Mansfield Park by Jane Austen with Beatrice Scudeler

Jane Austen's most underrated novel is also her most serious. In this conversation, books editor Nadya Williams and essayist Beatrice Scudeler explore what Mansfield Park has to say about virtue, vocation, wealth, and the formation of character -- and why Fanny Price, the novel's quiet, overlooked heroine, may be Austen's most carefully drawn moral portrait.

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Chapters

• 00:03 -- Opening: Austen reads the opening lines of Mansfield Park; Nadya introduces the episode and season premise
• 01:48 -- Defining a classic: what makes a work speak across centuries without losing its rootedness in its own time
• 05:29 -- Why Mansfield Park for America's 250th: Austen, evangelical Christianity, and the values that crossed the Atlantic
• 08:48 -- The plot: Fanny Price, the Bertrams, and what happens when the Crawfords arrive from London
• 13:35 -- The problem of Fanny Price: why modern readers resist her, and why Lionel Trilling diagnosed the real issue in the 1960s
• 19:57 -- Fanny as a sympathetic character: what it means to be 10 years old, sent away from your family, and expected to be grateful
• 25:09 -- The absent adults: Sir Thomas, Lady Bertram, and the novel's indictment of parenting by principle without presence
• 27:09 -- Was Fanny autobiographical? The case for Jane Austen as observer, introvert, and moral compass
• 33:15 -- What money buys: education, time, space for contemplation -- and what it cannot buy
• 39:07 -- Marriage as formation: why Austen's vision of marriage is still revolutionary, and what we've lost by privatizing it
• 41:16 -- Why Mansfield Park may be Austen's best: constancy, prudence, and the virtue of being the quiet center that holds everything together
• 48:45 -- Closing question: what classic would Beatrice have written? Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:18

About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward of Huntington, with only 7,000 pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram of Mansford Park in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady with all the comforts and consequences of a handsome house and large income. All Huntington exclaimed on the greatness of the match. And her uncle, the lawyer himself, allowed her to be at least 3,000 pounds short of any equitable claim to it. She had two sisters to be benefited by her elevation. And such of their acquaintances thought Miss Ward and Miss Francis, quite as handsome as Miss Maria, did not scruple to predict their marrying with almost equal advantage. But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them. So opens Jane Austen her third novel, Mansfeld Park. Welcome to season two of Christians Reading Classics, the podcast from Mirror Orthodoxy. I'm Nadia Williams, book's editor at Muir Orthodoxy, and today it is my delight to talk about Jane Austen's Mansfield Park with Beatrice Scuttler. Beatrice is a prolific essayist and she writes really thoughtfully. Like I love how she writes about literature and life of motherhood, faith, and cultural issues that pertain to us today as well. Because Jane Austen's world is not so far removed from ours. So, Beatrice, thank you for joining me today.

SPEAKER_04 2:01

Thank you for asking me to join you today. It's wonderful to be able to speak about what is probably my second favorite, if not my favorite, Jane Austen novel, but one that I think is unfortunately underrated.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

And we'll get into the reasons for that in a minute. But first But first I have to ask you, as a literature scholar, what is your definition of a classic?

SPEAKER_04 2:26

That is a very good question. I think so the answer I would give would be something along that, you know, every literary scholar will tell you something completely different. To me, a classic is a work of literature that is both universal in its theme, somehow it speaks to people throughout the ages. It doesn't necessarily matter how long ago it was written. Obviously, there might be an issue of having to translate it, but still, there's something about it that speaks to people at any time, anywhere. But at the same time, it needs to be firmly rooted in its own time and the location in which it's set. And the reason I say that is because I think if a novel is very clearly of its time and of its place, not in the negative sense of becoming dated very quickly, but rather in the positive sense of being a novel that is deeply rooted in the society in which it was written, that allows us to both see the similarities and the differences to our own society, to our own culture. And I think that really spurs us to reflect on the culture in which we live now, in the place in which we live. So it has to have both that specificity and yet that universal quality to it. And I think Jane Austen's novels and Mansville Parkinson in particular really fit that description.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

I like that. And I was thinking as you were talking of how I would agree with these definitions, even like as I think about Greco-Roman antiquity and the reasons that works that seem at first glance like why would we care today about Homeric heroes? Well, on the one hand, they spoke in a different way to their contemporaries or people reading them in antiquity. Um, on the other hand, even today, we see so many similarities that continue to surprise us.

SPEAKER_04 4:23

Exactly. And it's absolutely fine if we also can see a sense of if we also feel a sense of alien alieness when we read a work or of literature that was written a long time ago. That's that's fine. But it can still give us the initiative to confront our values and our reality through that difference. So, you know, I I'm a firm believer that we shouldn't make a claim that something is classic and something's worth reading only if it seems relevant to our culture now, which is, you know, often what happens. Often um scholars of Austin will say, well, she was an early feminist, or well, she was interested in this or that issue, and that's why she's worth reading now. And what I'm trying to say is actually she's very similar to us in many ways, she's also very different from us in in other ways, and she's worth reading because of that too.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

I love that. Yes. So um instead of instrumentalizing literature, we have to realize that it's beautiful also.

SPEAKER_04 5:28

Precisely. That's exactly right, yeah. Um, although, yeah, as I said, not not everyone has has found Mansfield Park beautiful over the two centuries since this was written and published, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

Well, so let's talk about why it why Mansfield Park is worth reading today. Um, so the theme of this second season of the podcast is uh classics American Christians should read in the year of America's 250th. And in some ways, Jane Austen kind of makes makes sense. I mean, she is as old as America. She was born in 1775. So that's right. Um, on the other hand, she's a British novelist. So uh talk to me. Uh tell us why specifically Jane Austen and why specifically this novel um would be a great read for American Christians in the year of 250th.

SPEAKER_04 6:21

Absolutely. Um it's it's quite fortuitous that these two big anniversaries are lining up. Austin's uh 250 years since Austen was born, and obviously since uh America was born as a country. Um so Austin might not seem like the most obvious choice. Obviously, she was not an American author. Um, but Mansfield Party in particular, I think is an excellent choice, and I think Americans should um read it because um Jane Austen grew up. I'll give you the kind of short story and then we can delve more into this later. Uh Jane Austen was brought up as an Anglican Christian, so within the Church of England tradition, but throughout her life um there was a new religious movement, the evangelical movement, that became very popular in the UK, and then later on it crossed the Atlantic and it came to the US as well. And I think obviously evangelicalism today is in many ways different from what it was in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but a lot of the core beliefs are the same, they come from British evangelicalism, and I think these are beliefs that have also shaped America as a country. Um, obviously, I'm speaking as a Brit, so I don't want to um kind of impose my own my own perception of what American values are uh on someone who I'm I'm sure, such as yourself, you know, has a much better sense of what it is to be American. But um, from an outsider's perspective, certain values or certain beliefs that I associate with a sense of Americanness are things like individualism, egalitarianism, um, things like you know, being industrious, being productive, um directness and not being afraid of making one's opinions and one's feelings known. You know, the opposite of us British people who are very introverted and very shy and overly polite, um, or even things like a very strong sense of justice. And of course, all of these values can have more negative and more positive iterations, but they are all values that I associate with a sense of Americanness, and they're all values that really come from this evangelical movement that I've been talking about. And Mansfield Park, I think more than any other Jane Austen novel, deals with these things. It really delves deep into what is happening in terms of how Christianity is expressed in Jane Austen's times. I think she was thinking a lot about these issues, and so I think it's worth um, it's worth a read, even you know, even though she wasn't an American, granted.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Well, absolutely. And I really enjoyed, um, I really enjoyed this one. Um, it's the I think the only Jane Austen novel that I have not read. So I really appreciated this opportunity to read it finally. So let's walk through the novel now. Um, maybe we don't want to ruin the ending for people. Um it's kind of funny actually. Like I've been convicted of this recently, uh, not ruining the ending. Did you know the only like attempted murder in the continent of Antarctica was over between two scientists there, one of whom was spoiling the ends of books for another.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

And so the guy, anyway, yeah, it was this is like one of the most random stories I came across, and it's been living rent-free on the head.

SPEAKER_04 9:49

Excellent story. Yeah, so so one of the two so it was just the two of them, these two scientists living in this particular complex. So um, okay, I one of them spoils the ending of a book for the other, and then okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Anyway, it's it's hilarious. Um, I mean, probably not hilarious for the guy who nearly got killed, but it seems but it seems like from the story, it seems like he was really asking for it. Like spoiling the end of a really good novel for somebody is like serious business. Anyway, so we don't want to do that on this podcast. Absolutely. But we're going to set the stage for readers, and especially for someone who might never have read this novel before. We'll give them reasons to read it. So we start with this premise to the very beginning, which I read um very Jane Austen. Like you have a tale of three sisters, one makes a good match, one makes a sort of middling match, and one makes a poor match. And we kind of we find find this out on the first page, and then we go from there.

SPEAKER_03 10:52

So let's go from there.

SPEAKER_04 10:55

Absolutely. So yes, it's good, it's almost like um a fairy tale, isn't it? You know, a lot of fairy talking. The three sisters and this sister made the right choice, and this other one made a different choice. Um, absolutely. So although whether anybody made the right choice, well, that that that is a good question. In this case, um, I would personally say none none of the sisters made a particularly good choice, but that that is also for the other readers to to decide for themselves. Um, but yeah, so the the the main character in Mansfield Park is Family Price. She is the daughter of one of these three sisters. Um her mother marries someone who is not very well off, and they have a big family, so lots of siblings, and it was quite a normal thing to do at the time if you had a big family and you were relatively poor, you were struggling to feed your children, to send one of the children to a more well-off relative to live with them, and that's exactly what happens to Fanny. So when she's a child, she's sent to live with her aunt and uncle, the Bertrams, who live on this really big estate of Mansfield Park, and she feels very lonely there. She misses her home, but at the same time, she enjoys all of these comforts that she had not experienced at home. She does not get particularly well on with her cousins, her two female cousins, um, all her one of her male cousins, but she does really form this friendship with Edmund Bertram, her other cousin. Um, and from there she sort of starts to settle in Mansfield Park, and we follow her journey from when she's a child into adulthood. And she's really quite a quiet and thoughtful character. So she's not the kind of she's not an Elizabeth Bennett type from Pride and Prejudice, you know, she's not particularly chatty or particularly extroverted. She's opinionated, but she often keeps her opinions to herself. So people think she's a little bit boring, and that's part of the reasons why a lot of readers of Mansfield Park have not enjoyed the novels as much as Austin's other works. But she's also an incredibly thoughtful and incredibly considerate character. She's an observer of human nature, I would say. Um, she's always observing her family, observing her friends, and trying to figure out are they doing the right thing? Should I advise them to do something different? Which I think is quite nice because we can really see ourselves in in her role, right, as the reader. Um, we are observing everyone that she's observing at the same time. So it's it's it's quite wonderful in that way, in the way it's written. It's a very introspective novel. You really get a good sense of what's going on in her mind, even more so than in other um novels that that Austin wrote. And then everything gets turned upside down when these two very glamorous people come from London. Jane Austen did not was not a big fan of big cities, so if anyone is coming to visit from London, they are going to be evil and corrupted and bring all these different vices from the big city. So that's exactly what happens. So these two characters, Henry Crawford and Mary Crawford, these two siblings, come onto the scene and then chaos ensues. That's kind of the very beginning of the novel. Um, I don't want to say any more for now. I don't want to spoil everything else that happens.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

So, who do you think Jane Austen is rooting for? Because it seems like on the one hand, you have like this boring protagonist, Fanny, um, as some would say is boring. I was actually thinking like she's realistic.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

Like the family just decided they just took this poor kid from her family, um, and like threw her amidst these cousins she's never met, and everybody's kind of like expecting her to be grateful and instead is appalled that she's crying when she gets there. It's like, what is this?

SPEAKER_02 15:00

Um so what is Jane Austen trying to like what kind of emotions do you think she's trying to evoke?

SPEAKER_04 15:08

That's an excellent question. So I think the first thing we need to think about, and I've kind of mentioned this already, is that some of our values and sensibilities now I think are actually quite different from Austin's times. So when the novel was first published, it did not have a bad reception at all. Austin was aware that she was writing a very different novel from Pride and Prejudice. You know, as Pride and Prejudice was about to be published, she wrote to her sister, Cassandra Austin, saying that this time around she was going to have a complete change of subject in her novel. You know, this was going to be different. She knew this. But this was not in, you know, she wasn't expecting the novel to be received more negatively because of this. So, how have our sensibilities changed? So, this is all to say I think Jane Otton is fully on board with Fanny Price as a character. I think she loves her as as her heroine. I don't think she's trying to get us, the readers, to perceive Fanny as an annoying, boring, kind of prudish, uh pietistical character at all. I think that is entirely our perception of her. And yet we have perceived her like that over the over the years. And that that that that's really interesting because you know, everyone, well not everyone, but most people I've spoken to who are big Austin fans will will tell me that this is their least favourite novel. It's so common. I I hear this all the time, and when I ask them why, they just say I don't like Fanny Price. I just I can't I can't get myself to like her. And like I said, you know, she's not particularly uh sparkling and vivacious like Elizabeth Bennett or Emma. And she's also quite devout, she's quite religious, and she always wants to do the right thing. She's got, you know, some would say kind of an obsession with doing the right thing at the right time. Which some people think means that she doesn't, you know, she doesn't know how to have fun, she's too puritanical. Um some people think that she cares more about being thought of as being good than actually doing good for other people, which again I would disagree, but that's the kind of reaction that I hear often. And what's quite funny is that actually there's a really good essay from a literary critic called Lionel Trilling from sometime in the 60s, where he says that no one now, now you know, in the 60s, but I think it applies to our current times as well, no one could like the heroin of Mansfield Park. He says that very bluntly, and he thought it was because our sensibilities had just changed too much. Our modern literary taste was just completely against virtuous characters, and it's actually quite interesting that he says we only like virtuous characters if they have had to overcome a very strong temptation to sin. So he gives the example of um, for example, of Augustine, and he says, you know, in with our modern sensibilities, if we do like a saint, it's probably going to be Augustine because he sinned a lot before he became devout. And if we like, you know, I don't know, for example, I think he gives the example of of Milton, you know, if we if we're going to enjoy Paradise Lost, it's it's only if we believe that Milton was on the side of the devil and not on the side of God. You know, that he gives these examples of how our sensibilities have really changed, and and that's why he thinks people don't like Mansfield Park anymore, that we're just somehow offended by how virtuous Fanny is. But I also think that's not entirely I think he's hit on a very important point, which is that we dislike virtuous characters, but I also think he's wrong in saying that Fanny is never tempted, because I think towards the end of the novel, um, and I don't know if you want me to reveal exactly what happens because I don't want to spoil it, but she does I'll just say that she is tempted to make a very important life decision, which deep down she knows is wrong, and she's quite literally sent away from Mansfield Park, which has been her home for years and years, and sent back to her family to reflect on her decision because her uncle is pressuring her in a direction that she knows is wrong, but that she's tempted to take. So I I think it's wrong that that that she's that she never sins, perhaps. Perhaps she does always make the right choice, but it's not to say that she does it automatically, like she doesn't even have to think about it. She does, she is tempted, and I think that makes her a very compelling character. But yeah, that's that's a kind of long explanation for that. But I I'm really trying to defend that because I think she's wonderful, if you hadn't noticed.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

I liked her. Um, I felt, although the main emotion I felt was just like sorrow for everything she had to go through. Like I just felt a lot of compassion for her, both as a mom. Like, here's this child barely 10 years old, just like taken away from her family. I mean, like, she's the age of my middle son. And I'm just thinking, like, if we had to send this child away right now, that would be heartbreaking for the whole family. And it clearly is heartbreaking for Fanny. And we get hints of how like it was difficult for her family to do that. And so doing this as they were thinking, like, well, we're doing the right thing, everybody's thinking at the beginning, we're doing the right thing. And it's a little more complicated than that. And I appreciated the point you just brought up. This is a novel about choices, like making the right choices in life. And the question of how to go about that. Why do you think Jane Austen was so interested in this question at that point?

SPEAKER_04 21:08

That's another really good question. So I think at that time. And I will say actually, what what what you said about how she goes away from home and feels both homesick and homeless, in the sense that from a very young age she doesn't quite have a place where she belongs. So it's uh somewhat of a tangent, but it reminded me that I think that's another way in which an American reader might relate to this novel in the sense that America is still a young country compared to a lot of other countries. And you know, it's it's it's it's still a country that is finding a sense of identity, or that at least, you know, I mean, there's a sense of identity, of course, but but but I think perhaps in the US you understand being in the process of creating a national identity more than maybe. Do in the UK, where you know we've been a nation for much longer. And Fanny, this is exactly what happens to Fanny on a on a much smaller scale, is she's she never quite belongs anywhere. So she's having to create the sense of identity, even in the title of the novel. The title of the novel is the the place where she lives, but it's not exactly her home. And it's not her name. You know, with some of Austin's novels, the titles are just abstract nouns, pride and prejudice, sense and sensibility. With Emma, it's quite literally the name of the heroine, Emma. But with Mansfield Park, it's nothing to do with the heroine. So that that's quite an interesting point in and of itself. But to go back to your question about why was Austin so interested in making the right choice and what's right and what's wrong, I would say the kind of short answer is she was a very committed Christian. She grew up the daughter of a clergyman of an Anglican priest. So this is something that she was trained to think about throughout her life. She was um taught to pray every day. Uh, she even wrote prayers herself that have survived, in which she asks God to help her discern what what she should do um at the end of each day. Um so this this is something that was very natural for her to think about. But then I would say this is where her interest in the priesthood really comes into focus. So all of her novels have priest characters, right? But some of them, the the the priests are a little bit silly or uh, you know, a little bit laughable. So people often say, well, if she was interested in, you know, if she was so religious, why is Mr. Collins and Brett and Prejudice such a terrible person? And that that is a very, you know, a very fair question to ask. But what I would say is that he was awful because she cared a lot about the vocation of the priesthood being carried out well, and so she didn't shy away from portraying both very good clergymen and very bad ones. And in Mansfield Park, I think she shows us the process of someone, so a different character, not Fanny herself, but Edmund Bertram, who's the kind of the male, the the hero of the story, the other main character. She shows us in him a character who is approaching ordination, so who is about to become a priest, and who is taking that duty very seriously, but also having lots of doubts. So it's it it's it's quite um it's quite pleasing in a way that we have a male character and a female character in this novel. The female character, Fanny, always wants to make the right choice in life, always wants to do the right thing, the moral thing, and most of the time she's quite certain about it. And then you have Edmund, who is actually trained to become a priest, but he's kind of you know a lot more uncertain, and she's his moral compass as much as he is hers. So they they have this kind of uh this really beautiful relationship where they they help each other make good choices, they have this beautiful friendship. Um, and we know that Austin thought of this novel as a novel about ordination, about someone choosing the location of the priesthood, because again, she told her sister Cassandra in in a novel, in a letter, sorry, which is um uh it's it's great that we that that's survived so that we know exactly what her intentions were.

SPEAKER_02 25:22

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SPEAKER_00 26:03

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SPEAKER_02 26:59

That is striking. You know, there are also like as as you're talking, I'm thinking like about the absences. We have the absence of responsible adults who would advise these, I mean, teenagers.

SPEAKER_04 27:12

Yes, exactly. So that's something we should we should absolutely mention. Um, Sir Bertram and Lady Bertram are just not very good parents. I mean, Lady Bertram, if you just sits on a couch with her dog all day. She's just sits exactly. She just sits on a couch, she doesn't do much, she doesn't seem to really know what's going on around her. Uh, and then Sir Thomas is often away for for work, and he simply doesn't know what's going on in his household. And we have a really beautiful moment actually at the end of the novel, where again, I want to say exactly what happens, but uh all of his children, in some way or another, make really bad choices in life. Um, and he has this moment of recognition of, oh wow, I've not been a good parent. I told my children, this is what you do, this is you know, the the these are the kind of general values you should have in life. But then I was never there to actually teach them all of this. He has that that that kind of moment where his um character arc is resolved and he he realizes everything he's done wrong. So absolutely, they have they have no no role models really. Um, which is also why I think it's so beautiful that the novel has so much to do with the vocation of becoming a priest, because we are I suppose we're meant to assume that by the end of the novel, um perhaps Edmund Bertram will be the kind of figure, the kind of role model that for other people that he didn't have himself growing up. And so was Fanny, although in a different way.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

So do you think Jane Austen w sees Fanny as kind of a autobiographical in an autobiographical light?

SPEAKER_04 28:59

Oh, I like I like that question a lot. So it's funny because everyone has a different opinion on which Jane Austen's protagonist she was most like, which of our own you know characters she was most like. Some people say, oh, well, she she must have been exactly like Elizabeth Bennett because you know she's she's very witty and very intelligent and very sarcastic in her writing. So surely she was like that in real life. Um I third an argument for her being more like Emma, uh, in that you know, Jane Austen seemed to enjoy gossip based on her letters, so and you know, so does Emma. Uh uh Emma Woodhouse is uh a very um uh let's say she she likes to be a matchmaker and she likes to get in everyone's business. So um, so I you know I've heard that argument as well. Uh some people say she was more like Anne Elliott from persuasion. I I've always personally thought that she must have put a lot of herself in Fanny Price, and I say that because Fanny is also someone who observes a lot and then but then doesn't sort of immediately get her thoughts out. She needs to absorb the information, absorb um everything she's observed in the behavior of the people around her, and then she thinks it through by herself in her own room in her own time. And when you think about it, that's not so unlike the art of writing a novel. Um, so I can imagine Jane Austen being a little bit like that. If you um if you go, you you can go to, you can visit uh the the cottage where she spent her remaining years later in life, and there is this little desk, it's very small, it's this tiny, tiny desk where she wrote or revised most of her well-known novels. And you you can just imagine her there, you know, getting everything out on paper, but perhaps not necessarily always expressing her opinions in that witty way in real life, if that makes sense, because her letters are also very witty. But then again, she was often described as someone not necessarily particularly extroverted in in her actual day-to-day life. So perhaps this is just me being an introvert, um, wanting Austin to be uh like like me, but but yes, I I I can see that there's um maybe there's something a little bit autobiographical in Fanny to show.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

I was thinking about that, where uh there's um at least one instance in the novel where people just kind of forget her.

SPEAKER_03 31:40

Oh they do just left her! Oh dear, like there's this moment. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 31:47

Yeah, there's um there's this moment uh they they're visiting the house of um uh so Mr. Brushworth is engaged to one of her cousins, and they're visiting his estate. Uh, and everyone's running off in a different direction, everyone's flirting with everyone else, and she's just sitting at this little bench, and they just completely forget that she exists, but of course she's taking everything in, and she knows what everyone else is doing and what they're doing wrong, and what they're doing that they're not supposed to be doing, but they just completely forget of her existence. Um, so yes, it's it's quite sad, actually. You you're right, but uh but I will just say she does, you know, um she her love is recognized by the end of the novel by the other characters, so that that that it's still a satisfying ending in that way.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

I thought so, yeah. I found the ending satisfying that Jane Austen connected uh the various loose ends really well at the end. Like you you have that tension throughout the novel, but it is also funny to see like the person who is not charismatic is just so forgettable, like she really does blend in with the wallpaper, or um, and that's it. And yet um there's virtue in silent, kind of well, quiet, uh thoughtful life. Um, which is why I was wondering if she was relating to that. As a writer, I find that I relate to that.

SPEAKER_04 33:07

Um I relate to that too, and it it's I like that you said she blends in with a wallpaper because you know, she she almost literally does in the sense that she's always, well, she sent away from Mansfield Park at one point, like we said, which she experiences as almost traumatic. You know, she she had become such an important part of this little community of Mansfield Park. But once she returns, she not only does she you know fit right back in, but she actually becomes the kind of the heart of this house. You know, as we said, Lady Bertram doesn't really even know what's going on around her. And Sir Thomas, who when she was younger, doesn't think much of Fanny, realizes by the end of the novel that she's really the only person in their entire family that has moral principles. And he comes to, in some ways, rely on her. She really becomes the heart and the kind of the moral core of this of this place. So it is kind of a good thing in this novel if you blend in with a wallpaper in the sense of if you are a core part of this house that represents the small community of people. She's solid, she's you know, um, she's stable, and she provides that stability for everyone else around her. Someone has to be the quiet observer that keeps everyone else in check. Um, and she does that so well.

SPEAKER_02 34:33

Yeah. I really, I really enjoyed that complexity. Another complexity I want to talk, uh I wanted to ask you about is the question of like wealth and poverty. Because we have this um set the stage that there's the wealthy family, the Bertrams, and then there's like the poor prices who have to send a kid away and all of that. And the idea of like what can money buy for you? So in Jane Austen's messaging here, what does money buy for you?

SPEAKER_04 35:05

So I would say money buys education, at least in her times, and it buys it buys time. Something I was really struck by when I reread the novel fairly recently was that when Fanny goes back to her original home with her birth family, um, and she has lots of siblings, I'm actually forgetting how many, but it's something like eight or nine. She can't find a quiet moment to just sit down and write a letter. You know, it's it's always busy, it's always chaotic. Which, of course, you know, in some ways, that's wonderful. I'm not at all saying that big that there's something wrong with big families, not not at all. But but her family, they you know, they they're they're not extremely poor, you know, they have enough money to eat, but they live in a very small space, and they are you know constantly interrupting each other, and that's something she really misses is time and space for quiet reflection. And again, I think that's not at all to say that there's something wrong with a big family or with living in a small place. I live in a small place and I don't have a big family yet, but you know, we we do have uh two kids, that there's always noise in the house, there's nothing wrong with that. Um, but I think Austin is quite realistic that with a family like the Bertrams, who are much more well off, there is space for contemplation, and that's what Fanny really, really loves doing. She loves going back to her own room and she loves to spend time in contemplation. On the flip side of that, uh no one else at Manshill Park really, except for maybe Edmund, really spends any time in contemplation, even though they have the means to do so. So this is not, you know, that this is really a novel about um some worthy characters who do not have the means to do what they would like to do, and then some very unworthy characters who have the wealth and yet don't use it as well at all. Because we also learn that after the end of the novel, one of Fanny's sisters, Susan, will come to join her at Mansfield Park. And she also turns out to be this wonderful young woman, very thoughtful, also very worthy. So it's you know, Mansfield Park begins to be inhabited by characters that come from poverty, but that are bringing a wealth of wisdom to this house that is inhabited by such wealthy people who literally do not spend any time doing anything useful for themselves. So, you know, the there's a sense of justice there as well.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

And that explains again why she chose the title of Mansfield Park for the novel, that it really is about the place and the idea that I like what you just explained that uh money will not buy you virtues. But money can facilitate growth in the virtues if you use it well.

SPEAKER_04 38:06

Exactly, because Funny through her friendship with her cousins is able to have the kind of education that she could never have had at home. So Andrew Nostin is always very practical and very realistic when she writes about money. She's a romantic, but she also none of her herons marry someone who's completely penniless. You know, um, some of them marry someone that was penniless, but then eventually got you know a job or something, or was it was able to have enough money to create a family and create a home and a household. Um but yeah, also is quite um it's quite realistic about that. Um, but but what's so beautiful is that you really do get a sense at the end that you get a sense of poetic justice. And you you could argue that it's not realistic in the sense that in real life good people don't always get what they deserve. But I think in the world of Austin's novels, she wrote comedies, you know, she wrote novels that do end happily. Um, and and I think there is benefit for us as readers in in reading stories like that, um, where good people do get what they deserve. Um, I think they are hopeful, and I think that's something that we should cultivate in our reading.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

Yeah. I'm thinking again of that snarky sentence on the first page of the novel that there are just not enough good husbands for all the pretty girls who deserve them.

SPEAKER_04 39:27

Well, and and even that, you know, in and of itself, um she's questioning, you know, obviously she's often quite um sarcastic in her tone. Austin, I mean that's the right. Yes. And and and even that, you know, the idea of oh, there aren't enough good husbands for all these pretty women, what she really means is that there aren't enough rich husbands for these pretty pretty women. And in that consideration, you know, um the the um Pride and Prejudice begins in some ways in a similar way with with a very famous quotation, you know, it's a truth universally acknowledged that you know uh uh a man in with good fortune. Exactly, must be wantable life. So again, that the idea is you know, there's a wealthy man, he must want a pretty woman. But but you know, we shouldn't. Jane Austen is saying that because it it probably is how considerations of marriage and you know matchmaking worked in her day, but she's not saying that's a good thing, that all you need is a wealthy man and a pretty woman. I think through her novels we find out actually, what you really need is enough money to live on, but then to have two sensible people, which there is definitely not enough sensible people in uh in the world, in our opinion. Um, and and and most of I would say all of her major novels are really stories about um two characters growing in virtue and eventually marrying, not just because of financial considerations, but also because they believe that they can continue to help each other grow in virtue, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 40:57

Yeah, and that is a and that is a useful and thoughtful message that's still revolutionary today, the whole idea of like why do we why is marriage a good thing, uh, both spiritually good, but also good for our society? Well, because if you grow in the virtue, everybody benefits.

SPEAKER_04 41:17

Absolutely, and it's you know, in some ways you could say uh at her time in her times, um perhaps in some cases there was too much of an emphasis on making a good match, you know, marrying someone rich. But I think we've gone too far the other way where in you know most people, well, a lot of people in my generation are not marrying at all, or are guessing married very late. Um, but when they do, it's not thought to be something that is beneficial to society, it's just thought of as a personal, individual, private decision that is going to benefit just you. And that's not what we get in our system um at all. What we get is that is well, actually, yes, it's beneficial for the two people involved in that they make each other happy, but two people that are in good marriage make their entire local community better as well. I think we've kind of lost that a little bit in our society now, that sense of um good marriages, being able to have a wider effect on society.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

And that's a really worthy uh message to recover and remember.

SPEAKER_04 42:25

Absolutely, I uh I completely agree. Um and you know, some some people will say, well, what uh what experience did she have? Because she never got married uh herself. Um she remained single throughout her life. Um but again, I think much like Fanny, the point is that if you're a good enough observer of character and observer of the world, um I think you can make very thoughtful points about the goods that you should strive for, um, even if you haven't experienced a particular location yourself.

SPEAKER_02 42:59

So let me ask you, you mentioned at the beginning of this conversation that this is either your favorite or second favorite Austin novel. So tell me more.

SPEAKER_04 43:09

That's yeah, absolutely. So um it it's funny because I always go in between Fred and Prejudice and Mansfield Park, which tend to be most people's favorite and least favorite of her novels. I think that's something I enjoy about how different the two main characters are and how they show us different ways in which you can be virtuous as a person. Um, because that's the other temptation that we can often have is um, first of all, virtue as a word isn't not particularly trendy. It's not particularly, you know, people don't like to talk about being virtuous. That sounds boring and it sounds old fashioned and it sounds a little bit too you know preachy. Um, but whatever you want to call it, being a good person, being virtuous, whatever you prefer, I think we can have the temptation of going immediately to, well, to be a good person. You must do exactly this and this and that. There's only one way. You have to take, you know, all the boxes, and there's only one way to be a good person. And Austin, with all of her different heroes, each of them is very different. And she shows us that actually you're gonna be a good person in several very different ways. Um, and part of that, I think she was reacting against some of the novels which she read growing up, and she enjoyed them. It's not to say that that she didn't, but a lot of the novels that would have been popular when she was a child and a teenager had heroines that were very similar to each other. So they they would always be very modest, very shy. The one virtue that was always written about as being the most important virtue for women was chastity and modesty. Um but there wasn't much about, well, okay, so you're you're a kind of pious young woman who is not going to go and have affairs with random people. Great, but what else is there to it? Um, and I think Jane Austen was reacting a little bit against this simplification of what it means to be a good woman. Um and she gives us all these different examples of what that can look like. So um, if you take Elizabeth Bennett, the heroine of Prague and Prejudice, and then Fan Price, the heroine of Mansfield Park, I would say, for example, that they are both brave, they're both courageous, but they show that in very different ways. I think there's a beauty to it. So that's probably why they're my two favorite novels. Um, I'm often tempted to say that Mansfield Park is my favorite, but that's that might be because I'm trying to defend Fanny so much. Realistically, I think they are both up there, probably equal with each other.

SPEAKER_02 45:45

I like that. And I was thinking as you were talking, also, Jane Austen brought a lot of wisdom into her favorite characters. So that's the other virtue that just this prudence that um perhaps women were not expected to have in the same measure as men.

SPEAKER_04 46:03

Absolutely, prudence is very important to Austin. Some of the other virtues that so for prudence and wisdom kind of you know could could be seen as being the same, the same virtue in a way, um, that's very important for her characters. Also, I would say the virtue of constancy, or I think that's quite important to her as well. Um, and Fanny Price is exactly that. She's very constant in her principles. Um, so uh and there's also a discussion of constancy in in in another one of her novels, Persuasion. So we can see that that's quite important to her. I would also say hope. I think it's quite important to Austin that her characters remain not hopeful in hopeful in the actual sense of the term. So not simply, well, I'll do whatever I want and things will somehow turn out fine. More in the sense of sticking by the principles and trusting that whatever happens, the fact in itself that you chose to do the right thing means that you will have some level of happiness no matter what happens. I think that's quite important for her parents as well.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

So good decisions will lead you to a good life, ultimately, or good virtues will lead you to a good life or a better life than you would have been.

SPEAKER_04 47:24

Yeah, exactly. And a good life is not necessarily a life of extreme wealth. Um, we should specify, you know, all all of all of her female characters are are happy by the end of the novels. They all have good marriages, but they don't all become extremely rich. You know, Elizabeth Bennett marries into an extremely wealthy family. But for example, um, who am I thinking of? Um Eleanor Dashford Instance of Nussibility marries someone who's going to be, you know, just a regular parish priest, and they're going to be comfortable, but they're not going to be rich by any means. But that's no less she she doesn't, she's not less happy than than than someone like Elizabeth Bennett because of that, uh, if that makes sense. Um, so yeah, a good life, but not necessarily a life of extreme wealth, because that's something else that often readers have a have an issue with with Jane Ausland. They think she's a snob or they think she's not, you know, she's only interested in very rich people. And actually, not necessarily, I think, um, I don't think that's true.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

And the virtue of constancy that you mentioned, I always think of it as a monastic virtue, that the whole like stabilitas locky, that like you stay in place, you stick there because you you are dedicated to it.

SPEAKER_04 48:40

Exactly. So actually, if I'm not mistaken, um so the the philosopher Alistair McIntyre, who really liked Jane Austen, and he thought that she really understood the tradition of the virtues. And he thought that constancy was the most important virtue for Austin. Um and he particularly liked Fanny Price. So there you go. He uh he had a soft spot for her as a heroine. Um and and you're right, it's about staying staying good and staying stable with your principles, but again, also physically. I think there is something so key to all of us as novels really about being in a small community, which often we don't experience anymore because so many of us live in cities, being in a small community and trying to do something good locally, you know. Fanny might not have been uh, you know, uh well if she had existed in real life. Of course, I'm talking to her like she's a real person, but you know, something uh I'm sure there were countless women in real life like Fanny who just quietly made a difference in their small communities by staying there and by and by trying to do the right thing, by remaining constant, like we said. Um, so it's you know, they they might never have achieved any level of fame or recognition, but that's kind of the point, it doesn't matter. Um, but there's a wonderful sense of locality in Austen's novels. I I think that's really beautiful. Um, and maybe that's also why so many of us are drawn to her novels now, because that's something that we lack a sense of small community.

SPEAKER_02 50:25

In other words, if you like Wendell Berry, consider reading Jane Austen. That yes, that sounds exactly right.

SPEAKER_03 50:35

Well, Beatrice, let me conclude with our usual closing question. What classic novel would you like to have written?

SPEAKER_04 50:45

That is another excellent question. What classic novel would I like to have written? Okay, I'm going to go in a slightly different I will not say an Austin novel, surprisingly. I love Jane Austen very, very dearly. But there is a novel by one of the Bronte sisters, Anne Bronte. She's the one Bronte sister that people tend to read a little bit less. She's a little bit forgotten. And she wrote a novel called The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which I actually always think is Anne Bronte's equivalent of Mansfield Park. I think they're two novels that are very similar in the main character, in the heroine, and also some of the themes and the concerns. It's a it's a novel about staying faithful to your principles and having hope in Providence in spite of many, many hardships in life. So I would like to have written The Talent of Wild Purple. I would highly recommend it. If you do end up reading Mansfield Park and you like it, I would go to that novel next.

SPEAKER_02 51:46

That's wonderful. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.