do, fend danger off with an embroidery needle? Miss “Arrow in the eye” wins it. She’s probably pretty haunted about it, though, if it makes you feel any better.
Next week: Fitzwilliam “The Gentleman” Darcy goes to the mats against Peeta “Frosting Stud” Mellark! Only on an Austen blog near you!
The great ebook wars started innocently enough in June, 2012. A single alert blogger, Philip Howard, noticed that the Barnes & Noble version of War and Peace had erased all instances of the word Kindle—an competitor at the time—with their own brand-name, Nook. (“It was as if a light had been Nookd in a carved and painted lantern….”) One or two blogs picked it up, the people lol’ed, case closed.
An simple mistake with search-and-replace, but it started people thinking. . . hackers had already inserted zombies into Pride and Prejudice in the careless spirit of the 2000s, so why not make some money by selling product placement in the books? Anyone can publish e-versions of books no longer in copyright. Starbucks was first on the bandwagon in late 2012, with their special Frappuccino Editions of the classics (Frappuccino was a curious coffee-like drink). These editions merely replaced all coffee and tea, coffeehouses and tea shops in the classics, with Starbucks. The changes to the coffee shop scene in Persuasion did cause some comment on the primitive “social networks” of the time, but marketers and companies eagerly lined up to have their products inserted in some edition, any edition of a classic, and by 2015 generic ebooks were becoming rare and collectible.
The sudden rebirth of the bowdlerizers, and their tireless campaign to find and replace smut where ordinary dirty-minded citizens couldn’t even see it, spun off into its own crusade. Of course, the main target in Austen was “intercourse.” The mere thought of Emma and Miss Bates having “a regular and steady intercourse” caused President Sarah Palin to mandate bowdlerized versions of all classics in 2020.
The fall of America into chaos, the rise of the underground movement for Pure Classics, and the petty in-fighting of the various Jane factions (Austen, Eyre, Bennet, and Cobb), need not be gone into. Every schoolchild knows that in 2072, the Pure Classics broke away from the Altered Versions, and the two empires have been fighting ever since. It has been a long and terrible history. But on this, the 1,000th anniversary of the first shot of this massive war, let us stop and remember that it need never have happened.
. . .
Ok, so this could also be called Leo Tolstoy Hates Your Search-and-Replace. But, you know, once you start down the Dark Side, forever will it guide your destiny! So, beware!
Sketch for the new Mansfield Park adaptation . . . No, just kidding . . . I said, JUST KIDDING!
So, I just read a new book that I think might explain a little bit about Jane Austen and Fanny Price—QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. (Here’s a good article summing up the book: The Rise of the New Groupthink.) No surprise that Fanny’s a world-class introvert; I think we can all agree on that. But part of Ms. Cain’s point is that extroversion has become much more important over the past few hundred years, and something called the Culture of Character gave over to the Culture of Personality, in which we live today. Here’s the ideal self the Culture of Character self-help books described:
- Citizenship
- Duty
- Work
- Golden Deeds
- Honor
- Reputation
- Morals
- Manners
- Integrity
That doesn’t [hint hint] sound familiar at all, does it?? Anybody we know? Not little Miss Price, sitting in the corner?
And what about the ideal self from the Culture of Personality? Here’s what her self-help books describe:
- Magnetic
- Fascinating
- Stunning
- Attractive
- Glowing
- Dominant
- Forceful
- Energetic
Hmmmm….. Is there anyone in Mansfield Park who embodies those traits? And might she just coincidentally be Fanny’s rival just a teeny bit? I think Jane Austen actually uses at least half those words to describe Miss Crawford.
Now, the odd part is that Ms. Cain and “influential cultural historian, Warren Susman,” who she gets all this from—they both say that this switch from admiring Character to admiring Personality happened roughly at the end of the 19th century, when people were moving to cities and working with people they didn’t know, and having to sell themselves. And yet, here we have Mansfield Park almost 100 years earlier, and Jane Austen seemingly talking through Character vs. Personality. (That’s not foreshadowing in any way, Miss Ball.)
In a way, this makes Fanny more believable to me; that Our Jane would write a heroine like her makes sense if those qualities were more important. And yet, everyone in the book clearly finds Fanny awfully trying—they don’t hold her up as an ideal, no, they’re all over Miss Personality Crawford. So… maybe what Jane Austen is doing is looking at books that idealize the Fanny Price type and saying, “You pretend you like this girl, but in real life you think she’s a drip. See, I’ll prove it.”
When you think about it, that’s what Jane Austen does. Take stereotypes and look at them in real life: Catherine Morland vs. the Gothic novel. Marianne Dashwood vs. Ro-mance. Elizabeth Bennet vs. Prejudice . . . Wow, looking at it like that, Mansfield Park actually makes sense to me. And are we surprised that Jane Austen picked up on how people really thought of each other years before the self-help books did? No. No, we are not.
