“But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.”
Mansfield Park, volume 1, chapter 1
Oh, how true!
Category Archives: Mansfield Park
The ‘thoroughly benevolent’ Mrs. Norris
Horrible Mrs. Norris!
“Mrs. Norris had not the least intention of being at any expense whatever in [Fanny’s] maintenance. As far as walking, talking, and contriving reached, she was thoroughly benevolent, and nobody knew better how to dictate liberality to others: but her love of money was equal to her love of directing, and she knew quite as well how to save her own as to spend that of her friends. …
“Under this infatuating principle, counteracted by no real affection for her sister, it was impossible for her to aim at more than the credit of projecting and arranging so expensive a charity; though perhaps she might so little know herself, as to walk home to the Parsonage after this conversation, in the happy belief of being the most liberal-minded sister and aunt in the world.”
Mansfield Park, volume 1, chapter 1 (emphasis mine)
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Filed under Economy, Generosity, Greed, Mansfield Park, Money, Self-deception
Can money make a man smart?
Apparently so!
“If this man had not twelve thousand a year, he would be a very stupid fellow.”
What Edmund Bertram thinks to himself about Mr. Rushworth
Mansfield Park, volume 1, chapter 4
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Filed under Edmund Bertram, Mansfield Park, Men, Money, Mr. Rushworth, Wealth
Provided she could marry well…
“Miss Crawford was glad to find a family of such consequence so very near them, and not at all displeased either at her sister’s early care, or the choice it had fallen on. Matrimony was her object, provided she could marry well, and having seen Mr. Bertram in town, she knew that objection could no more be made to his person than to his situation in life. While she treated it as a joke, therefore, she did not forget to think of it seriously.”
Mansfield Park, volume 1, chapter 4 (emphasis mine)
I want to condemn Mary Crawford for this sentiment, but no doubt it was the way (nearly) everyone thought then. And I wonder — how much have we really changed? Although my definition of marrying well and Mary Crawford’s are completely different.
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Filed under Mansfield Park, Marriage, Mary Crawford, Money, Money and Marriage
Marrying properly
“I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly; I do not like to have people throw themselves away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage.”
Mary Crawford
Mansfield Park, volume 1, chapter 4
Filed under Mansfield Park, Marriage, Mary Crawford, Money, Money and Marriage
For the love of Pewter
“People are more ready to borrow & praise, than to buy-which I cannot wonder at;-but tho’ I like praise as well as anybody, I like what Edward calls Pewter too.”
to her niece Fanny Knight, on whether or not there will be a second edition of Mansfield Park
November 30, 1814 [114]
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Filed under Letters, Mansfield Park, Money, Writing
Some thoughts on Mansfield Park
I was debating about whether to post this now or wait until Sunday, but my thoughts on Mansfield Park have been posted over on the PBS.org blog, Remotely Connected. I was thrilled to be asked to do this. Check it out now, or wait until Sunday night and weigh in with your own opinion.
Fanny Price is a ninny. (Forgive me, dear Jane.) I’ve tried to like her and I can’t.
When I was first asked to blog about Mansfield Park, the editor
mentioned that she saw “such similarity” between me and Fanny. I had to
stop to consider whether or not that was an insult.more here…
Filed under Mansfield Park
The transfer of unchanging attachments
“I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be
at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable
passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as
to time in different people. I only entreat everybody to believe that
exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and
not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and
became as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could desire.”
Mansfield Park, volume 3, chapter 17
See a preview on the PBS site.
Blake Ritson as Edmund Bertram. ©Jon Hall/ITV plc (Granada International) for Masterpiece™
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Filed under Edmund Bertram, Fanny Price, Love, Mansfield Park, Mary Crawford
On being taken in … er, getting married
“Everybody is taken in at some period or other. . . . In marriage especially . . . there is not one in a hundred
of either sex who is not taken in when they marry. Look where I will, I see that it is so; and I feel that it must be so, when I consider that it is, of all transactions, the one in which people expect most from others, and are least honest themselves.”
Mary Crawford
Mansfield Park, volume 1, chapter 5
More on the Masterpiece site.
Hayley Atwell as Mary Crawford. ©Jon Hall/ITV plc (Granada International) for Masterpiece™
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Filed under Mansfield Park, Marriage, Mary Crawford
Heaven’s last best gift
“I am of a cautious temper, and unwilling to risk my happiness in a hurry. Nobody can think more highly of the matrimonial state than myself. I consider the blessing of a wife as most justly described in those discreet lines of the poet, ‘Heaven’s last best gift.'”
Mansfield Park, volume 1, chapter 4
According to my Oxford World’s Classics edition, Henry Crawford is joking about Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which “Adam describes Eve as God’s ultimate gift; Henry Crawford wittily turns the line to express his preference for deferring wedlock.”
Hmm… I have known many men “of a cautious temper.”
Joseph Beattie as Henry Crawford. ©Jon Hall/ITV plc (Granada International) for Masterpiece™
Filed under Happiness, Henry Crawford, Mansfield Park, Marriage, Other books and writers
The Jane Austen Guide to Life: Thoughtful Lessons for the Modern Woman (May, 2012)
A Walk with Jane Austen: A Journey into Adventure, Love, and Faith