Bondage in Jane Austens Mansfield Park

by Loraine McGee

In Mansfield Park, Jane Austen interweaves nuances related to the name Ward, which bind the women and their children in the novel to patriarchal rule. The individuals within the family are dependant upon the Sir Thomas for subsistence, and the women are also prisoners of circumstance built into societys social hierarchy, dooming them to obedience because of the ideology of male superiority. Additionally, Austen utilizes symbols of oppression throughout the literary work. Three of these symbols surface as common elements in daily life. A book, necklace, and lock allude to underlying issues prevalent in society. As a result, Austens novel is a story about patriarchal bondage in the early nineteenth century.

In the first sentence of the book, the reader is informed that Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon is raised to the station of baronet through her marriage to Sir Thomas Bertram. As defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, the word ward refers to the guardianship of a child, or other person legally incapable of conducting his [or her] affairs or one who is under the protection or control of another. As Sir Thomas ward, Lady Bertramunder the official care granted by the laws of marriageenjoys the luxuries of the wealthy, but at the same time, she is bound to the regulations of her husbands patriarchal rule. Even though Lady Bertram is an aristocrat with a title, she is thought to be unable to make intelligent decisions, and is considered a second class citizen in a male dominated world.

Miss Ward, the second sister, finds herself obligated to marry the clergyman, Mr. Norris, who is a friend of Sir Thomas (Austen 3). Mrs. Norris not only becomes the property of her husband, who works for Sir Thomas, but she also is bound to the generosity of her brother-in-law for her survival after her husband dies. At this time, women were considered the property of their husbands and dependent upon his financial support or that of another male family member. Even if a woman earned money through sewing or other talents, the family patriarch had the right to control all household earnings. Therefore, the women in the story are under the protection of Sir Thomas for their continued existence and have become his wards through his own desire and societys traditions.

The third sister, Frances Ward, rejects her family of orientation, marries a Marine, and becomes a prisoner of poverty and family. Francis Ward becomes Mrs. Price, but the connotation of her maiden name remains with her as she is trapped in a culture of poverty. Another description of ward in the OED is explained as the condition of being a prisoner. With a disabled alcoholic husband and an expected ninth child, Mrs. Price sees no way out of her situation, and appeals to Lady Bertram for help. As a result, Fanny Price moves to Mansfield Park and becomes an additional ward of Sir Thomas. Francis two older sisters and her eldest daughter remain true to the Ward maiden name by becoming the responsibility of Sir Thomasif not by law at least by social customsand becoming duty-bound to Sir Thomass patriarchal authority.

Upon returning from the family estate in Antigua, Sir Thomas demonstrates his patriarchal authority, which constrains the actions of the entire family. Sir Thomas represents the conservative aristocrat who rejects the contemporary view of his family in regards to the theater. After removing all evidence of the theater in the billiard room and restoring it to what Sir Thomas believed to be its proper state (Austen 147), he was in hopes . . . to wipe away every outward memento of what had been, even to the destruction of every unbound copy of Lovers Vows in the house, for he was burning all that met his eye (emphasis added Austen 149). The print version of Lovers Vows is a symbol of Sir Thomas unbound children (Austen 149). Sir Thomas perceives his family as unrestrained and incapable of rational decisions and, therefore, the former must step in and remove all dangers from invading his childrens values. Sir Thomas exhibits this tyrannical behavior to assert his power over the family. As Ruth Bernard Yeazell claims in The Boundaries of Mansfield Park, Sir Thomas gesture firmly re-establishes those boundaries . . . restoring a space that had been profaned (137). In doing so, Sir Thomas remains as the sole ruler of his domain, wiping out all that he deems as a threat to his authority.

One of the most interesting links to bondage in the book can be examined through the symbolism of the necklace. The symbolism is twofoldchain and link. According to the OED, a chain is a connected series of links passing through one another or otherwise joined together, so as to move on each other more or less freely and thus form a strong but flexible ligament. This pleasing definition resembles the bond to Edmund Bertram that Fanny desiresmarriagewhen the former requests the latters acceptance of this little triflea chain for Williams cross (Austen 204). Consequently, Henry Crawford proposes marriage to Fanny but she refuses him. On one hand, Fanny wants to be linked to Edmund, but on the other hand, Crawford is determined to coerce Fanny into marriage through a responsibility to her uncle.

In an arranged marriage, the patriarchal relative negotiates the marriage and the woman is given away as property to her husband. As seen throughout the realm of history, the woman is compelled to obey male authority. If Fanny must choose a type of bondage, she is delighted that Crawfords chain can not be threaded through the ring of the cross but Edmunds necklace fits perfectly (Austen 212). Therefore, Fanny join(s) the chain and the cross, those memorials of the

two most beloved of her heart (Austen 212), and wears them as a symbol of love. She also wears Henrys chain given to her by Mary Crawford as a sense of duty, acknowledging the gift from a friend. In the end, Fannys choice of bondage as foreshadowed by the necklace comes to fruition when she marries Edmund. Fanny loves the generosity behind Edmunds gift, but as seen at the end of the story, Fanny considers Edmunds character as the valuable asset to their bond of marriage. In short, since Fanny must marry, she happily chooses her bondage to Edmund.

Furthermore, a chain is employed to restrain or fetter (OED). When a person thinks of the word fetter the shackles of slavery immediately come to mind. This definition would suit Fannys feelings for an unwelcome marriage with Crawford. Fanny is excited about the gift from Mary, until Fanny realizes that the necklace was originally a gift from Henry. Initially, Fanny believes that she is choosing a necklace brought on by the friendship of the two women. However, Miss Crawford urges her to select a specific necklace. Once Fanny accepts the necklace, she informs Mary that the former would think of her each time she wears the necklace. Much to Fannys horror, Mary enlightens Fanny that she must think of Henry, adding to Fannys dismay by saying, I make over to you all the duty of remembering the original giver (Austen 203). The stress of being linked to Henry causes Fanny to doubt her friends kindness, and Fanny dreads the wished for chainnow a symbol of an obligatory remembrance (Austen 204). As another foreshadowing of the necklace, Sir Thomas expects to compel Fanny to accept Henrys proposal and be linked to him in marriage out of duty. However, Fanny undermines Sir Thomas authority by defying social norms and refusing to marry Crawford.

Moreover, Miss Maria Bertram is bound by societys rules for women. A slip in her behavior can ruin her reputation and future chances for a life of leisure like her mother. Mr. Rushworth holds the key to the lock on the iron gate of the ha ha where Maria exclaims, that ha ha, give[s] me a feeling of restraint and hardship (Austen 78). In Slipping into the Ha-Ha: Bawdy Humor and Body Politics in Jane Austens Novels, Jill Heydt-Stevenson argues that in this scene Austen undermines those ideological foundations that disguise and romanticize oppression as seen by the patriarchal expectations of female behavior (315). Also, through matrilineal inheritance Maria becomes heir to the implication of her mothers maiden name. Maria is like the locks ward, described by the OED as each of the ridges projecting from the inside plate of a lock serving to prevent the passage of any key. Maria teases Crawford, but he does not possess the keya marriage proposalthat can penetrate her unexplored female entry. Furthermore, Maria is just another protrusion in a family of Wards rising up to rebel against male authority and its influence. However, in a world without womens rights, her rebellion eventually dooms her to a life of hardship as foreseen in the ha ha scene (Austen 78).

In conclusion, Austens novel educates the reader on the dominant ideology that supports the authoritative male in society, resulting in a repressive class system. At the beginning of the book, Austen alludes to Sir Thomas West Indies estate, a reflection of the worst type of bondage

slavery. The undertone of slavery parallels the situations of Sir Thomass family in the novel. The family members are constrained and they rebel against authority and societys norms, but there are consequences that result from resistance to laws of patriarchy in a male constructed society. However, in Fannys case, her resistance eventually works to her advantage as the true characters of the Crawfords are revealed. As a result, Fanny willingly bonds to Edmund in marriage. While Austens novel, published in 1814, addresses the suppression of the family, her story of bondage makes a statement about gender inequality and the assumed superiority of the patriarch in the European aristocratic estate system forty years prior to the onset of the womens suffragette movement in which women were later imprisoned in the early 1900s for defiance against legal authority. By addressing the false consciousness of society, the novel attempts to debunk the ideology that devalues women and supports the power of the patriarch and the first born male no matter how incompetent he may act. Thus, Austens novel encourages the reader to strive for independence within the realm of societys limitations. Principles While characters like Edmund and Fanny feel that morals are universal rules, and are right for everybody, others take a much more relative view of morals. Many characters reflect on what is good and proper behaviour and what is wrong, lax behaviour. Language and communication This miscommunication and lack of communication play a bigger role in Mansfield Park than good communication. Whether communicating verbally or non-verbally, characters are frequently misunderstood, fail to make themselves clear, and misunderstand others. (The role of letters)

Comedy Mr Rushworth and Mrs. Norris . They are funny in their pomposity and their lack of intelligence but their place in the plot is deadly serious. Rushworth represents the negative side of marrying for money; he is dreadful to know and completely incompatible with Maria. Mrs. Norris is a

deliberate caricature. Her hysterical insistence on preserving social distinctions is responsible for much of the mistreatment Fanny receives. Passivity One of the major divides in Mansfield Park is between action and passivity. Characters are largely defined by their active or their passive natures, and this division extends over into other contrasting traits: talkative characters versus silent ones, moving ones versus still ones, etc. Marriage Many of the marriages in this novel are based on money and social position. Austen depicts many of her characters as caught up in either money or extremes of emotion. For women in particular, marriage is an opportunity to rise up the social ladder. Lady Bertram, for example, becomes a wealthy woman through marriage, while her sister Mrs. Price ends up in poverty after marrying a sailor. As a result, when considering marriage, love often takes a backseat to more practical concerns. The ideal marriage, in this world, is one based on companionship. Despite their flaws, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram truly seem to value each other's company. The ideal mate for someone like Fanny would be a man with whom she is intellectually and emotionally close without physical attraction playing too excessive a part. Edmund is perfect, since he is like a brother in his manner toward her but not actually her brother.

Love Love is not logical, predictable, or even controllable. In Mansfield Park, characters constantly fall in love with people they'd rather not love. They fall for people who don't love them back, they try to love people whom they can't, and they try to fall out of love with people and fail. Love is very messy and very confusing here. It challenges characters' attitudes and preconceptions.

Family What kind of role does family play in the development of an individual's character? Can a good person come from a bad family, or vice versa? Which is more important--someone's innate qualities, or the way they were raised? Are the characters that end up revealing some serious character flaws born that way, or is it a result of their parenting? In addition, most of the families we see aren't very happy ones. Blood may be thicker than water, but it isn't thicker than things like income or clashing personalities in this novel. Slavery

Slavery in Mansfield Park is background, not foreground. The allusion to slavery used to suggest the fatuity and ignorance of each and every member of the younger generation at Mansfield Park. Fanny would have liked to ask Sir Thomas a question about the issue except everyone else is so bored to tears by any serious subject so she drops it. There is not such emphasis on slavery in Mansfield Park. Rather the allusions to slavery are used emblematically to tell us things about the characters which are not necessarily to tied to any notion that a slaveowner is necessarily evil or corrupt or deeply wrong in his character or values. Far from the more simple interpretation that Sir Thomas is to be taken as corrupt because his wealth is based on slavery, Austen presents him as a complex real man in a real world; he is a serious person who works hard, and is weary and exhausted and has had severe caustic moral lessons dealing with the whole of his experience in Antigua .
General notes

Mansfield Park is the most condensed and complex novel ever written by Jane Austen, and is her first novel that was conceived, written, and published at her mature years. Even though it lacks in the playful ironic humor which is so characteristic of

Austens other novels, it is the novel that most clearly shows another aspect of the writer: her philosophical anxieties, her social concern, and her mature feminism. Austen seems fearful of the impact change and progress has on traditional life including its morals, beliefs, and behavior. As a result her themes revolve around change, the battle between good and evil, character, dependency, and independence. The subtle battle between good and evil is one between the moral forces of the serene Mansfield Park, and the amoral intruders whose London values pose a threat to the traditional ways of Mansfield. There is a great question, which seems to preoccupy Austen in writing Mansfield Park. Is character formed in relation to environment and opportunity? Or is character the innate tendencies to be good or evil, moral or amoral, quiet or loud. Most importantly, how far can one change by adapting to ones environment. The example of Fanny Price displays the difficulty in finding definite answers to such questions. Fanny first appears as the poor relation from Portsmouth and is small, awkward, and shy. The absence of family identity makes Fanny a displaced person: she feels homesick wherever she is. When at Mansfield she longs for Portsmouth, and when she finally returns to Portsmouth at eighteen she discovers that Mansfield is where she belongs. She returns to find Mansfield shattered by scandal and disgrace, and to be placed at the center of what has remained of the Bertram family. What is striking and confusing is how the pious Fanny manages to be perfectly happy when surrounded by the misery of those close to her, while she was miserable when these same people were happily enjoying their lives. Isnt Austen thus questioning goodness or at least the saintliness in Fannys character? The novel poses several such disturbing questions, which challenge values like tradition and stability, which it appears to praise. Austen doesnt present all change as negative, but merely states that for change to be positive it must be natural. Fanny, the pillar of goodness and morality clearly expresses this idea: How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time and the changes of the human mind. Fannys philosophical ideas are an indication of her intellectual advancement, which was made possible by the opportunities she now had at Mansfield Park. Thus Austen also expresses her views on the importance of environment in shaping or even changing ones character. However, the concept of innate individuality does not escape Austen: when one thinks of it, how astonishing a variety of nature. Isnt this symbolic of the variety in the human species? One solid example is how radically different Fanny is from Mary. Austen is also perplexed with how some people can deviate from the most basic rules of creation: plants differing in the rule and law of their existence. Isnt this a reflection on the amorality of some young aristocrats? However, as amorality is presented as not natural it cannot be eternally present in the soul of a human being. Doesnt Henry Crawford repent? Doesnt he show a need to be good? Even at the height of his amoral

state of mind he would reflect with something of a consciousness when reminded of his wrongdoing. At the very least he shows signs of wanting to reform himself, even if he is too weak to do so. The clash between good and evil is eloquently symbolized in the temptation the amoral Maria poses for the moral Edmund who is to be a clergyman. This is the most beautiful, allegorical scene in the novel. The wilderness of Sotherton is a natural artificial labyrinth made of plants and trees. The tempting of Edmund reminds the reader of the tempting of Adam in the Garden of Eden, which is a comparison Austen would probably find desirable. As Edmund remarks we have taken a very serpentine course, which is an indication of how Edmund will be tempted to lose sight of his morality. Marys tempting of Edmund can be interpreted in mythical terms. In trying to take him away from his moral values and beliefs, and his calling in life, Marys first weapon is flattery: you really are fit for something better. Isnt flattery the Devils first weapon? This good v. evil battle is a subtle confrontation; a battle disguised behind the mask of flirting or love. Austens obsession with disguise and hypocrisy, which is also one of Shakespeares favorite themes, is also expressed through her negative presentation of the theatricals, which are presented as sinister and corrupting. In Mansfield Park Austen also proves herself to be a truly feminist writer. Few male characters in her novels are attractive, intelligent, and in command. It might be hard to see how an introverted, shy, enduring character like Fanny Price could be seen as a feminist figure, but Fanny is indeed a silent hero. When she refuses to marry the rich Henry Crawford she is accused of being stubborn, selfish, and ungrateful. Fanny is, of course, merely trying to be true to herself. However, there is an irritating lack of flexibility in her character: once she forms an opinion, its impossible to change her mind (although she is always right in her opinions). Even the good-natured Edmund is not Fannys equal. He can be too easily tempted by female charms, whereas Fanny stands firm, upholding her beliefs and her morality. The ending of the novel presents the outcome of the battle between good and evil, the consequences of the great crisis. While Austen presents evil masked in beauty throughout her novel, her ending proves that good can indeed be masked in evil, as a result of certain outside factors. Good did in fact win over evil, but what was the consequence? What is the consequence when the masks finally fall?

Further comment and analysis

The first of Jane Austen's novels to have been conceived and wholly written at Chawton, Mansfield Park is very different in tone from its predecessors. For some readers it is the most substantial and satisfying of Jane Austen's novels. Others like it the least, perhaps because wit and humour, though not absent from the novel, seem to be regarded with some suspicion.

Most controversial of all is the heroine, Fanny Price. Some feel as tenderly toward her as her author does; others find her too solemn. Fanny comes to Mansfield at the age of ten, a poor relation. Timid and self-effacing, she stands on the sidelines for the first half of the novel, observing the courtships and flirtations of her cousins the Bertrams and visitors to the neighbourhood, Henry and Mary Crawford. The departure of some of these characters forces Fanny into a more prominent role in the second half of the novel. Now her own strength of character is tested by pressure to submit to the destiny chosen for her by the powerful men in her life. From being the most marginal figure in the Mansfield community, Fanny turns out to have its future welfare in her keeping. Symbolism Mansfield Park is exceptional among the novels for using the literary devices of symbolism and foreshadowing. They make a large contribution to the aesthetic qualities of the book. Three times Jane Austen brings these devices into play. The first is the day out at Sotherton. The characters divide naturally into groups, which foreshadows their later involvement with one another. In the 'wilderness' itself symbolic - Fanny is forgotten while Edmund and Mary wander off together. Maria Bertram, accompanied by the man she is engaged to, Mr Rushworth, and the man she loves, Henry Crawford, arrives at a locked iron gate leading to a different part of the garden. Maria, metaphorically facing the prospect of marriage, has a feeling of constraint. While Mr Rushworth goes off to fetch a key, Maria allows Henry Crawford to help her scramble round the side of the gate and walk off toward a knoll in the distance - just as he will lead her into adultery later in the novel. The next major event in the young people's lives is their absorption in amateur theatricals. Rehearsals allow them to rehearse the parts they would like to play in real life with one another. Maria and Henry enjoy many rehearsals of the scene in which they have to embrace as mother and long-lost son; while Mary's character has to declare her love for Edmund's, and boldly propose marriage. The fit between the characters in the novel, and those in the play, Mrs Inchbald's melodrama Lovers' Vows, is remarkable. The third use of symbolism concerns William's cross. Fanny's beloved sailor brother William sends her an amber cross as a gift, an incident copied from life, as Jane Austen's brother Charles sent topaz crosses to his sisters. To wear the cross at the ball, Fanny needs a chain. Mary gives her one of her own necklaces, but it turns out that Fanny has been tricked into accepting what is really the gift of Henry, her unwelcome suitor. Meanwhile Edmund, the man Fanny secretly loves, buys a simple gold chain for his cousin. When she comes to try them, Fanny finds that Henry's

necklace won't go through the cross, but Edmund's chain will. The symbolism is obvious, but subtle. Mansfield and Portsmouth Most of the action of the novel takes place at Mansfield Park, the elegant and comfortable mansion of Fanny's rich relations, the Bertram family. Fanny has been transplanted here from her home in the back streets of Portsmouth. Lady Bertram and Mrs Price are sisters, starting off with the same chances in life, whose marriages have brought them very different status and lifestyles. Fanny is initially delighted when her uncle suggests she might like to visit Portsmouth again, after being away eight years. But the reality of her parents' home soon makes her revise her opinion. We feel with Fanny the tumult, noise, disorder, dirt and confinement of a workingclass home. It is not only shortage of money, it is bad management that makes the Prices' house so uncomfortable. Her eyes could only wander from the walls marked by her father's head, to the table cut and notched by her brothers, where stood the tea-board never thoroughly cleaned, the cups and saucers wiped in streaks, the milk a mixture of motes floating in thin blue, and the bread and butter growing every minute more greasy than even Rebecca's hands had produced it. Her father read the paper, while her mother lamented over the ragged carpet as usual. Jane Austen paints her Portsmouth scenes convincingly. To be able to move comfortably from descriptions of country house life to such scenes of domestic squalor demonstrates a range for which she is not always given the credit she deserves.

JANE AUSTENS DANGEROUS CHARM: FEELING AS ONE OUGHT ABOUT FANNY PRICE by Nina Auerbach Department of English, University of Pennsylvania Though Jane Austens other novels are written by a maestro at pleasing, Mansfield Park is defiantly unlikable most notably in its unyieldingly charmless heroine, Fanny Price. Though critics have transfigured her into a culturally-fraught emblem, the reader cannot forget Kingsley Amis taunt (Whatever Became of Jane Austen reprinted in Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Ian Watt) that an evening with Fanny and her clergyman husband would not be lightly undertaken. We may understand our heritage through Fanny Price, but ought we to want to dine with her? After learning more about her life, living more closely in her consciousness than we have done with Jane Austens other heroines, we are still teased by the question: how ought we to feel about Fanny Price?

Fanny captures our imaginations in an unnerving manner congenial to Jane Austens own Romantic age: like Wordsworths Leechgatherer or Coleridges Ancient Mariner, there is something horrible about her that deprives the imagination of its appetite for ordinary life and compels it toward the deformed, the dispossessed. She is unconvivial, a spoiler of ceremonies. In such family groups as Sir Thomas Bertrams and her fathers houses, she exists like Mary Shelleys Frankenstein as a silent censorious pall. She defines herself best in assertive negatives: No, indeed, I cannot act. Even when Lovers Vows is not in question, Fanny follows this credo and refuses to act. Instead, and consistently, she counteracts. Her timidly magisterial denial of acting includes activity and play, those impulses of comedy which bring us together in ceremonial motions where fellowship seems all. It is precisely this opposition to the traditional patterns of romantic comedy that lends Fanny her disturbing strength. If she cannot act, locking herself in a hell of jealousy and agitation while everyone around her is gay and busy, she assumes the audiences withering power over performance. As quietly-seeing spectator of others activities, Fannys role is as ambiguous as the readers own: like Fanny, we create the action by our imaginative participation in it, while we hold as well the power to obstruct it by our censure. Our discomfort at Fanny is in part our discomfort at our own voyeurism, implicating ourselves as well as Fanny in a community of compelling English monsters. Like them, this denying girl will not, perhaps cannot, eat. Home at Portsmouth, family food induces in her only a nausea that may be the most intense in nineteenth-century fiction. Fannys revulsion against food, along with her psychic feasting on the activities of others, associates her with that winsome predator the vampire, an equally solitary and melancholy figure who cannot eat the common nourishment of daily life but who feasts secretly upon human vitality in the dark. The melancholy Grendel in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf peers as jealously as Fanny through the window at a convivial banquet. Finally his rage overcomes him: he invades the lighted hall and begins to eat the eaters. Fannys cannibalistic invasion of the lighted, spacious estate of Mansfield is genteel and purely symbolic, but her affinities with these primitive monsters make her a more resonant figure than are her healthier analogues in Jane Austens fiction. As with withering spectator of a play within a play, Fanny shows her quiet kinship to Shakespeares Hamlet. His stern creed Madam, I know not seems epitomizes, like hers, refusal to act. Hamlet is Shakespeares supreme anti-actor and counter-actor, the avid and omniscient spectator of the game who fascinates us as Fanny does because he expresses his virtue by the characteristics of conventional villainy. Jane Austens contemporaries were obsessed by this troubling sort of hero: Samuel Taylor Coleridge apotheosizes Hamlet as a paragon of inactivity. Fanny Price may be one symptom of this new, Romantic fascination with Hamlet as a modern type. As Jane Austens Hamlet, scourge and minister of a corrupted world, the perfection of the character who wont play, Fanny Price in her unyielding opposition, her longing for a purified and contracted world, gains coherence if not charm.

Fanny defies the conventions of a heroines story in that she wins power but no love. Her parents seem as repelled by her as she is by them, and the belated appreciation of the Bertrams is a wounded penance for their collapsed hopes. The love of her two suitors is similarly undermined: Henrys reveals itself as a sadistic game, while Edmunds is as stately, inevitable and passionless as his ordination is. Her radical homelessness makes her still more unnerving as a domestic heroine. As a woman who belongs only where she is not, Fanny is a more indigestible figure than the wistful Victorian orphans for whom embracing their kin is a secular salvation. In the tenacity with which she adheres to an identity validated by no family, home, or love, she repudiates the vulnerability of the waif to the unlovable toughness of the authentic transplant. Repelling the conventional female endowments of love and home, Fanny passes from the isolation of the outcast to that of the conqueror, aligning her rather with the Romantic hero than with the heroine of romance: her solitude is her condition, not a state from which the comedy will save her. Like other literary monsters, Fanny is a creature without kin who longs for a mate of her own kind. The pain of her difference explains a longing that is common to much Romantic literature and that looks disturbingly like incest. The ecstatic, possessive passion Fanny divides between her brother William and her foster brother Edmund, her horror at the Crawfords attempt to invade her emotions, seem aligned less with the Freudian family romance than with the monsters agonized attempt to alleviate his monstrosity. The female counterpart of Mary Shelleys monster, Fanny yearns only for a brother-mate. In her parallel movement from outcast within a charmed circle to one who is hunted by it and then conqueror of it, Jane Austens most Romantic, least-loved heroine finds the kin she so wretchedly seeks. Though the word ought resounds in the novel, it is used anarchically, not authoritatively, for there is no objective code to endow it with validity. As a walking Ought in an inchoate world, Fanny herself is less a moral than a shaping principle: she is the solitary author as well as reader, for the novels action happens as she wills, and so her emotions become our only standard of right. For in its essence, the world of Mansfield Park is terrifyingly malleable, revealing both inner and outer nature as pitifully ineffectual in the face of that which can be made. Mary Crawfords nature is helpless against the constructive, or the deconstructive, power of her medium For where, Fanny, shall we find a woman whom nature had so richly endowed? Spoilt, spoilt! while Susan Price will survive, not because of her natural qualities, but because she is a girl so capable of being made, every thing good. In so malleable and so defective a world, though she laments improvements, Fanny is the most potent of the novels improving characters, turning her most potent attention on the vulnerable, that which is capable of being made. In Mary Shelleys Frankenstein as well, family, nature, and even the Alps pall before the monster who is capable of being made. The monstrosity of Mansfield Park is one manifestation of its repelled fascination with acting, with education, and with landscape and estate improvement: the novel imagines a fluid world, one with no fixed principles, capable of awesome, endless, and dangerous manipulation. The unconvivial stiffness of its hero and heroine is their triumph: by the end, they are so successfully made by each other that he is her creature as completely as she has always been his. The mobility and malleability of Mansfield Park is a dark realization of an essentially Romantic vision, of which Fanny Price represents both the

horror and the best hope. Only in Mansfield Park does Jane Austen force us to experience the discomfort of a Romantic universe presided over by the potent charm of a heroine who was not made to be loved.