Since Jane Austen Wrote Novels About Young People Who Get Married, She Is Therefore Often Presented As a Writer of Romances
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CHAPTER EIGHT THE NOVEL: MARRIAGE AS A GAME OF SPECULATION Since Jane Austen wrote novels about young people who get married, she is therefore often presented as a writer of romances. An attentive reader, however, cannot help concluding that her attitude to marriage is thoroughly ironic. This is seen from the first words of Mansfield Park: “About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield 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 an handsome house and large income.” The opening of the first chapter is dedicated to a comparison of the long settled fate of the three Ward sisters on the marriage market, and the breach between them due to their resulting different social standing. The key word is “match”; the key idea is trading female beauty for male money: … such of their acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and Miss Frances 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.1 This ironic contemplation of the three sisters’ different luck reveals the values of this middle- and upper-class society. The good match is to marry fortune and title, the acceptable match is to marry a clergyman with connections, the poor match is to marry a penniless Lieutenant of Marines. And nowhere does the word “love” appear in 1 Miss Ward is the later Mrs Norris; Miss Frances is Mrs Price, and Miss Maria is Lady Bertram. 232 Irony and Idyll these first pages, not even in connection with the youngest sister.2 The only comment about the emotional side of marriage is an ironic reference to “conjugal felicity”, again connected to money. The opening of Mansfield Park is not the opening of a romantic love story. It is the opening of an ironic novel about marriage as a market where women are the wares and men the buyers, and about a society where people are classified according to the contents of their purses. The striking and repeated mention of specific sums of money is again seen to be a typical feature of Austen’s novels. Miss Maria Ward, for instance, was “at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it” (that is the match) with her “only” seven thousand pounds. The second example of Austen’s ironic attitude to common marriage practices is found in the forming of the Rushworth/Bertram alliance. The motives of both bride and groom are described with irony: Mr Rushworth “fancied himself in love” (38); Maria Bertram wanted a house in town. And yet, they are none of them caricatures (as they more easily are in films). The point for Austen is rather that this is the common behaviour of young people of this class, and the superficial concerns of their parents (here represented by Mrs Norris and Mrs Rushworth) – that a good match is what counts – is equally wide-spread. Mr Rushworth is uncommonly stupid, and this combined with his wealth makes him an easy victim of the intrigues of others.3 Maria is a well-bred girl, and she thinks it her duty to marry at the age of twenty-one, and also her duty to marry money and position. The young people are shown to do what they are told, expected and raised to do. This is the irony, not that particular individuals can behave so superficially, but that a whole society bases its matrimonial practices on such ideals: “After dancing with each other at a proper number of balls, the young people justified these opinions” and got engaged. Nobody encourages them to get to know each other. Even Sir Thomas (although abroad at the time of the engagement) is seen to share the same shallow criteria: the money, the family, and that they are of the same county are decisive factors for him. 2 The word appears twice in the first chapter, but both in a discussion of the potential problem of “cousins in love” if Fanny is brought up in the family (a dramatic irony on Mrs Norris’ abilities as a prophet). 3 He is, however, not the clown that he is in the BBC adaptation (see Chapter Nine); there is “nothing disagreeable in his figure or address”, we are told (38). .