Women's Studies, 45:275–290, 2016 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0049-7878 print / 1547-7045 online DOI: 10.1080/00497878.2016.1149031
THE “FANNY PRICE WARS”: JANE AUSTEN’S ENLIGHTENMENT FEMINIST AND MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
MARIJA REIFF University of Virginia, Charlottesville
After Jane Austen completed Mansfield Park, she sought her family’s opinion of her newest novel and its protagonist. The results were not encouraging: “her mother found the virtuous heroine ‘insipid’”; her nephew George “disliked Fanny [Price],” the heroine; and even Cassandra, Jane’s sister, tried to “persuade Jane to let her [Fanny] marry Henry Crawford” instead of Edmund, Fanny’s actual matrimonial choice (Tomalin 225). Since Mansfield Park’s publication in 1814, other readers have echoed these responses, and Fanny Price is widely considered to be Jane Austen’s most unlikeable heroine. One hundred and forty years after its publication, Lionel Trilling famously wrote, “Nobody, I believe, has ever found it possible to like the heroine of Mansfield Park” (220), and contemporary critics tend to agree, calling Fanny Price “priggish, lifeless, unattractive, and censorious” (Sturrock 12) and “rather prudish and initially unattractive” (Teachman 71). It is not just members of the academic elite that dislike Fanny, though. Consumer reviews on amazon.com are filled with comments such as “The protagonist is a loathsome little priss” (“A Lover of Good Books”), and the webmasters of pemberly.com, a Jane Austen fan site, specifically request that new members should “avoid exacerbating needlessly and gratuitously” the “Fanny Price wars” (“Miss Fanny Price”), thus indicating that debate over Mansfield Park and its heroine is still very much alive today. However, there is a great deal of evidence that Austen “was aiming at some- thing beyond easy approval” in her creation of Fanny Price and Mansfield Park (Todd 75). Unlike her earlier works, “in Mansfield Park Austen is deliberately writing against the grain of her audience’s expectations” (Gay 98), and many scholars speculate that Fanny Price is Austen’s experiment with a totally new type of heroine. Some critics theorize that Fanny is Austen’ s experiment with a “contemplative heroine” (Emsley 128), while others believe that she is Austen’s endorsement of conventional female roles (Sturrock 13). Most notably, Marilyn Butler argues in her landmark book Jane Austen and the War of Ideas that Fanny Price is a symbol of anti- Jacobin thought (i.e., anti–French revolution) and that Austen was “attempt[ing] to use the inward life of a heroine as a vehicle” for “conservative thinking” (249). However, others believe that rather than experimenting with a meek and conserva- tive heroine, Austen was experimenting with a more progressive and outspoken protagonist. Margaret Kirkham writes that Mansfield Park is “Austen’s most ambitious
Address correspondence to Marija Reiff, University of Virginia, Department of English, 219 Bryan Hall, Charlottesville, VA 22904. E-mail: [email protected] 275 276 Marija Reiff and radical criticism of contemporary prejudice in society and in literature,” and she concludes that Fanny Price is a reluctant feminist who “is forced, despite herself, to stand up for those rights which her moral nature, not her own wish, impose upon her” (119, 106). Carol Shields reiterates this wary endorsement of a feminist Fanny Price by saying that, by the end of the novel, “she shows growing signs of indepen- dent thought” (xii). There is another way, though, of interpreting Austen’s work that combines these various conservative and progressive viewpoints: to see Fanny as Austen’s experiment in creating an Enlightenment feminist. While this view would ostensibly mirror those of contemporary feminist critics who embrace a more progressive view of Fanny Price, Enlightenment feminism is markedly different from contemporary feminism. In fact, Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the foundational work of Enlightenment feminist philosophy, endorses a feminism that is surprisingly conservative. Although Wollstonecraft wrote her work near the end of eighteenth century, it still draws interest and criticism today. Claudia Johnson calls her a “liberal feminist” (363), and when Wollstonecraft is presented to students, her life fits the mold of what a contemporary audience might expect from someone of avowedly radical tendencies: she had illicit love affairs, tried committing suicide twice, and gave birth out of wedlock (Habib 339–40). However, scholars who look at Wollstonecraft’s work after examining her life may be surprised; far from being an advocate of free love, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman “comes close to arguing that women have no innate sexual desires at all” (Poovey 358), and “her descriptions of female comport- ment at first seem as though they would not be out of place in virulently misogy- nistic literature …” (Johnson 365). Wollstonecraft’s values, then, do not strictly align with present-day feminist principles, and many of her deepest beliefs are “dead letter” to modern scholars (Taylor 376). There is no written evidence that Austen read Wollstonecraft, but there is a great deal of circumstantial evidence that she was influenced by A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and that she sketched Fanny Price to resemble the ideals Wollstonecraft detailed in her seminal work.1 Through understanding Wollstonecraft’s Enlightenment feminist principles and examining their parallels
1 There is no direct proof that Jane Austen read Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman because there is no evidence that her father owned a copy, as Lauren Gilbert clarifies. She writes, “I contacted Jane Austen’s House and Museum, Bath Central Library, Jane Austen Centre, and Chawton House Library. No catalog of Rev. George Austen’s library is known to exist. (Jane Austen’s House and Museum does have a copy of the inventory of the contents of the Steventon Rectory but no catalog of his books.)” However, Gilbert goes on to say that Austen most likely did read Wollstonecraft’s book because “The Bath Central Library indicated that A Vindication was on the catalog for Marshalls Circulating Library on Milsom Street dated 1808 … since A Vindication was published in 1792 and was a well-known work, this argues that the book was probably available via a circulating library when Jane Austen lived in Bath, or visited in London or other cities.” Gilbert concludes that “Jane was profoundly influenced by Ms. Wollstonecraft’swork.” Miriam Ascarelli agrees with this conclusion, arguing that since “Austen, like Wollstonecraft, was tuned into one of the hottest issues of her time: women’srole in society,” it is probable “that Austen was familiar with Wollstonecraft’s work, even though Austen never mentions Wollstonecraft in any of her novels or in the letters that have survived.” Biographer Claire Tomalin also cites facts showing that Austen most likely knew of Wollstonecraft and her work because both knew Sir William East. East was a neighbor of Austen’s uncle, and his son was a pupil of Austen’s father. East was also Wollstonecraft’s benefactor and kind friend (Tomalin 158). The “Fanny Price Wars” 277 to Fanny Price, we can gain a greater acceptance and appreciation for Austen’s controversial heroine, and the “wars” can be reconciled between those readers who despise Fanny’s conservatism and those who admire her nascent feminism. By seeing Fanny Price as a heroine inspired by A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the conservatism of the protagonist can be viewed in the larger context of Wollstonecraft’s liberal feminist philosophy. Especially in Mansfield Park, the posi- tion that “the novels of Jane Austen, Wollstonecraft’s contemporary, are the most obvious example of a conservative recuperation of Wollstonecraft” becomes defen- sible, and the implementation of Wollstonecraft’s beliefs can be seen quite clearly (Kaplan 346). In understanding this conservatism as an intrinsic part of Wollstonecraft’s progressive tract, the true nature of Austen’s experiment shows itself, and Fanny Price is revealed to be an Enlightenment feminist. At the outset of Mansfield Park, these radical feminist influences are not obvious. When the young Fanny Price arrives at Mansfield Park, she is anything but an outspoken, independent woman. She is “exceedingly timid and shy,” and she has not been educated well, either: the young Fanny can “read, work, and write, but she had been taught nothing more” (Austen 43, 48). With her diffidence and inexperience, Fanny Price, instead of resembling a Wollstonecraft-inspired heroine, “conform[s] to many of the features of the conduct book young lady, being modest, quiet, delicate, passive, religious, and dutiful” (Sturrock 13). However, the ideas about comportment that the conduct book writers advocated were antithetical to Wollstonecraft’s beliefs. Wollstonecraft declared that “women are … degraded by [the] mistaken notions of female excellence” that these writers encouraged (14). In his Sermons to Young Women, Dr. James Fordyce, one of the most famous of the conduct book writers (and whose writings are used by the fatuous Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice), encourages women to behave with “Christian meekness” and declares that female piety is best achieved by “a modest, susceptible, and affection- ate mind” (205, 46). While Fanny, with her weakness and passivity, begins Mansfield Park as a model Fordyce heroine, the novel details her “progress toward[s] power” (Auerbach 110), and she makes advances in becoming an outspoken, freethinking woman. For Fanny to become a feminist in the style advocated by Wollstonecraft, two external changes are essential: she must develop herself mentally through educa- tion, and she must develop herself physically through exercise. By cultivating a strong body and mind, Fanny develops the courage and fortitude necessary for asserting herself as an independent woman who defends herself and her feminist principles. One of the key beliefs that underlies A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is that women must be educated so that they can reason and make the correct moral choices independently (Habib 342–43), and Jane Austen demonstrates this princi- ple through showing the positive effects of Fanny’s education. When the young Fanny arrives at Mansfield Park, she is largely uneducated and inexperienced, and her “timidity” is often correlated with her “ignorance” (48, 50). While Fanny is educated with the Bertram girls after her arrival, Aunt Norris specifically states to Maria and Julia that “it is not at all necessary that she should be as accomplished as 278 Marija Reiff you are;—on the contrary, it is much desirable that there should be a difference,” thus indicating that Fanny should always maintain a subordinate position in the family (50). However, Fanny does receive a good education because her cousin Edmund recognizes “her to be clever, to have a quick apprehension as well as good sense, and a fondness for reading, which, properly directed, must be an education in itself” (52). To aid in her learning, “he recommended the books which charmed her leisure hours, he encouraged her taste, and corrected her judgment; he made reading useful by talking to her of what she read, and heightened its attraction by judicious praise” (52). With Edmund as her tutor, Fanny receives the sort of educational foundation necessary to become an Enlightenment feminist. However, her education does not end with Edmund’s teachings. Instead, Fanny furthers her own education when she becomes a teenager. After Miss Lee, the governess, leaves, Fanny acquires her east room, thus symbolically becoming her own governess. She fills it with “her plants, her books … her writing-desk,” and it becomes her place of “immediate consolation” where she can gather “some train of thought at hand” (171). In other words, the east room becomes her place where she can read, write, and, most importantly, think without the interference of anyone else. Perhaps more than anything else, Fanny’s use of the east room signals her willingness to educate herself independently. Fanny’s self-education continues when she is sent home to Portsmouth, too. In her home city, which is full of uneducated “coarse” men and “pert” women, she only has one person to whom she can turn to for society: her sister Susan (396). Despite her lack of education, Susan has somehow formed “proper opinions,” and Fanny endeavors to be “of service to her” (399, 397). Thus Fanny begins the tutelage of her sister that will improve Fanny as well. Fanny joins a library and “inspires” her sister to love learning, an education that gives “a material advantage to each” sister (400, 399). This continuing education corresponds with Fanny’s mental, moral, and physi- cal growth. Wollstonecraft was deeply concerned with the education of women, and many of her most famous works take up this cause. Women become “degraded,” writes Wollstonecraft, because they have a “want of understanding” (82). When a woman becomes educated, she has the ability and the strength to act with morality and virtue. As M.A.R. Habib writes, for Wollstonecraft the “injurious consequences of women being given such a haphazard education … [include] that women are unable to act as genuine moral agents: without the power of reason, they cannot make moral choices and are disposed to blind obedience of whatever power structure can claim authority over them” (342–43). When Fanny actively pursues her own education, she takes up Wollstonecraft’s challenge to be “prepared by education” to continue the “progress of knowledge and virtue” (6). Besides education, the other external factor that is necessary for Fanny to grow into an Enlightenment feminist is the development of her body through exercise. As a young woman at Mansfield Park in the beginning of the novel, Fanny usually “sat at home the whole day with one aunt,” and when her one form of usual exercise, horseback riding, is denied her, Fanny “is in danger of feeling the loss in her health” (64). This loss of health has led some critics to believe that Fanny suffers from a disease called chlorosis, an iron-deficiency anemia caused by physical inertia that The “Fanny Price Wars” 279 was common in adolescent girls (Takei 2). People of Austen’s era may not have regarded this disease as undesirable, however, because they viewed physical indo- lence in women favorably, believing that women were supposed to partake in the “cult of domesticity,” which “stressed that women’s place was in the home doing light work and engaging in relatively passive recreations” (Struna 57). This view was circulated through conduct books whose authors equated this frailty with femininity, going so far as to criticize women who were too athletic and robust (Takei 4). As John Gregory wrote in Father’s Legacy to His Daughters, a conduct book from the 1770s, “We so naturally associate the idea of female softness and delicacy with a correspondent delicacy of constitution, that when a woman speaks of her great strength, her extraordinary appetite, her ability to bear excessive fatigue, we recoil at the description in a way she is little aware of” (qtd. in Takei 4). Remarkably, then, based on the climate of the time, Edmund is not pleased that Fanny’s lack of physical exertion is making her ill. Instead, he decides that she must exercise and declares to his mother and Mrs. Norris that “Fanny must have a horse” (65). However, Austen’s brazenness extends beyond having a man insist on a woman’s physical robustness. She goes on to use Fanny’s physical weakness and ill health in an unexpected way: she demonstrates how they correspond with Fanny’s submission and reticence, and she shows that this inertia makes Fanny almost pathologically unable to assert her desires or opinions (64). This correlation between physical health and mental strength (or lack thereof on both parts) is especially highlighted in the scene in which Fanny picks roses for Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris on a hot day. Fanny gets a headache and feels ill after this exercise, and Edmund thinks that Fanny’s fatigue has been caused by her inability to go horseback riding for four days. But Fanny admits to herself that her spirits have been low and that “the pain of her mind had been much beyond that in her head” (100), implying that it is not simply the lack of physical activity but also her disturbed mental state that have combined to make her ill. Critic John Wiltshire supports this reading of Fanny’s health, writing, “It is impossible to separate Fanny’s psychosocial development from her bodily and sexual condition” (63–64). While the link between bodily strength and mental health would not gain wide recognition until the late Victorian era (Bending 209), Wollstonecraft herself hinted at such a conclusion in A Vindication when she writes, “Dependence of body naturally pro- duces dependence of mind” (47). Through her prescient theories, Wollstonecraft indicated that she believed that physical and mental health were inextricably linked, and Austen displays a similar belief in her portrayal of Fanny Price. It is at Sotherton that the indolent Fanny experiences one of her first bouts of physical exertion. She rides “ten miles there, and ten back”—a prospect that deterred Lady Bertram from attending the outing—and on an “insufferably hot ” day, Fanny climbs “a considerable flight of steps” to see Sotherton’s “wild- erness” (101, 115). While this is certainly not a great feat of physical prowess, it is the beginning of an establishment of a connection between a strong body and a strong mind for a woman to whom “every sort of exercise fatigues her so soon” (119). Not surprisingly, one of Fanny’s first minor moments of assertion occurs when she chimes in on the discussion of improvements at Sotherton and says, “Cut down an 280 Marija Reiff avenue! What a pity!” (83). For Fanny Price, then, physical effort is followed by burgeoning mental independence. The idea that Austen was implying a link between bodily health and a robust, assertive mind is most clearly seen in Mary Crawford. A physically able young woman, Mary Crawford is outspoken on almost every subject. Whether criticizing her uncle, lecturing Edmund about the church, or devising a plan to save Henry and Maria from ruin, Mary Crawford is a woman who is unafraid to speak her mind. Likewise, she is a woman at the peak of her physical abilities. The coachman praises her riding abilities, and Mary herself declares that “nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like” (95). In a marked contrast to the mores of the day, Austen portrays Mary’s vigor positively. As critic Colleen A. Sheehan writes, Mary’s dyna- mism is “clearly meant to charm and captivate.” With her independent thoughts and her strong body, Mary lives up to Wollstonecraft’s idea that “strength of mind has, in most cases, been accompanied by superior strength of body” (Wollstonecraft 42). Almost an echo of Wollstonecraft’s thoughts, Austen has Maria Bertram say of Mary that “her spirits are as good, and she has the same energy of character [as Henry Crawford, her robust brother]. I cannot but think that good horsemanship has a great deal to do with the mind” (96). Mind and body, then, are clearly connected in Austen’s work. Throughout the course of Mansfield Park, Fanny Price begins to resemble Mary Crawford in terms of her physical abilities and mental strength. After the Sotherton adventure, one of the next key moments in Fanny’s physical growth occurs with Mary’s help. Getting caught in a rainstorm on the way back from the village to Mansfield Park, Fanny takes shelter at the parsonage where Mary is staying. So begins a friendship with Mary that goes beyond their former casual acquaintance; with Mary’s help, Fanny starts developing her body through exercise, and they begin walking together every few days (222–33). The positive effects this physical develop- ment has on Fanny’s mind are alluded to when she gushes on one of their walks, “How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!” (223), thus signaling that Fanny’s emotional wellbeing has been aided by her improved physical strength. Any doubt about the connection between physical and mental health is eradi- cated when Fanny is sent to Portsmouth. At her parents’ house, she lives in “con- finement” with a Sunday walk as one of her only forms of exercise (430). Here she misses the “animation both of body and mind” that came from living at Mansfield Park and becomes physically ill as she loses “ground as to health since her being in Portsmouth” (430, 441). While some critics plausibly claim that Fanny loses her health—and also her “bloom” (Austen 410)—so that her “interior virtues” and “moral superiority” can be recognized over her “easy to objectify” beauty (Greenfield 319), this does not account for Fanny’s decreasing mental acuity during her time of illness and decreasing beauty. As Fanny loses her physical health, she also loses her mental and moral clarity, and she starts questioning her judgment about Henry Crawford. Confined within her parents’ insalubrious home, she won- ders whether she was right to refuse him, and she starts pondering whether she could marry him (407–08). She even begins to re-evaluate his character and thinks The “Fanny Price Wars” 281 that he has “decidedly improved” (407). As it will later be revealed that Henry has not decidedly changed, it casts doubt on whether Fanny would have been so eager to see his “good qualities” if she had had access to exercise (406). While Fanny is not totally mentally crushed by her lack of physical exertion in Portsmouth, Austen goes a long way toward depicting the Wollstonecraft belief that “every young creature requires almost constant exercise” to have both a strong body and mind (Wollstonecraft 45). Because this bold advocacy for female health and exercise presaged the Victorian interest in this subject by many decades, Austen’s novel is nothing short of revolutionary, and “Mansfield Park … can be read as a radical feminist novel” (Takei 18). Since Fanny takes great efforts to develop herself both mentally and physically, she begins to acquire the courage and fortitude necessary to assert herself as an independent woman. The goal of education and exercise is to make women strong and capable, and once Fanny begins growing mentally and physically, she starts to behave like an Enlightenment feminist who resolutely upholds her principles and defies the patriarchy. Whereas Fanny certainly begins the novel as a quiet, meek woman, Mansfield Park details her change from this passivity. Throughout the novel, Fanny’s character drastically changes, and by the end of the novel she is no longer a girl who “needed encouragement,” but a young woman who is assertive, self- confident, and independent (43). Some of the first instances in which Fanny begins to declare her independence are in the controversial scenes involving the theatrical performance of Lovers’ Vows. Fanny’s extreme disapproval of the performance of this play is one of the aspects of Mansfield Park that “is frequently disturbing to readers” (Tave 38) who know that Jane Austen loved theater and that theatrical performances regularly took place at the Steventon parsonage (Gay ix). While there are a variety of ways to interpret Mansfield Park’s treatment of the theater, one of the most common is to assume that Austen is exploring the propriety of the theater when it is filled with “immoral roles” and when there is a possibility that “play-acting will spread corruption” (Harris 48). However, there is another, perhaps complementary, way of viewing these theatricals that has frequently been ignored: as a means of growth for Fanny Price. To become an Enlightenment feminist, Fanny must learn to trust her own judgment and to speak her mind. It is in the scenes involving the theatricals that Fanny truly starts learning to become an independent thinker who expresses her views. Fanny first defies patriarchal authority during the rehearsal of Lovers’ Vows. With Sir Thomas away in Antigua, Tom Bertram is for all intents and purposes the lord of the manor. It is Tom, encouraged by his friend Mr. Yates, who truly desires to perform Lovers’ Vows. Even though he is opposed by Edmund, Tom defends himself against Edmund’s objections by saying he is “convinced to the contrary” about his father’s approval, that Mansfield Park “shall not be hurt,” and that Edmund’s concern over the expense is “absurd” because “the carpenter’s work may be all done at home by Christopher Jackson himself [their full-time employee]” (148, 149, 149, 149). By opposing Edmund’s disapproval of the theatricals, Tom is validating his right to rule in his father’s absence as the heir of the estate. 282 Marija Reiff
With Tom in charge, then, Fanny’s disapproval is startling because she is asserting herself against the patriarchy. Moreover, since Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris have “no objection to the plan” either, Fanny is truly defying her superiors and benefactors (150). Though she has Edmund to support her, Tom expressly tells her that “you [Fanny] must be the Cottager’s Wife” (165). When she states that “it would be absolutely impossible for me” to act in the play, she is strongly rebuked by Mrs. Norris, who says to her, “I am quite ashamed of you, Fanny, to make such a difficulty of obliging your cousins in a trifle of this sort” (166, 167). While Fanny does not yet have the courage to say why she will not act in the theatrical—she demurs by saying she should “only disappoint” if forced to perform —her direct disobedience to Tom and Mrs. Norris’s instructions marks the begin- ning of her independence (166). While some critics believe that Fanny supports the patriarchy in these scenes by protecting the rights of the absent Sir Thomas who “would not approve such a plan if he were home” (Teachman 74), they are missing a key distinction: with Sir Thomas away, Tom is the patriarchy—with Mrs. Norris as a substitute manager of the estate—and by defying them, Fanny takes a bold step toward independence. Fanny’s ability to assert herself becomes even stronger when she learns to disagree with Edmund, the person at Mansfield Park on whose support she depends and the man whose assistance in her education has been of the “highest impor- tance” (52). When Edmund reverses his position on the theatricals and decides to act in them himself, he seeks Fanny’s opinion on the matter. Expecting her to agree with him, he is surprised that she “hesitate[s]” in her approval (174). “Give me your approbation, then, Fanny. I am not comfortable without it,” he pleads to no avail (174). He leaves without receiving her approval, and it is the first demonstrable instance of Fanny not acquiescing to Edmund’s judgment. When Fanny asks herself, “Was he not deceiving himself? Was he not wrong?” (176), she takes one of the first steps toward gaining true independence instead of following Edmund’s emotional and intellectual lead. The controversial Lovers’ Vows also serves as the catalyst for another break- through in the development of Fanny’s independence. She becomes angry with Henry Crawford when he tells her, “We were unlucky, Miss Price. … Another week, only one other week, would have been enough” to perform the theatrical before Sir Thomas arrived home from Antigua (238). Unaware of her feelings, he blithely continues: “If Mansfield Park had had the government of the winds just for a week or two about the equinox, there would have been a difference. Not that we would have endangered his safety by any tremendous weather” (239). Fanny’s response is remarkable in its condemnation of him because Henry is young, rich, charming, and, most importantly, male. Conversely, Fanny is financially dependent, shy and soft-spoken, the “lowest and the last,” and female (234); yet her response is filled with righteous anger and indignation: “She had never spoken so much at once to him in her life before, and never so angrily to any one; and when her speech was over, she trembled and blushed at her own daring” (239). For Fanny, her experi- ence with Lovers’ Vows emboldens her to turn away from the lessons of passivity and silence that conduct book writers like Dr. Fordyce recommended. Instead, she acts The “Fanny Price Wars” 283 like a Wollstonecraft feminist as she begins to practice “feel[ing] herself indepen- dent” by behaving with “courage or fortitude” as she asserts her own differing opinions (Wollstonecraft 28, 13). However, in order to fully become an Enlightenment feminist, Fanny must receive recognition from others that she is an independent, free woman. While Fanny herself changes mentally and physically so that she can assert her own will, she is still subservient in Mansfield Park because of her humble station, and she is physically and financially dependent on Sir Thomas and the Bertram family. To be able to enact her feminist ideals, she must convince others, particularly Sir Thomas, to see her as a strong and independent person, and to act accordingly. In one way, this task should be made easier because as she improves both in mind and body, her physical looks improve, too. Her burgeoning beauty indicates her moral and mental improvement, and, significantly, others notice this change. She begins as a “delicate and puny” child, and she has “no glow of complexion, nor any other striking beauty” (42, 43). Notably, Fanny is also shy, unassertive, and timorous at the beginning of Mansfield Park, and her homeliness and her timidity are thus correlated. Immediately after her first declarations of independence during the theatricals at Mansfield Park, though, Fanny’s appearance drastically changes. “Your uncle thinks you very pretty, dear Fanny,” Edmund remarks to her, and it signals a physical as well as emotional change in the novel (213). By the midpoint of Mansfield Park, Fanny will be “absolutely pretty … her air, her manner, her tout ensemble, is so indescribably improved!” (242). With the possible exception of Anne Elliot in Persuasion, no other character in Austen’s canon blooms like Fanny Price. In creating a character that grows from plain to pretty as she develops her mind through education and her body through exercise, Austen once again nods to the theories that Mary Wollstonecraft depicted in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Wollstonecraft writes:
To render the person perfect, physical and moral beauty ought to be attained at the same time; each lending and receiving force by the combination. Judgment must reside on the brow, affection and fancy beam in the eye, and humanity curve the cheek …; but this fair assemblage is not to be brought together by chance; it is the reward of exertions calculated to support each other; for judgment can only be acquired by reflection, affection by the discharge of duties, and humanity by the exercise of compassion to every living creature. (180–81)
Like Mary Wollstonecraft’s ideal woman, Fanny Price’s moral ascendancy reveals itself on her physical body, and she becomes a strikingly beautiful young woman. However, despite the fact that her beauty is the product of her virtue, her attractiveness does not lead others to recognize her moral growth. Conversely, her beauty encourages Sir Thomas and others to see her as a sexualized object. In the thoughts of Enlightenment feminists, this objectification was harmful because it discouraged abstinence, which was believed to aid in moral growth, and it made a woman’s worth correspond to her sexual appeal rather than her moral virtues. As Wollstonecraft writes, “to render the human body and mind more perfect, chastity must more universally prevail, and that chastity will never be respected in the male world until the person of a woman is not, as it were, idolized” (Wollstonecraft 6–7). Moreover, according to Cora Kaplan, because “sexuality and pleasure are narcotic 284 Marija Reiff inducements,” Wollstonecraft believed this objectification could lead women into “li[ves] of lubricious slavery” as they sought sexual pleasure rather than moral improvement (336). Therefore, although physical beauty is desirable because it is the result of virtue, sexual appeal is not because it degrades and objectifies women and leads them into a life of licentiousness. The impression that Fanny Price does not want to be admired (or, in the words of Wollstonecraft, “idolized”) for her beauty occurs throughout the novel. It is seen very specifically when Sir Thomas returns from Antigua and tells Fanny “with decided pleasure how much she had grown!” As he admires her, Fanny “knew not how to feel, nor where to look” (195). Though Fanny blushes in embarrassment, Sir Thomas “led her nearer the light and looked at her again… . He was justified in his belief of her equal improvement in health and beauty” (195). Even Edmund cannot comprehend Fanny’s mortification; he instead tells her, “You must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking at.—[sic] You must try not to mind growing up into a pretty woman” (213). Fanny, in an attempt to repress the recognition that she is, in fact, a healthy, beautiful woman, can only cry in response, “Oh! Don’t talk so, don’t talk so” (213). Since she does not want men to “react to her through her body,” she recoils strongly from Sir Thomas and Edmund’s admira- tion of her physical attractions (Todd 79). While their views may seem prudish today, Enlightenment females would have believed that repression of their sexuality “permitted the development of their reason and independence” (Kaplan 336). As an Enlightenment feminist, Fanny chooses to not have her overtly sexual and female body recognized, a fact Mary Crawford notes as she remarks that Fanny is “almost as fearful of notice and praise as other women were of neglect” (214). Therefore, Fanny endeavors to dispute Sir Thomas’s implicit belief that she now has worth because of her mature, sexualized beauty. This, too, coincides with the beliefs of Mary Wollstonecraft: “The root of the wrongs of women, according to Wollstonecraft, is the general acceptance of the idea that women are essentially sexual beings” (Poovey 352). By not wanting her body and beauty acknowledged, Fanny fights to be seen as more than just a sexual object, and she implicitly asserts her right to be seen as a thinking, reasoning woman. Fanny’s desire to be seen as an independent, assertive feminist is most clearly seen, though, when she refuses Henry Crawford’s marriage proposal. While her rejection of a single, wealthy, desirable man should be adequate to prove Fanny’s feminist leanings, it is her reaction to Sir Thomas that truly marks her as a model of virtue and feminist independence. Sir Thomas, to whom Fanny owes her home, education, and financial security, is disappointed in her decision, and he takes her to task for her refusal, saying:
You have disappointed every expectation I had formed, and proved yourself of a character the very reverse of what I had supposed. … But you have now shewn me that you can be willful and perverse; that you can and will decide for yourself, without any consideration or deference for those who have surely some right to guide you—without even asking their advice. You have shewn yourself very, very different from any thing that I had imagined. (323–24) The “Fanny Price Wars” 285
By refusing to marry Henry Crawford, Fanny takes on the momentous task of showing Sir Thomas that she can decide for herself and that she is not obliged to follow his plans for her life. By calling her “willful” and “perverse,” Sir Thomas explicitly states his disapproval of her newfound independence, marking a definitive change from her formerly meek persona to her new feminist identity. In response to her defiance, Fanny is sent away from Mansfield Park by Sir Thomas and back to her parents’ home of Portsmouth. Returned to the town she left as a child, Fanny is to be reminded, by way of contrast, of the “elegancies and luxuries of Mansfield Park” that should bring her “into a sober state” and remind her of the “value of a good income” (371, 372). Sir Thomas’s plans works: Fanny is “stunned” by her return home (383). Rather than being a place of sanctuary and repose, it is instead “the abode of noise, disorder, and impropriety,” and she is disgusted by her family’s home (390). While Fanny grows considerably throughout Mansfield Park, the scenes at Portsmouth show the punishment presented to Fanny if she does not relinquish her newfound independence, and she is sorely tempted to acquiesce to Sir Thomas’s plans. However, instead of yielding to his wishes, she instead solidifies her feminism by showing her continued resistance to patriarchal authority. Moreover, she even battles the temptation to leave Portsmouth when it is offered since it would obligate her to a rakish man she does not love and would be contrary to her feminist principles. When Henry Crawford arrives in Portsmouth, Fanny longs to be removed from the squalor and filth of her parents’ home. Marriage to a wealthy man like Henry would free her from the financial constraints of her situation, and the inducement to submit and marry him is strong. His offer to bear her away from Portsmouth and back to Mansfield Park “affected and distressed [her] to a degree that made it impossible for her to say much” (412), but Fanny, without feeling resolute, still declines his offer. To reject his offer when she is “very low” is a tough trial for Fanny, but in doing so, she remains true to her belief that it would be “wretched” to “marry without affection” (414, 329), and she is validated in her decision when Henry reveals his true character and embarks on an adulterous affair with Maria, Fanny’s cousin. However, this rejection of the charming and alluring Henry Crawford has been problematic to many readers who view Fanny’srefusalofhimasasymbolof sexual repression and, thus, of anti-feminism. “Our modern impulse [is] to resist the condemnation of sexuality,” writes Lionel Trilling (227), but Fanny’s behavior would be seen as admirable for someone who subscribes to Mary Wollstonecraft’s feminist theories. Wollstonecraft could almost perfectly be describing someone like Henry Crawford when she writes, “Men of wit and fancy are often rakes; and fancy is the food of love. Such men will inspire passion. Half the sex, in its present infantile state, would pine for a Lovelace; a man so witty, so graceful, and so valiant … [but] the day of reckoning comes; and come it surely will, to turn the sprightly lover into a surly suspicious tyrant, who contemptuously insults the very weakness he fostered” (127). Henry is indeed charming, witty, and appealing, but he is also a libertine, and when he runs off with Maria, someone who clearly does not subscribe to Enlightenment feminist ideals, he fulfills 286 Marija Reiff
Wollstonecraft’s prediction that he will insult “the very weakness he has fostered” by refusing to marry Maria and reproaching her as “the ruin of all his happiness in Fanny” (Austen 459). Despite his noticeable sex appeal, Fanny is right to reject Henry Crawford because, as Wollstonecraft explains, love should “acquire more serious dignity, and be purified in its own fire; and virtue giving delicacy to their [young girls’] affections, they would turn in disgust from the rake” (Wollstonecraft 126). For Wollstonecraft and Fanny Price, then, sexuality is a ruseonwhichtruelovecannotbebuilt,andsexuallustisathingtowhicha feminist should not succumb. Austen ultimately rewards Fanny for her commitment to Enlightenment fem- inist ideals with marriage to her cousin Edmund. While many readers dislike the union of Fanny and Edmund—critic Kingsley Amis calls them both “morally detest- able” and says that their marriage is Austen’s acquiescence to “conventional notions” (244, 246)—it is the model partnership for a heroine who follows the teachings of Enlightenment feminism. For years, their intimacy has been founded on mutual caring and respect, and it is Edmund who first makes Fanny feel at home in Mansfield Park by telling her that “you must remember that you are with relations and friends, who all love you, and wish to make you happy” (46). While his belief that everyone wishes to make Fanny happy is unfounded, it is definitively true for him, and Edmund’s fundamental goodness is what initially enables Fanny to grow “more comfortable” at Mansfield Park (47). While their relationship may strike a modern reader as being more platonic than romantic, this, too, follows a Wollstonecraft-inspired ideal. “In order to fulfil the duties of life, and to be able to pursue with vigour the various employments which form the moral character,” Wollstonecraft writes, “a master and mistress of a family ought not to continue to love each other with passion” (34). By marrying Edmund, Fanny chooses mutual respect and esteem, and she opts for a quiet life as a parson’s wife. Edmund, too, hopes that “her warm and sisterly regard for him would be foundation enough for wedded love” (465). After being heartbroken by his passionate love for the vivacious Mary Crawford, Edmund longs for the calm happiness that comes from marrying someone of “mental superiority” (466). While this apparent rejection of sexuality and physical love is at odds with contemporary perspectives, Wollstonecraft wrote that esteem is “the only lasting affection” (102), and in selecting a man who will love and respect her, Fanny chooses the marriage that best encompasses Enlightenment feminist ideals. Beyond Fanny Price’s growth, Austen also pays homage to Mary Wollstonecraft’s Enlightenment philosophies through Mansfield Park’s references to slavery and religion. Mansfield Park stands out among her works as being the only novel to directly address the issue of slavery (although Persuasion could possibly be interpreted as indirectly referencing slavery) and to repeatedly reference reli- gious debates. In Mansfield Park, female submission and slavery are correlated, and religious beliefs are shown to have transformative social power. Wollstonecraft’s work similarly associates slavery and religion with feminism, and it is another indication that A Vindication of the Rights of Woman deeply affected Austen’s composi- tion of Mansfield Park. The “Fanny Price Wars” 287
Wollstonecraft’s work is filled with the language of slavery, which suggests that the verbiage of A Vindication informed the themes of Mansfield Park. Almost every page of Wollstonecraft’s work evokes the imagery of slavery—society contributes to “enslave women,” women should “not be treated like slaves,” and they should not be “slaves of feeling” (25, 40, 73). For Wollstonecraft, female subservience is a form of slavery, and in Mansfield Park, Austen transforms Wollstonecraft’s beliefs into various plot points. Mansfield Park’s Sir Thomas has a plantation in Antigua, an English colony dependent on slave labor, but more importantly for the development of the heroine, his manner at home is frequently that of a slave-owner. For example, when he “led her [Fanny] nearer the light and looked at her again,” he is like a master inspecting his property (195). And when he suspects Henry Crawford is beginning to have an interest in Fanny at the ball, he orders Fanny to bed so that “he might mean to recommend her as a wife by shewing her persuadableness,” an act similar to the way in which a master might show off his slaves before they are sold (289). The implications of slavery permeate the novel, and Sir Thomas “is compromised not only by his presumed ownership of slaves in Antigua … but primarily by his insidious arrogance, which allows him to treat his family as commodities” (Todd 77). As the only novel in Austen’s canon to truly examine the effects of slavery at home and abroad, it is a mark of Wollstonecraft’s influence that her language and imagery took root in Austen’s themes. Similarly, both A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Mansfield Park are religious works. For both Wollstonecraft and Austen, religion and the clergy have an important place in the community because they can serve as catalysts for progressive social change. While other novels feature members of the clergy and the occasional discussion of religion, Mansfield Park is Austen’s sole work that takes up matters of the clergy and church in frequent vigorous discussions. As Ruth Yeazell suggests, “Mansfield Park may be the most openly Christian of Jane Austen’s novels” (138). Likewise, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a fundamen- tally religious work, and its philosophies are predicated on the existence of God. Despite the fact that “admirers of Mary Wollstonecraft are often reluctant to see her as a religious thinker … it [A Vindication] contains at least fifty discussions of religious themes” (Taylor 99). Wollstonecraft herself clearly states that “there is a God” (30), which is a belief that permeates the whole of her work. Likewise, Fanny has clear—some might say priggish—views on religion, but for Wollstonecraft, “clear-cut religious views were essential” (Taylor 100). And Fanny is undoubtedly “more morally serious, more insistently religious than her predecessors” (Todd 88). While many feminists today might not embrace Fanny’s views on morality, God, and religion, someone from Austen’s era may have seen it differently because, as critic Barbara Taylor explains, “Eighteenth and nineteenth century western feminists were nearly all active Christians” (103), and there was not the discord between piety and feminism that a modern reader might expect. Like radical Christians who sought to end slavery and to improve conditions for the working poor, “evangelicals began explicitly linking doctrines of female moral leadership to demands for practical improvements in women’s own political and legal status” (Taylor 105). While Austen may not go so far as to demand improvements in “political and legal 288 Marija Reiff status” for women, it is telling that Mansfield Park contains numerous discussions about the role of clergy and the church. Wollstonecraft herself wrote in A Vindication that “the clergy have superior opportunities of improvement” (20), and Edmund defends the importance of the clergy throughout the novel. While Fanny is largely silent during these debates between Mary and Edmund, her opinions are documented through shakes of her head and through her occasional rebuttals of Mary’s unorthodox views (346, 134). Notably, the newly assertive Fanny Price is rewarded for her feminism with marriage to Edmund, a clergyman who defends the faith and pursues ways to improve the “influence and importance” of religion in society (Austen 117), and who seeks to uphold to the laws of a “powerful, wise, and good” God (Wollstonecraft 188). As products of the Enlightenment, both Mansfield Park and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman were concerned with the prevailing social issues of their day, including religion, slavery, and the changing role of women. While Wollstonecraft’s influence on Jane Austen is palpable in Mansfield Park, Fanny Price’s growth into an Enlightenment feminist often goes unrecognized because of the marked differences between Wollstonecraft’s philosophies and contemporary feminist principles. Though Fanny is moralistic and conservative by modern stan- dards, this was compatible with Wollstonecraft’s radical feminism. The ostensible conservatism of Austen’s novel—the overt religious beliefs, the sexual prudishness, the prim moralizing, and the confusing denunciation of the theater—fits within Wollstonecraft’s larger vision of liberal politics, and Fanny’s eventual triumph signals Austen’s endorsement of emerging Enlightenment feminist creeds. Because “Fanny improves in both strength of mind and body as the novel pro- gresses” (Kirkham 105), she is not, as some critics claim, a static character who is always “passive, obedient, and long-suffering” (Emsley 115). Instead, Fanny Price changes from the sort of girl whose voice “can scarcely be heard in the first part of Mansfield Park” to a woman who “bursts into a promising articulation” by the end (Shields xi, xii). Far from being Austen’s endorsement of “totally conventional femininity” (Sturrock 13), Fanny Price instead emerges as a heroine whose growth “reads like a fictional reworking of A Vindication” (Kaplan 346) and whose eventual triumph is the result of her dedication to Enlightenment feminist ideals. By reward- ing Fanny so richly for her virtue and determination, Austen embraces the princi- ples of Enlightenment feminism that Wollstonecraft details in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The depth of Austen’sfeelingsonthesubjectmaybeondisplay,though, when she finishes her book with an uncharacteristic show of emotion: she calls her heroine “My Fanny” in the last chapter, thus signaling a tenderness and regard for the girl who changes from being “ashamed of herself” into a confident young woman who rejects her suitor, defies her uncle, and marries for love and affection (457, 44). Austen’sapprobationisclearasFannyisallowedtoquietly and resolutely climb the heights from being the “lowest and the last” to even- tually become the beloved daughter of Mansfield Park (234). In Austen’stale, Fanny’s triumph is not just the victory of a heroine in a novel; it is the triumph of the ideals of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Enlightenment feminism, and it signals The “Fanny Price Wars” 289
Austen’sbeliefthatawomancanbeindependent, moralistic, and virtuous all at once. The kind of ideal feminist that Mary Wollstonecraft described in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Austen brought to fruition as Fanny Price in Mansfield Park.
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