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Aayvagam an International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research | Volume No. 4 | Issue 7 | August 2016 8 ISSN – Online: 2321-5259 Print: 2321-5739 The Theme of Love and Marriage in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park Dr. J. Sobhana Devi Asst. Professor of English, S.F.R.College for Women, Sivakasi The romantic period is a term applied to the literature of approximately the first third of the nineteenth century. During this time, literature began to move in channels that were not entirely new but were in strong contrast to the standard literary practice of the eighteenth century. It is intensely interesting to note how literature at first reflected the political turmoil of the age. And then, when the turmoil was over and England began her mighty work of reform, how literature suddenly developed a new creative spirit, which shows itself in the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and in the prose of Scott, Jane Austen, Lamb, and De Quincey. A wonderful group of writers, whose patriotic enthusiasm suggests the Elizabethan days, and whose genius has caused their age to be known as the second creative period of our literature. Jane Austen's time seems to have been a golden age for women writers. She is the first English writer who infused the novel with modern character through the treatment of everyday life. She takes love marriage as the central theme for her novels. Through her vivacious and spirited heroines and their social circles, Austen portrays English middle- class life. Almost all of her works explore the precarious economic situation in which women of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries found themselves. Her novels are the stories of marriage for love, financial security and social status. As a novelist, Jane Austen worked in a narrow field. Except for short visits to neighbouring places, she lived a static life but she had such a keen power of observation that the simple country people became the characters of her novels. The chief duties of these people were of the household, their chief pleasures were in country gatherings and their chief interest was in matrimony. It is the small, quiet world of these people, free from the mighty interests, passions, ambitious and tragic struggles of life that Jane Austen depicts in her six novels—Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. But inspite of these limitations, she has achieved wonderful perfection in that narrow field on account of her acute power of observation, her fine impartiality and self-detachment and her quiet, delicate and ironical humour. Her circumstances helped her to give that finish and delicacy to her work, which have made them artistically prefect. Novel-writing was a part of her everyday life, to be placed aside should a visitor come, to be resumed when he left, to be pursued unostentatiously and tranquilly in the midst of the family circle. Jane Austen takes love and marriage as the central theme for her novels. She considers love and marriage to be the fundamental problem of human life. Human nature in its essence unfolds itself through this most intimate of personal relationships. The theme of love is capable of highly emotional treatment. Jane Austen took a sober and balanced view of life. Love, in her novels, is never an explosive passion. Many of Jane Austen’s critics and readers have found her novels unreadable because they deal with a highly emotional theme in a very cold manner. Aayvagam an International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research | Volume No. 4 | Issue 7 | August 2016 9 ISSN – Online: 2321-5259 Print: 2321-5739 In Mansfield Park, the theme of love and marriage is tightly intertwined with female sexuality. She presents different kinds of marriages in the novel. There are four marriages that take place over the course of events and there are four significantly different views on marriage. Mansfield Park is centered on Fanny Price, the poor ward and niece of Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram. She is taken from her parents to be raised by her rich relatives and comes to Mansfield Park as a child of nine. It is a more socially- aware novel than Austen’s other works, focusing, as it does on the slave trade and the roots of the British upper crust’s wealth in corruption and exploitation. The story contains much social satire, targeted particularly at the two aunts, Lady Bertram and Mrs.Norris. Jane Austen was distrustful of emotional love and viewed it as a disturbing factor in human life. Her aim was to give an authentic picture of life of most men and women, being a mere prelude to marriage. Jane Austen deliberately robs love of all its romantic glamour. The readers find her taking in very practical view of life. Love in her novels, therefore always result in successful marriage. It is significant that Jane Austen suggested a sober view of love when in the romanticism, reason had yielded place to feeling and emotion. The oft quoted sentence from Jane Austen’s letter to Cassandra, “Now I will try to write of something else and it should be a complete change of subject ordination and I am glad to find your enquiries have ended so well” (qtd. in. Reddy 50) pointed to her concern with the principle that is to govern a genteel society, a concern that provides a clue to the understanding of the novel. When the novel Mansfield Park begins, a young girl named Fanny Price comes to live with her uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas Bertram. Fanny is a romantic heroine. Fanny grows up shy and deferential, caught as she typically is between members of the Bertram family. Fanny finds kindness in Edmund Bertram, which is the source of great solace and comfort for her. However, Edmund remains friendly and encouraging to Fanny and she gradually falls in love with him as she grows up. His active kindness, then and later, has a natural result, that “…she loved him better than anybody in the world except William; her heart was divided between the two.” (20) The arrival of the lively, attractive Henry and Mary Crawford disrupts the staid world of Mansfield and sparks a series of romantic entanglements. Mary is beautiful and charming. Edmund is fascinated by her, and speaks to Fanny of her the next day. They agree on her improprieties, but Fanny does not find her as charming as Edmund does. While Edmund falls in love with Mary, even neglecting Fanny sometimes in his attempts to please Mary. Mary finds Edmund’s company increasingly pleasant and his growing admiration for her increasingly troubles Fanny. Fanny fears that Mary has enchanted Edmund, and that has blinded him to her flaws. Fanny’s own secret devotion to Edmund is the one contrast attachment from the beginning to the end of the novel. She regarded her cousin as an example of everything good and great as possessing worth, which no one but herself could ever appreciate….Her sentiments towards him were compounded of all that was respectful, grateful, confiding, and tender. (35) Aayvagam an International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research | Volume No. 4 | Issue 7 | August 2016 10 ISSN – Online: 2321-5259 Print: 2321-5739 The feelings of Fanny herself are even more complicated. At this point, she is clearly beginning to feel a romantic interest in Edmund, although she cannot admit this to anyone, even herself. Abused by all and pulled in every direction, she must try to please everyone at once, leaving her in position where she cannot be herself, save perhaps at odd moments with the understanding Edmund. Very likely, Fanny annoys herself as much as she annoys us, and when the readers step back and look at her overall situation, she emerges as a very realistic and sympathetic character. The novels of Jane Austen abound in loving sisters and brothers. Fanny deeply loves her brother William. In the beginning of the novel Jane Austen, tells us that Fanny’s heart was divided between Edmund and her brother. There are many instances of Fanny adoration of William’s presents and also how much she likes to spend her time with her brother. When Tom was seriously ill, Edmund devoted all his energies to the nursing of his brother. There is real family feeling and affection between Mary and Henry and their half-sister, and there are many pleasant scene between them. Within the three hours of Mary’s arrival, Mrs. Grant unfolds her plan that her sister should marry Tom Bertram. Mary immediately sets her eye on Tom Bertram, and his large estate, although she finds him dull. She considers forming match with Tom Bertram, heir of a baronet. She finds him to be a suitable match for a young lady such as herself with afortune of 20,000 pounds. Despite her best efforts, Mary has made no progress with Tom, and she is disappointed when he leaves to Mansfield to Carouse with friends. However her feelings do not obey her financial goals as she finds herself preferring instead his young brother, Edmund Bertram. Though Mary Crawford is charming, she has certain immoral views and opinions which mean in the end that she loses Edmund. In Sotherton, Mary finds the idea of going chapel is disagreeable and, unaware that Edmund is to become a priest, makes snide comment about clergymen. She encourages Edmund to become a soldier or a lawyer instead, but to no avail. Edmund is also greatly upset when he discovers that Mary is opposed to him becoming a clergyman. But Edmund is still attracted to her despite her flawed reasoning and her generally disturbing outlook is proof that passionate love is not a positive thing in this society.

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