THE NOVELISTS’ TABLE: PLAY, FANTASY, AND WRITING
A thesis submitted to the faculty of A5 San Francisco State University 3 (o In partial fulfillment of the requirements for £06 L the Degree
Master of Arts
In
English: Literature
by
Brandy Nichole Deminna
San Francisco, California
Fall 2015 Copyright by Brandy Nichole Deminna 2015 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL
I certify that I have read The Novelists’ Table: Play, Fantasy, and Writing by Brandy
Nichole Deminna, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in
English: Literature at San Francisco State University.
(■ / # Summer Star, PlvD. Professor of English
Wai-Leung Kwok, Ph.D. t Professor of English THE NOVELISTS’ TABLE: PLAY, FANTASY, AND WRITING
Brandy Nichole Deminna San Francisco, California 2015
My thesis is a comparative study of Samuel Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles
Grandison and Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. I analyze the spirited characters in these two novels with the help of Sigmund Freud’s essay “Creative Writers and Day-
Dreaming.” Using Freud’s theories, I divide these characters into two groups: those who play and those who fantasize. In comparing the novelistic fate of these characters, I also compare Austen and Richardson as writers, showing that Austen is more morally conservative than Richardson. Finally, I conclude that though Richardson’s novel predates Austen’s, his proves to be more progressive.
I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis.
Jio IS Chair, Thesis~Committee (J ^ Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my advisors, Professor Star and Professor Kwok, for guiding me through every phase of the writing process from research to completion. It’s hard to imagine where I would be without early morning meetings at Cafe Reverie, impromptu
Skype sessions, and Dogshaming! I would also like to thank Pat for editing the entire document all the way from a cafeteria in Westport. And finally, I want to thank Professor
Christmas for first introducing me to Richardson a short two years ago.
v TABLE OF CONTENTS
Austen, Richardson, and the Play of W riting...... 1
The Men’s Table: Fantasy and Choice ...... 17
Historical Context...... 19
Foolish Fantasizers...... 23
A Cruel Comparison: Henry Crawford and Sir Charles Grandison ...... 36
The Ladies’ Table: Wagers and Gains...... 45
The Immaterial Actions of a Listening Ear...... 47
Mary Crawford’s Unfeminine Immodesty...... 53
Charlotte Grandison: The Creative Writer at Play...... 62
Know When to Fold Them ...... 71
Notes...... 75
Works Cited 85 1
Austen, Richardson, and the Play of Writing
Through an understanding of the terms “play” and “phantasy” as defined by
Sigmund Freud in his essay “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming,” I will uncover the vibrant and multifaceted way in which Samuel Richardson and Jane Austen play as they write and how their characters who fantasize become (or do not become) players and writers themselves. In his essay, Freud states that child’s play involves imagining a world separate from reality, but one wherein real objects are linked to those objects found in play. A child, while he plays at being a fireman, for example, never loses sight of reality.
As he plays, he never loses consciousness of the fact that he is not a fireman. According to Freud, when the child grows up, he is no longer capable of play, only of fantasizing,
“As people grow up, then, they cease to play, and they seem to give up the yield of pleasure which they gained from playing.... Actually, we can never give anything up....
In the same way, the growing child, when he stops playing, gives up nothing but the link with real objects; instead of playing, he now phantasies [sic]” (emphasis original) (437-
438). The adult’s fantasies become a source of shame and his tendency to play is turned inward—he daydreams about impossibilities and potentially loses sight of reality.
In “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming,”1 published in 1908, just eight years after The Interpretation o f Dreams, Freud is both a psychoanalyst and a literary critic as he tries to explain the difference between adults and adults who are novelists. I will use his essay as a method of literary analysis, not psychoanalysis, as I analyze Richardson 2
and Austen and their characters. Freud’s comparison between writers and all other adults reveals that the connection between writers and those who do not write is the tendency both groups have to daydream and fantasize. The difference between writers and all others is the ability writers have to play. Writers create fanciful worlds with their language, all the while remaining conscious of the fact that these worlds are imaginary; as Freud states, “The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously—that, which he invests with large amounts of emotion—while separating it sharply from reality” (437). Though fantasizing is the common fate of all adults, writers remain capable of play.
In this thesis, I will reveal how Samuel Richardson in The History o f Sir Charles
Grandison and Jane Austen in Mansfield Park play as they create their fictitious worlds.
However, Richardson and Austen are not the only players on whom I will focus; I will also evaluate how their most fantastic characters are depicted as unfortunate gamblers, witty deceivers, and even writers themselves, and how these depictions reveal the authors’ opinions. It is relevant to think of Freud’s essay as a work of literary criticism in conjunction with these novels because both Richardson and Austen create worlds that are imaginative, yet deeply rooted in the reality of their times. Gambling was popular in eighteenth-century England, so much so that both authors create novelistic worlds that focus on particularly playful and fanciful characters. 3
I have chosen to compare Richardson’s Grandison with Austen’s Mansfield Park because of Austen’s evident rapport with Richardson’s work and because of the similarities of the situations and characters in the respective novels. Austen was very fond of Grandison, even writing a play about the novel. Brian Southam states, in his introduction to Austen’s play The History o f Sir Charles Grandison, that “It has long been known to us that Richardson was her favourite novelist, and Grandison her favourite novel, its characters ‘as well remembered as if they had been living friends’”
(3). The latter part of Southam’s statement is a quote by Austen’s nephew, James Edward
Austen-Leigh, in his book Memoir o f Jane Austen, and it acts as first-hand, biographical knowledge of Austen’s feelings toward Richardson’s Grandison. Austen had an almost perfect memory of Grandison and a great intimacy with its characters. For example, in a letter written by Austen to her sister, Cassandra, in September of 1813 (consequently, the year prior to the publication of Mansfield Park) Austen states, “Miss Hare had some pretty caps, and is to make me one.... It will be white sattin [sic] and lace, and a little white flower perking out of the left ear, like Harriot [sic] Byron’s feather” (229). Harriet
Byron, the heroine of Grandison, might well have worn a feather in her hat, but after reading the longest book in the English language this detail would most likely be lost on the everyday reader.
Austen’s admiration of Grandison is not only apparent in her crystal clear memory of the novel and the tribute she makes to the novel by adapting it into a play, but also in her own language and syntax. K. C. Phillipps, in his text Jane Austen’s English, 4
points out several instances where Austen’s diction and sentence structure mimic that of
Richardson’s. For example, Phillipps states:
The eighteenth-century reflexive use of allow, to allow oneself in, now quite
obsolete, occurs once in the novels: Mr Crawford allowed himself in gallantries
which did mean nothing (MP 363). We may compare Richardson: Persons ... that
yet allow themselves in liberties which no good man can take (Sir Charles
Grandison I, 279) [emphasis original]. (69)"
The minuteness of Phillipps’ analysis and his comparison of Austen’s Mansfield Park to
Grandison shows that Austen was not only fond of Richardson’s work, but had such a memory of Richardson’s novel that she went as far as to reuse his particular, and peculiar, phrasing in her own novels.
Austen’s appreciation of Grandison is not only evident through her admiration of the novel, however. She was known to be critical of the characters in Grandison, especially of the hero, Sir Charles. In her Juvenilia piece Jack & Alice she satirizes the goodness of Sir Charles, mocking his shining character with hyperbolic imagery,
“Charles Adams was an amiable, accomplished & bewitching young Man, of so dazzling a Beauty that none but Eagles could look him in the Face” (12). Austen’s satire of
Richardson’s virtuous character Sir Charles, though comical, shows that though she may have admired Grandison, she was also deeply critical of its characters. In her play by the same name, Austen mocks Richardson’s Sir Charles by characterizing him as an 5
insensitive and immoral man. Brian Southam states in the introduction to the play that,
“Occasionally, Grandison is enlivened with some quite unRichardsonian humour—such as the moment in Act Four, when his elder sister is late for tea and the hero cracks what is for him a daring joke: ‘How long Caroline has been gone! I hope no more Sir Hargrave
Pollexfens have run away with her & Emily” (27). Austen’s satire of Richardson’s virtuous character, along with other instances in which she appears to be communicating directly with Richardson’s work, foreshadows how unlike Richardson she would become as a novelist. Phillipps points out that Austen never thought it appropriate to address even a friend or family member informally, “It was not uncommon for husbands and wives to use Mr and Mrs when referring to each other.... Sons and daughters, even when grown up and married, addressed their parents frequently as sir and ma ’am or madam’’’
(emphasis original) (214). Evidently Richardson does not share in Austen’s conservatism as one of his most brilliant characters, Charlotte, chastises her friend Harriet and Harriet’s cousin for continually addressing her formally, “Call me not Madam; call me your
Charlotte. My brother has given me and himself a sister; will you not own me? [emphasis original]” (I; 145). Austen’s more conservative tendencies and her criticism of the behavior of certain characters in Grandison show that she did not believe the morality of
Richardson’s novel to be “perfect” as did George Eliot.1" As I will demonstrate in my thesis, it is evident in Mansfield Park that Austen felt that the danger of behaving immorally during the sixty-one-year period between Richardson’s novel and her own had 6
grown rather than diminished and that Richardson attempted to write a morally didactic novel but did not succeed.
Austen’s Mansfield Park is a much more conservative novel than Grandison because of its preference for the past and tradition over the trends and behaviors of the present and for its focus on the consistency of character. Richardson’s Grandison is much more lighthearted in comparison, focusing on the many possible ways adults could behave in eighteenth-century England. This difference between Austen and Richardson as novelists is made evident by the fates of their playful and fanciful characters.
The characters who play and fantasize in Richardson’s Grandison and Austen’s
Mansfield Park exhibit their lively behaviors in the same three primary ways: through their language, their relationships with the opposite sex, and their choices to remain in or to leave the prized family circles of the novels. Although these characters fantasize similarly across both novels, Richardson’s playful characters do not meet such severe ends as Austen’s. In the first chapter of this thesis, I will focus on the male characters who play and fantasize in both novels, and in the second chapter, I will focus on the women who do the same. My choice to divide my thesis chapters by gender instead of by author or novel does not intend to promote a focus on the treatment of woman during the period. By focusing on the similarities in behavior of both genders across both novels, each chapter will more easily lend itself to a comparison of Richardson and Austen as writers of playful male and female personas. I have chosen to begin with the male 7
characters in these novels (and with Richardson’s Everard and Austen’s Tom in particular) because these characters reveal the intricacies of Austen’s and Richardson’s moralism. Both male characters are foolish, but both are moderately rewarded at the end of the novels. Beginning with this apparent similarity in the morals of the authors will lay the foundation for my discussion of their vast moral differences, which is the main focus of my thesis.
The male characters I will focus on in chapter one are Everard Grandison, Tom
Bertram, and Henry Crawford. Everard Grandison and Tom Bertram are both gamblers who speak and behave poorly. In gambling, they fantasize about worlds that do not resemble the morally focused worlds that these novels promote. These characters do not play in the Freudian sense of the word; they fantasize and therefore lose the ability to connect to the people in the world around them. They lack the tools to communicate properly and court women in the correct manner, and ultimately they choose to behave in a way their novelistic worlds will not support. Both characters just barely remain members of the novels’ prized circles, Everard marrying into the merchant class and Tom choosing to carry on his father’s estate after a near brush with death.
Richardson, whose fictions were meant to act as conduct novels,,v instructs his readers how to behave appropriately through the actions of his characters. Everard, who gambles away his estates and makes unfortunate connections with women, is an example of how not to behave. Everard is overcome by his fantasies and, as a result, almost 8
completely loses contact with the Grandison family. Jessica Richard, in her article
‘“Putting to Hazard a Certainty’: Lotteries and the Romance of Gambling in Eighteenth-
Century England,” claims that for Everard, “gambling ... is both sacrificial and (he hopes) productive” (189-190). Whatever Everard’s hopes may be, it is clear that
Richardson does not hope to make Everard a winner. Without going so far as to imply that Everard is a completely unredeemable character (much like he does with Hargrave
Pollexfen), he shows that Everard’s behavior cannot be sustained. The didactic message
Richardson sends with Everard’s character is that if you gamble, lose all your money, and act inappropriately toward women, you can live, but not at Grandison Hall.
On the other hand, whether a character like Everard should even be able to live after committing such indiscretions is unclear in the world of Mansfield Park. Tom
Bertram is very similar to Everard Grandison—he is a foolish, irresponsible gambler— yet Austen treats his often quite laughable character traits as seriously abhorrent. The severity of Austen’s treatment of Tom is evident when Tom must experience a near death illness in order to reform and to remain the heir of his father’s estate. Although Tom is in a position of responsibility as future heir of the Bertram estate and Everard has little to no responsibilities, Tom’s near death illness is a severe punishment for what is merely foolish behavior. Mansfield Park corrects the morality of Richardson’s Everard, showing how much more morally severe Austen is as a novelist than Richardson. P.C. Giotta, in his article “Characterization in Mansfield Park: Tom Bertram and Colman’s The Heir at
Law,” states, “In what is a testament to her conservatism, Austen first must have Tom 9
undergo a transformation, becoming ‘steady and quiet’ before she can install him
securely as the Bertram heir” (469). Her conservatism, however evident in her treatment of Tom, is even more apparent in the fate of Henry Crawford.
Henry Crawford is a more complex character than either Everard or Tom. As a member of polite society, he knows how to behave, but lacks moral depth. His charming character bewitches several women in the novel and his playful nature leads to serious consequences. Not so much a gambler as a play actor, Henry seeks to win Fanny’s approval without the backing of real love or conviction. Henry fantasizes about a world in which any woman can be his regardless of his behavior. This is, of course, not the world Austen supports. Henry’s deceptive language, illicit relations with women, and his choice of married Maria over upright Fanny create a complex figure who ultimately fails when given the choice.
Austen deliberately teases the reader with the possibility of the often times loveable Henry Crawford’s reformation. Although Henry seems to reform slightly when he is courting Fanny, Austen suggests that dishonesty and an almost sociopathic disconnection from reality are in his nature. Furthermore, when Henry has the choice to reform, he does not, a decision that disappoints many readers and shows that his immoral behavior is inseparable from his character.
Considering Tom Bertram as a parallel character to Everard Grandison, Austen seems to be attempting to correct the morality of Richardson’s hero, Sir Charles, through 10
drawing parallels in speech and behavior to her character Henry Crawford. Jocelyn
Harris, in her article ‘“As if they had been living friends’: Sir Charles Grandison into
Mansfield P a rk points out similarities between Sir Charles and Henry Crawford:
“Whenever Sir Charles married,” she writes, ‘“he would break half a score of hearts,’ an image that Jane Austen disrespectfully transfers to Henry: ‘O! the envyings [sic] and heart-burnings of dozens and dozens!”’ (371). Austen’s apparent dislike of Richardson’s hero, Sir Charles, and the ways in which she associates the language and character traits of Sir Charles with Henry shows her cynicism toward romance and what she would call
“perfection.”v Her mockery of Sir Charles’ perfection in her Juvenilia and her play is lighthearted in comparison to the cruel connection she makes between Sir Charles and the irredeemable Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park. As I will prove in my thesis, the severity of this comparison shows how much more conservative her understanding of male virtue is than Richardson’s.
Austen’s conservatism seems to bind her to tradition, rather than to progressively propel her views forward. On the other hand, Richardson rebelliously pushed the envelope of what it meant to be virtuous in eighteenth-century England by creating characters who acted naturally, or who made mistakes they were able to recover from.
Austen attempts to correct Richardson’s understanding of morality, subscribing specifically to the type of morality Samuel Johnson calls for in The Rambler—“Vice, for vice is necessary to be shewn [sic], should always disgust; nor should the graces of gaiety, or the dignity of courage, be so united with it, as to reconcile it to the mind” (65; 11
no. 4). Austen depicts Henry as a character who intrinsically lacks virtue and the ability to reform. In this chapter, I will prove that Austen directly corrects the morality of Sir
Charles through Henry Crawford, and that the impossibility of Henry’s reform stunts the imaginative world of Mansfield Park.
My second chapter will focus on the women who gamble and play in these novels, Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park and Charlotte in Grandison. Mary Crawford, who is very similar to her brother Henry, fantasizes that she can make the pious Edmund
Bertram her husband without substantively considering the type of life she would lead as a clergyman’s wife. She fails to succeed in marrying Edmund because of her own inability to accept his choice to become a clergyman and her inability to take serious matters seriously. She speaks in metaphor, treats Edmund flippantly, and unashamedly smiles at Edmund at the novel’s close. Brash and outspoken, Austen’s Mary Crawford appears to many readers an ideal Austenian heroine. However, she does not “play” in the
Freudian sense of the word, but instead fantasizes, a tendency all of Austen’s heroines lack or learn to subdue through reformation.V1 Mary, much like her brother Henry, does not choose to reform.
Mary shares similarities with Richardson’s Charlotte, but Charlotte is a very different character. Charlotte Grandison is outspoken and speaks informally (like Mary
Crawford) resulting in the intermittent loss of approval from her friends, family, and husband. Rather than continue to be completely oblivious to the wishes of those around 12
her, Charlotte attempts to curb her more lively tendencies through writing to the novel’s heroine, Harriet. Although Charlotte does attempt to regulate her playful behavior, she is not quieted or subdued at the novel’s close. Charlotte plays, and continues to play, in the
Freudian sense of the word, remaining aware of the reality of her situation as a woman in eighteenth-century England. She will marry, but she refuses to completely alter the way she speaks and acts. Although Charlotte does curb the cruelty of her raillery toward the man she has chosen to marry, she does not completely lose her playfulness. In fact,
Charlotte remains playful, persuading her husband, Lord G., to enjoy her humor rather than to be hurt by it. Charlotte is the only truly playful character in either novel. She creates a new world, much like Austen and Richardson do with their novels. Freud’s definitions of play and fantasy, and particularly of play as an activity that only adults who are writers are capable of, are essential to realizing the connection between Charlotte’s learning how to play at the same time she learns how to write.
Much like the parallel Austen draws between Sir Charles Grandison and Henry
Crawford in Mansfield Park, she draws similarities between the siblings of these two men: Mary and Charlotte. In Grandison, Charlotte metaphorically speaks of issues she is having with her husband, Lord G., likening her marriage to a difficult hand in a game of whist. When another character offers his hand for her to play, Charlotte states, “I will play my own cards: I shall have enough to do to play them well [emphasis original]” (IV;
389). She says this in front of almost every member of her family and is later severely rebuked for having gone too far. In this moment, Charlotte fantasizes that her marriage is 13
a card game, not taking the union seriously and thus causing her family and husband pain.
Similarly, in Mansfield Park, Mary Crawford plays speculation, during which she learns that Edmund has decided to take up residency at Thorton Lacey and become a clergyman. This upsets Mary, who states, ‘“There, I will stake my last like a woman of spirit. No cold prudence for me. I am not bom to sit still and do nothing. If I lose the game, it shall not be from not striving for it’” (II; 219). In this scene, Mary means to lose both the game and Edmund and risk what Gillian Beer calls “the insurance of marriage.”
In her article “The Reader’s Wager: Lots, Sorts, and Futures,” Beer states, “... all focus the social disapproval that centred on the idea of a woman taking chances, risking all... flouting the slow pace of that other self-defensive form of gambling: insurance—which in the marriage market must mean for women the preservation of reputation and the search for a secure husband” (109). In order to maintain her virtue, Mary should be “self defensive” and concerned with insuring herself against losses in courtship. Mary does not defend herself, but, instead, stakes all on William’s low card, the knave.
However similar these two characters are, their treatment in the novels is markedly different. Charlotte’s risk-taking behavior at the card table is punished, but only as a means to reform. As a result of the advice of her family and friends, Charlotte adopts a more socially acceptable form of play, one in which even her husband, Lord G., can participate. As I will discuss further in this chapter, the culminating scene of their playful 14
marriage is when Lord G. bursts into Charlotte’s room while she is breast-feeding their child. Charlotte is playfully outraged and Lord G. confesses his love for her raillery.
Mary Crawford’s playful language, on the other hand, results in her losing
Edmund’s interest and revealing herself to be completely unfeeling in a letter she writes to Fanny. Unlike the reformative power that Harriet’s letter writing has over Charlotte,
Mary is not reformed through corresponding with Fanny. In a particularly damning letter,
Mary acknowledges that Henry has run off with Maria, Edmund’s married sister, and, instead of suffering from this information like most of the other characters in the novel, quickly forgives Henry and hopes the scandal will pass. Charlotte is uplifted as a creative heroine, but Mary is brutally condemned. As I will prove in this chapter, the clear parallel
Austen draws between Mary and Charlotte shows that Austen’s condemnation of Mary is a condemnation of Charlotte.
Because Austen compares the irredeemable Mary Crawford to Richardson’s playful and progressive Charlotte Grandison, her purportedv" feminism must be questioned. In Mansfield Park in particular, Austen’s stance on a woman’s rightful position in a growing and changing eighteenth-century society becomes hazardously traditional. Many theorists who compare Richardson and Austen are quick to defend
Austen’s feminism and to look for weak points in Richardson’s. For example, Yuko
Ikeda, in her article “The Development of a Playful Mind: Samuel Richardson’s
Grandison and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice,” mistakenly claims that Charlotte 15
Grandison is no longer a playful character after she gives birth: “Charlotte may be allowed to jest, but not without limit.... she is expected to adopt the proper female role as wife and mother. Richardson evaluates playfulness as long as it is within the boundary of appropriateness” (29). Interestingly, Mansfield Park's heroine, Fanny, is not permitted to play at all. Whether at the card table or on the stage, Fanny cannot assume a playful role and can only act appropriately. This is another instance of Austen strictly adhering to
Johnson’s prescription in The Rambler—that a moral character must be consistently moral at all times and not exhibit both vice and gaiety.
To conclude, Richardson, an author who is conscious of the controversy of his morally ambiguous characters, pushes the envelope in his playful writing, especially widening the boundaries around what it means to be a playful woman in eighteenth- century England. Richardson’s novel ultimately supports its playful and fanciful character, Charlotte, making her herself into a type of novelist, world-creator extraordinaire. On the other hand, Austen’s novel is much more subdued, making the boisterous Mary Crawford an unashamed and emotional character who is left single and friendless at the novel’s close.
The joy of Richardson’s novel is that through Charlotte, new ways of speaking and being in the world are made possible. Charlotte remains a prized member of the
Grandison family and a playful wife and mother. Austen’s novel, on the other hand, does not reward the reader’s imagination with the same creative possibilities. Because 16
Austen’s aim is to recapture what she views as the more seriously meaningful traditional past, her characters lack the creative vitality that Richardson’s Charlotte portrays so well.
Thus, unlike what several theorists have claimed before, Austen does not perfect a feminist ideal that Richardson attempts to curb or to subdue. In fact, quiet the opposite appears to be true. Austen hopes to restore the values of a more traditional society in which people listen well and behave morally rather than politely. Richardson’s Charlotte-
Lord G. plot shows that people who behave naturally rather than politely may go on to create a new type of world together. While Austen’s Mansfield Park is focused on the past, Richardson’s Grandison is forward looking and champions change. 17
The Men’s Table: Fantasy and Choice
Everard Grandison, Tom Bertram, and Henry Crawford have at least one thing in common—they do not take important matters seriously. Everard gambles away all of his estates on cards, Tom takes an advance out on his younger brother’s inheritance to cover his gambling debts, and Henry commits adultery. These characters are the fools and rakes of Grandison and Mansfield Park, and they stand in stark opposition to their virtuous male counterparts. To understand the intricacies of male virtue, moral action, and polite behavior in eighteenth-century England, I analyze what traits make these characters foolish and immoral, why Richardson and Austen portray these traits negatively, and finally, what the fates of these characters imply about Richardson and Austen as writers.
My analysis includes Austen’s own commentary on Grandison, including the ways in which she attempts to perfect the morality of Richardson’s novel in her own work.
I divide this chapter into three sections: Historical Context, Foolish Fantasizers, and A Cruel Comparison: Henry Crawford and Sir Charles Grandison. In the first section of this chapter I describe the historical context of these novels, especially focusing on eighteenth-century gambling culture and the concept of virtue. This section explains what role gambling played in eighteenth-century England and how gambling was perceived to affect the virtue and morals of aristocratic men. This is important to my thesis because a historical perspective of the period is essential to understanding what gambling meant in 18
the eighteenth century and how gambling, which I argue is synonymous to what Freud calls fantasizing, affected virtue.
After explaining the historical context of gambling and virtue during the period, I perform a close comparative analysis of the gamblers in these novels: Richardson’s foolish character Everard Grandison and Austen’s equally flippant Tom Bertram. I use
Freud’s definitions of fantasy and play in his essay to show how these characters fantasize rather than play and how fantasizing separates them from the morally focused worlds that these novels promote. Fantasizing and gambling, I argue, are linked because in gambling one places a bet without knowing the outcome, all the while hoping for an outcome that is oftentimes impossible. I also explain that fantasizing and gambling both oppose the concept of virtue as defined by Samuel Johnson in his 1755 dictionary, A
Dictionary o f the English Language, and Nathan Bailey’s 1763 dictionary, An Universal
Etymological English Dictionary. Through a close comparison of the behaviors of these characters I show the different ways in which Richardson and Austen understand fantasizing and its effect on male virtue, finally proving that Austen is more morally conservative than Richardson in her treatment of Tom Bertram and Henry Crawford.
Beginning with an analysis of the foolish fantasizers in these novels will bring me to my final comparison in this chapter: Austen’s Henry Crawford and Richardson’s Sir
Charles Grandison. This comparison is one that Austen makes herself by putting the words of Richardson’s Sir Charles in the mouth of her immoral and irredeemable 19
character Henry. Through comparing these two characters, I prove that Austen hoped to correct the morality of Richardson’s virtuous character, Sir Charles, by showing that his principles lack substance and veracity. Henry is a fantasizer like Everard and Tom and,
Austen implies, so is Richardson’s Sir Charles under the veneer of his romance and perfection. To prove this point, I show how critical Austen was of the romance genre and how Richardson, though more of a realist than his predecessors, made use of tropes of the romance genre to prove the virtue of Sir Charles to his readers. I argue that her intolerance of Sir Charles and the fact that Henry Crawford does not choose to reform make her more morally conservative than Richardson. Finally, I conclude that her moral severity stunts the imaginative growth of the reader. To prove this crucial point, I must begin with a brief description of gambling during the period and the status of male virtue in eighteenth-century English culture.
H is t o r ic a l C o n t e x t
During the eighteenth century in England, card games and gambling were fashionable practices. As historian A.S. Turberville explains, “almost every sport and pastime of the age depended on it for additional excitement, so that it runs like a red thread through eighteenth-century life” (354). Even author and parliament member Horace Walpole wrote freely about his joy at winning a handsome hand at Loo in 1761 (Tuberville 354).
Yet however entertaining gaming was, the frequency at which aristocratic men gambled, 20
and the rate at which many of them lost large sums of money, indicated for social critic
Richard Steele a decline in moral values. Richard Steele explains in The Tatler that vice and gambling were inseparable during the period: “... the common Diversions of Men of
Fashion; that is to say,... Whoring, Drinking, and Gaming” (74; no. 60). Steele, along with other critics such as Samuel Johnson, not only criticized the behavior of aristocratic men, but also instructed their readers in how to behave properly during the period. In fact,
Horace Walpole’s opinion of gaming changed in just nine years, at the end of which, in
1770, he wrote that gaming was “worthy the decline of our Empire...” (Tuberville 354-
355).
Walpole was not the first person to deplore the effects of gambling. As early as
1662, gamblers were criticized for engaging in “wiccked [sic] folly vanity & monstrous excesse [sic] of Passion” (Evans 1) and criticism of the practice only grew. That being said, criticism did not diminish the desire to gamble or the popularity of gambling. John
Ashton, in his text The History o f Gambling in England, states, “Of the universality of gambling there is no doubt, and it seems to be inherent in human nature” (6). Members of the aristocracy especially engaged in gambling to display their wealth and power through losing large sums of money and paying their creditors (Evans 3).
Gambling was a common form of entertainment for aristocratic men during the eighteenth century as evidenced through Richardson and Austen’s focus on the practice in their novels. One of the reasons for its prevalence is that aristocratic men in eighteenth- 21
century England did not have much to do. They didn’t fight in wars, they no longer had to hold positions in parliament, and, with the spike in credit and trade, luxury items and activities were more and more available. A decrease in civic responsibility and an increase in luxury spending led some men of the period to engage in risky behaviors such as a gambling. Men, whose forefathers were soldiers who fought in battle, picked up cards in place of weaponry and sat down to fight at the card table.vl" James E. Evans, in his article ‘“A Sceane of the Uttmost Vanity’: The Spectacle of Gambling in Late Stuart
Culture,” sites V. G. Kiernan on this very subject. In his book, The Duel in European
History: Honour and the Reign o f Aristocracy, Kiernan states that the aristocracy “grew more and more into an actor, playing an elaborate part.... A man had to be able to hazard his fortune on a turn of the cards as coolly as his forefathers risked their lives on the luck of the battle” (153-154). The fact that aristocratic men in the eighteenth century did not engage in actual battles upset the understanding of male virtue in the period. Bailey, in his dictionary, defines male virtue as “Efficacy, Power, Force, Quality, Property” (897), and Johnson defines virtue very similarly as “Efficacy, Power, Bravery, Valour”
(.Dictionary o f the English Language). Aristocratic men during the eighteenth century could not exhibit these qualities in the same way that their forefathers did, but instead had to show their virtue through other means.
Gambling remained fashionable even though it clearly violated what Bailey calls the cardinal virtues of prudence and temperance (897). Virtue, a term more often used to describe women during the period than men, is important in my analysis of the 22
fantasizing male characters in these two novels because Richardson explicitly sought to create the most virtuous male character in Grandison. Richardson’s Sir Charles is meant to be the perfect example of male virtue and morality. His character instructs readers to behave properly, “[The Editor]... presents to the public, in Sir Charles Grandison, the
Example of a Man acting uniformly well thro’[sic] a Variety of trying Scenes, because all his Actions are regulated by one steady Principle: A Man of Religion and Virtue...” (4).
Richardson’s Sir Charles, through behaving consistently and virtuouslylx no matter the circumstance, instructs male readers how to attain virtue. Johnson explains in The
Rambler that it is important for moral characters to exhibit virtuous character traits clearly while not revealing any of their “correspondent faults” (64; no. 4) for fear that any representation of vice and virtue mingling in one character may “confound the colours of right and wrong” (64; no. 4). Since virtue was not only a matter of inner qualities but also of proper behavior, characters’ behaviors were inextricably linked to their virtue.
As a result of Johnson’s prescription in The Rambler and the fact that virtue could be determined through speech and behavior, heated debates would arise surrounding whether or not a character in a novel was actually virtuous. Richardson was no stranger to these debates, as his heroine Pamela, in his book by the same name, was the center of so much controversy regarding the proper behavior of virtuous women of the period. After
Pamela was published, two groups formed on either side of the virtue argument, naming themselves the “pamelists” and the “anti-pamelists” (Donovan 377). Austen appears to join the debate as well, but this time over the virtue of the characters in Grandison. I 23
prove in this chapter that Austen had a very different idea of the qualities of male virtue, as is evident in her play Grandison and her closely related novel, Mansfield Park. For a better understanding of vice in the period, I will now turn to my analysis of Everard
Grandison and Tom Bertram.
F o o l ish F a n t a s iz e r s
Everard Grandison is a foolish gambler and a rake. Through the course of the novel he gambles away all of his estates at the card table, inappropriately liaises with prostitutes and, finally, marries a widow who is a member of the merchant class in order to supplement his diminished inheritance. As a result of his gambling and fantasizing,
Everard feels shame and attempts to conceal his misdeeds from his family. Using Freud’s essay, I explain how fantasizing, shame, reformation, and virtue are interrelated and what their interconnectedness means for Everard. Richardson, I argue, goes against Johnson’s instruction in The Rambler that “Vice, for vice is necessary to be shewn [sic], should always disgust; nor should the graces of gaiety, or the dignity of courage, be so united with it, as to reconcile it to the mind” (65; no. 4). He combines two contradictory qualities in Everard: that of the laughable fool and the disgusting rake.
Austen however, in her parallel character, Tom Bertram, adheres more closely to
Johnson’s rule than Richardson.x Tom is strictly a fool and exhibits no rakish qualities. 24
Furthermore, his foolish qualities are quickly shown to be immoral by his virtuous family members and by the narrator, giving the reader no time to wonder how Tom’s inappropriate actions and language should be understood. Tom’s reformation, like
Everard’s, includes the key feeling of shame that Freud argues is a common emotion in fantasizing adults. But Tom’s reformation is not complete after he acknowledges that he feels ashamed only; Tom must also survive a deathly illness. Tom, who is meant to be the heir to the Bertram estate, has more at stake than Everard, who appears to have no real responsibility to anyone and only a slight responsibility to the Grandison name.xl
The reader learns of Everard’s behavior before he even appears in the novel through the novel’s heroine, Harriet Byron (Harriet knows about Everard’s infamous behavior from his cousin, Charlotte): “He has had the glory of ruining two or three women. Sir Charles has restored him to a sense of shame.... Mr. Grandison is thought to have hurt his fortune, which was very considerable, by his free living, and an itch for gaming;*11 to cure him of which, Sir Charles encourages him to give him his company at all opportunities [emphasis original]” (II; 232). Everard, who rakishly destroys women’s virtue and gambles away his money, does not feel ashamed of his behavior on his own.
Everard, as is common in Richardson’s novels, only feels shame in the presence of his virtuous cousin Sir Charles. It is a common theme in Richardson’s novels for virtuous characters to reform their immoral foils (and their immoral readers) by example; in the preface to the novel, Richardson states, “... the present Collection is not published ultimately, or even principally...for the Sake of Entertainment only. A much nobler End 25
is in View. Yet it is hoped the Variety of Characters and Conversations necessarily introduced into so large a Correspondence, as these Volumes contain, will enliven as well as instruct...” (4). Through Everard’s misdeeds and shame, Richardson entertains the reader, but also hopes to show the reader why Everard needs to be reformed. The virtuous example of Sir Charles and the resulting shame Everard feels in regards to his immoral actions work to bring about Everard’s reformation (as well as the reader’s).
But why should Everard feel ashamed? Freud explains the link between the fantasizing adult and shame in his essay. Although applying Freud’s 1907 essay to
Richardson’s novel may seem anachronistic, Freud’s theory only serves to bring to light what Richardson already makes fairly clear through the character of Everard—that fantasizing as an adult is shameful and is something that should be concealed. Everard is a fantasizer in the Freudian sense because his actions at the card table are not connected to the reality of the Grandisonian world that Richardson makes the focal point of his novel. Everard, who Richardson shows needs to learn to become a serious adult in order to live up to the Grandison name, attempts to shed his fantasizing through shame; as
Freud explains the tactic:
On the one hand, he knows that he is expected not to go on playing or
phantasying [sic] any longer, but to act in the real world; on the other hand, some
of the wishes which give rise to his phantasies [sic] are of a kind which it is 26
essential to conceal. Thus he is ashamed of his phantasies [sic] as being childish
and as being impermissible [sic]. (438)
Everard’s desire to evade the seriousness of adulthood through gambling and illicit affairs with women can only be fulfilled if he leaves Grandison Hall and escapes Sir Charles’ influence/1" He attempts to conceal his impermissible fantasies by disappearing from
Grandison Hall for a number of months.
The reader does not know why Everard has been absent from the novel until he returns to Grandison Hall to seek financial help from Sir Charles after losing all of his estates at a card table. An immoral character disappearing to carry out his vices was a common theme in eighteenth-century novels and plays. Gambling was so commonly left out of the plot of other eighteenth-century works that literary critic Evans argues, “It is not remarkable... that gambling is integral to characters’ conduct without being part of the dramatic action” (6). In opposition to Evans, I would argue that it is remarkable that a behavior so integral to character is concealed from the reader. The very fact that gambling scenes occur offstage, separate from the dramatic action of a story, strengthens
Freud’s claim that fantasizing as an adult is shameful and is something that must be concealed.xlv Everard, whose gambling history is an embarrassment to the Grandison family, is a foil to the heroic and virtuous Sir Charles whose good deeds are nearly always integral to the main action of the novel.xv 27
Gambling is not Everard’s only vice; he also speaks poorly and inappropriately, and these traits label him as a fool and a rake. When Everard first makes an appearance in the novel he foolishly flirts with the virtuous Harriet Byron. Harriet is of course offended by Everard’s manner of addressing her:
Mr. Grandison ... said very silly things, but with an air, as if he were accustomed
to say such, and to have them received as gallant things, by those to whom he
addressed them. How painful is it to a mind not quite at ease, to be obliged to be
civil, when the ear is invaded by contemptible speeches, from a man who must
think as highly of himself for uttering them, as meanly of the understanding of the
person he is speaking to. (II; 293)
Everard’s manner of speaking is so offensive to Harriet’s virtue that it is depicted as a painful and contemptible invasion. Though she describes the things he says as “silly,” it is clear that his foolishness is not a character trait that is to be taken lightly. His fantasizing and flirting are not only un-virtuous in and of themselves, they are a threat to the virtue of the women around him. Rake, a term that is defined by Bailey to mean “a profligate man” and one that is closely (and interestingly) related to the term “rake- shame” meaning “a base rascally fellow” (690), is one of the central facets of
Richardson’s Everard. Although Everard poses a threat to women’s virtue through his rakish behavior, Richardson also equates him with the laughable fool. Margaret Doody, in her article ‘“Love and Nonsense, Men and Women’: Sir Charles Grandison as 28
Comedy,” points out that, “Everard Grandison... is another example of the vain fop and stupid rake. His weak attempts at wit, and his use of slang, mark him as of but poor understanding.... It is Richardson’s intent throughout the novel to equate the rake with the fop and fool” (283). Richardson’s combination of the two character traits of rake and fool, in effect makes Everard’s dangerous qualities into foolish ones, or qualities that are not actually to be feared, but are instead to be laughed at. This is something that differentiates Everard from the more seriously dangerous rake in the novel, Sir Hargrave
Pollexfen. Sir Hargrave kidnaps Harriet in the beginning of the novel and attempts to force her to marry him. She is rescued, in one of the most classically romantic scenes in the novel, by Sir Charles and her virtue is preserved. Richardson’s equation of the rake with the fool diminishes the seriousness of Everard’s rakish qualities, but also the rakish qualities of more seriously dangerous characters like Sir Hargrave. This results in what
Johnson warns against in The Rambler, vice, when mingled with “the graces of gaiety”
(65; no. 4) can confuse the author’s didactic message. For example, if Everard is both a rake and a fool, Sir Hargrave, who is just a rake, may be confused for a fool as well.
Richardson shows that Sir Hargrave’s rakishness is of a more dangerous type than
Everard’s. Sir Hargrave is so dangerous that he must die for his actions at the end of the novel. However, according to Doody, who states that Richardson intended to equate the rake with the fool throughout the novel, Sir Hargrave’s death is out of place in the plot:
“[A] grating circumstance is the death-bed of Sir Hargrave Pollexfen. In this novel, such a scene is a discordant note in the general harmony of the last part of the book.... Sir 29
Hargrave, who is really a comic character, ought to have been dismissed on [Lucy
Selby’s] comic note” (302). Richardson would find this reading of Sir Hargrave quite troublesome because, though it may be a very valid point, it suggests that Sir Hargrave’s vices were not portrayed seriously enough to warrant his death at the close of the novel.
The comingling of rakishness and foolishness does appear, as Johnson feared, to lead to the unintended understanding that all rakes should be treated as lightly as fools. In
Doody’s defense, however, she also lays bare what is most wonderful about Richardson’s
Grandison (though Richardson himself might disagree)—the hope and possibility of reformation for all characters, no matter their past immoral actions.
The hope of reformation for all is not to be found in Austen’s Mansfield Park.
Austen more strictly follows Johnson’s rule that vice and virtue should never comingle in one character in her novel. Her adherence to this rule can be seen in her foolish character,
Tom Bertram who gambles at the racetracks and drinks heavily (prescribing to Steele’s description of aristocratic men). Tom is strictly a fool, and he shows no rakish qualities.
In fact, when Mary Crawford first arrives at Mansfield to stay with her half-sister Mrs.
Grant, she is attracted to Tom and hopes that he is likewise attracted to her. Tom has the opportunity to go to London to gamble on horses at the racetracks, but Mary is almost certain that her presence will persuade him to stay at Mansfield. When Tom decides to go to the racetracks instead of staying to court Mary, she states, “Now, Mr. Bertram
[Edmund], if you write to your brother ... [say] that I shall prepare my most plaintive airs against his return, in compassion to his feelings, as I know his horse will lose” (I; 53). 30
Mary’s bet has a double meaning: Tom will lose at the racetracks and he will lose Mary’s interest. However, it is not clear that Tom knows or cares that Mary is interested in him.
He returns to Mansfield months later, after Mary has already formed an attachment to
Edmund, without even seeming to notice.
Tom often disappears for long periods of time from the dramatic action of the novel to gamble and keep company with his immoral friends. Much like Everard, Tom gambles away a dangerously large sum of money, so large that it requires that he take an advance out on his inheritance, which results in the deduction of the sum from his younger brother Edmund’s inheritance. Although this is a serious offense, Tom does not take it seriously. His father, Sir Thomas, explains the great loss he has caused Edmund, but Tom only pretends to listen:™
‘...nothing can, in fact, be an equivalent for the certain advantage which
[Edmund] is now obliged to forego through the urgency of your debts.’ Tom
listened with some shame and some sorrow; but escaping as quickly as possible,
could soon with cheerful selfishness reflect, 1 st, that he had not been half so much
in debt as some of his friends.... (I; 20)
Much like Everard in the presence of Sir Charles, Tom feels shame in the presence of Sir
Thomas, but once free of the presence of Sir Thomas, Tom’s shame disappears. As a result, Tom does not stay at Mansfield for long periods of time; he goes abroad with his father, but returns early, and only visits Mansfield again while his father is still in 31
Antigua. Interestingly, Tom, just like Everard, gambles and fantasizes offstage in an attempt to conceal his immoral actions from his family. Like Everard’s gambling, Tom’s is only related to the reader second hand. Theresa Kenney states in her article “Why Tom
Bertram Cannot Die: ‘The Plans and Decisions of Mortals,”’ that “ ... Tom undergoes perhaps the biggest change of any character in Mansfield Park although all his character growth happens offstage, through narration” (1). My understanding of Tom’s actions offstage is very different from that of Kenney, who states that Tom’s absence from the main action of the novel marks a period of his character growth. Nothing in the narration suggests that Tom is growing while he is away; rather the reader knows that Tom leaves
Mansfield and the presence of Sir Thomas, only to engage in immoral activities such as gambling and drinking.xv" Tom does not appear to grow at all until he becomes extremely ill at the end of the novel, resulting in feelings of shame and an urgency to return to
Mansfield: “Tom had gone from London with a party of young men to Newmarket, where a neglected fall, and a good deal of drinking, had brought on a fever; ...he thought so ill of himself, as to be as ready as his physician to have a letter dispatched to
Mansfield” (III; 388). Tom not only falls ill and thinks that he is ill, he also thinks ill of himself; Tom is ashamed and wants to return to Mansfield. It appears as though Tom’s shame has worked in the Freudian sense: to subdue the fantasizer in Tom. A marked difference between Tom and Everard, however, is that Tom does not only engage in immoral activities offstage, he also literally engages in them onstage while his father is absent from Mansfield. 32
Tom, who has been away in London with friends for several months, returns to
Mansfield with his immoral friend, the “honourable” (I; 109) John Yates, with the sole purpose of persuading his family to perform a play. It is not the mere fact that Tom and
Yates want to perform a play at Mansfield that is immoral;xvl" it is the circumstances of the performance that make the production particularly immoral. For example, Tom and
Yates only want to perform the play at Mansfield because a play they were already performing somewhere else was stymied as a result of “the sudden death of one of the nearest connections of the family” (I; 109). Also, Tom wants to perform this play while his father is abroad, and while he is free of his influence, something his virtuous brother
Edmund expressly disagrees with, “‘You are not serious, Tom, in meaning to act? ... In a general light, private theatricals are open to some objections, but as we are circumstanced, I must think it would be highly injudicious.... It would show great want of feeling on my father’s account, absent as he is, and in some degree of constant danger’” (I; 113). Tom disregards his brother’s warnings and moves forward with his plans to put on the play. The soon-to-be play actors spend several weeks trying to determine what play they will perform and finally decide on the play Lover's Vows. Once the play is chosen, Tom volunteers to act out the parts of all of the fools, a biting commentary on the depth of his character: “Tom himself began to fret over the scene painter’s slow progress, and to feel the miseries of waiting. He had learned his part—all his parts—for he took every trifling one that could be united with the Butler, and began to be impatient to be acting...” (I; 147). Although Tom is a fool, his actions are not 33
laughable like Everard’s, indicating that even foolishness is a seriously immoral quality in Austen’s novel.
Austen does not only treat Tom’s foolishness more seriously than Richardson treats Everard’s, she also gives Tom serious responsibilities where Everard has none.
Tom is meant to be the heir to the Bertram estate. This responsibility raises the stakes of his reformation. Peter C. Giotta, in his article “Characterization in Mansfield Park'. Tom
Bertram and Colman’s The Heir at Law,” states, Austen does depict Tom’s light heartedness as being wholly inconsistent with the qualities she, at least, requires in a landed baronet.... For Austen... having such a disposition renders one ineligible for assuming the role of head of the family” (469). Giotta’s claim that Tom does not exhibit the proper qualities of the heir of the Bertram estate is true—Tom’s foolish behavior and his gambling do not make him heir-material. Unlike Everard, Tom is responsible for fulfilling a serious role he is not morally prepared for. This element of Tom’s character complicates his foolish behavior. If Tom does not reform, the estate is likely to go into disrepair; if Tom dies, the estate goes to Edmund, his morally upright brother, at the same time fulfilling the wishes of the immoral Mary Crawford. As is necessary for the happiness of the virtuous characters, Fanny and Edmund, Tom must not die: “By cheating death, Tom foils the most outrageous and the most convenient suggestion to provide the novel with a conventional happy ending” (Kenney 6). If Tom dies, the narrative suggests, Mary Crawford and Edmund would marry, leaving the virtuous Fanny alone and unrewarded. Though Tom does not die, he must experience a near death illness 34
in order to reform, unlike Richardson’s Everard, who needs only to follow Sir Charles’ advice in order to be rescued from the ill effects of his actions.xlx
However, to say that Everard and Tom are reformed at the end of these novels would also suggest that they are rewarded (as is typical of reformation plots during the period). This is not the case. Tom, through his illness and shame, is subdued enough to assume the role of heir, but he is not rewarded: “[Tom] must not die; nor is he awarded wealth and consequence, for they were to be his to start with” (Kenney 10). Tom’s
“reward” is surviving his illness and becoming the heir to the Bertram estate, but his survival appears to be completely orchestrated in order to thwart the other more immoral characters, the Crawfords, from getting their way. Due to the neatly wrapped ending of
Mansfield Park, wherein the narrator suddenly appears in the first person to sew up all of the novel’s loose ends, Tom’s reformation does not appear to be natural, but is revealed instead to be the workings of the narrator-puppeteer. The narrator’s conscious control over Tom’s transformation is further evidence that Tom’s reformation is not important in and of itself. Tom does not reform from bad to good, but instead reforms from foolish to subdued, “In what is a testament to her conservatism, Austen first must have Tom undergo a transformation, becoming ‘steady and quiet’ before she can install him securely as the Bertram heir” (Giotta 469). Austen’s conservatism and the insertion of the narrative “I” at the close of the novel show that Tom is really only a plot device that exists to bring the two main characters closer together.xx 35
On the other hand, Everard’s reformation and moderate reward are natural to his character and the plot of Grandison. Tom’s near death illness in Mansfield Park is a punishment reserved for the more seriously dangerous rake in Grandison, Sir Hargrave.
In comparison to both Tom and Sir Hargrave, Everard’s punishment is mild: he marries into the merchant class and, as a result, is only occasionally invited to Grandison Hall for dinner. The worst of his punishment is perhaps the fact that though he no longer gambles
(although it is implied he will gamble again), he has abandoned the gentility, and thereby the associated virtues of being a gentile male in the period. Sir Charles laments this fact, stating,
[Everard] has presented [his wife] with a genealogical table of his ancestors....
She shows it to every one. Perhaps she thinks it necessary to apologize, by that
means, to all her visiters [sic], for bestowing her person and fortune on a ruined
man. But what, in a nation, the glory and strength of which are trade and
commerce, is gentility! What even nobility, where descendants depart from the
virtue of the first enobling [sic] ancestor. (VII; 348)
Everard has lost his estates and therefore his inheritance. As a result, he has “departed” from the virtue of his ancestors, those virtues being, as Bailey defines them, “Power,
Quality, Property” (897). Everard has lost all of these things in a game of cards, and inheritance and property are impossible to recoup. Though Everard has failed to completely reform by Sir Charles’ standards, he survives mostly an unchanged man. 36
Though Richardson does not care for Everard, writing in a letter after Grandison’’s publication that “No more need be said, than is, of EVERARD GRANDISON [emphasis original]” (VII; 468), he acknowledges that Everard’s fate should not be that of Sir
Hargrave. Tom, on the other hand, only seems to survive out of necessity to the plot. This not only shows that Austen is more conservative than Richardson when it comes to the treatment of foolish behavior, but that her characters function as a plot device rather than as representations of real people. Therefore Austen’s characters, I argue, are less realistic than Richardson’s.
A C r u e l C o m p a r is o n : H e n r y C r a w f o r d a n d S ir C h a r l e s G r a n d is o n
Austen’s betrayal of the realism of her novel through a blatant narrative control over her characters is also evident in the plot of the immoral Henry Crawford. Henry is a fantasizer who engages in playacting, card games, and affairs with women whom he does not intend to marry. Henry shows signs of reforming his immoral behavior, however, when he falls in love with the novel’s heroine, Fanny Price. The possibility of Henry’s reformation is quickly ended when Henry suddenly has an affair with the recently wedded Maria Bertram. Henry ruins Maria’s virtue and is steeped in “vexation and regret” (III; 427) in the narrative summation of the novel. 37
Henry is a fantasizer like Everard and Tom, but unlike these two characters, all of
Henry’s immoral behavior takes place onstage. This shows that Henry, unlike Tom and
Everard, is not, as Freud says is common to fantasizers, “ashamed of his phantasies [sic] as being childish and as being impermissible [sic]” (438). Although this type of behavior would have marked Henry as a fool in Grandison (much like Everard), in Mansfield Park
Henry is seen to be an immoral rake who is “treacherous” (I; 123). In the scene wherein several of the people present at Mansfield play speculation, Henry, who has recently fallen in love with Fanny, attempts to teach her how to play cards. Henry plays her hand for her the entire game even though she understands how to play after the first round. In this scene, Henry, much like the foolish wit Everard in his conversations with Harriet, attempts to woo Fanny by speaking to her cleverly. When Fanny attempts to lose the game on purpose to her brother William, Henry Crawford catches her hand and states,
“‘Your sister does not part with the queen. She is quite determined. The game will be yours,’—turning to [Fanny] again—‘it will certainly be yours’” (II; 220). Fanny ignores
Henry, showing her disapproval of his behavior through her silence. Henry’s inappropriate speech and his obliviousness to Fanny’s feelings make him an insensitive rake in Mansfield Park instead of an ignorant fool. Henry does not feel shame for his actions or his way of addressing Fanny as is evident through his perseverance to win her hand and her heart through contemptible speeches and crass insinuations.XXI Henry’s contemptible speeches are successful in attracting the immoral Maria Bertram, but Fanny, much like Harriet Byron, will not be fooled. Fanny does not clearly state her disapproval 38
of Henry in this moment at the card table due to her reserved and modest character, but her reason for disapproving of Henry’s method of addressing her can be seen in the narrator’s explanation of Henry’s attempts to attract Maria at the close of the novel.
When Henry attempts to seduce Maria at the end of the novel, the narrator states, “In this spirit [Henry] began the attack; and by animated perseverance had soon re-established the sort of familiar intercourse—of gallantry—of flirtation which bounded his views...” (Ill;
427). In this scene, Henry’s “attack,” or his verbal persistence in winning the attraction of
Maria, is very similar to the way in which Harriet describes Everard’s “gallantry” in
Grandison: “Mr. Grandison ... said very silly things, but with an air, as if he were accustomed to say such, and to have them received as gallant things, by those to whom he addressed them” (II; 293). Interestingly, Harriet describes Everard’s “gallantry” as an
“invasion,” just as Austen’s narrator describes Henry’s “gallantry” as an “attack.”™1 Both
Fanny and Harriet are adept at decoding the deceptive speech of the rakish Everard and
Henry, but what is it that makes Henry’s behavior more treacherous than Everard’s?
Henry’s poor behavior, unlike Everard’s, is not even moderately reformed within the dramatic action of the novel, but suggested only as a possibility at the narrative summation of the novel’s events. The fact that Henry only feels shame in regards to his final actions in the novel makes the veracity of his regret questionable. His shame, much like Tom’s sudden reformation, appears to be completely fabricated by the narrator in order to rid the novel of Henry and secure Fanny and Edmund as the prized couple in
Mansfield Park. Peter Graham questions the novelistic purpose of the sudden reversal of 39
the familiar reformed-rake plot in his article “Falling for the Crawfords: Character,
Contingency, and Narrative:” “Why have Fanny Price be the heroine in one familiar plot... instead of another that’s even more popular with novel readers, that featuring a rake reformed by a loving good woman, whether he comes to deserve her before or after winning her heart?” (889-890). Graham outlines a few of the many reasons for Austen’s narrative decision, ultimately concluding that, “Even if Austen’s pen serves an authorial inclination for restoring ‘tolerable comfort’ and saves Fanny and Edmund from the
Crawfords and for one another, the complex moral and narratological contingencies that pen boldly delineates in Mansfield Park allow readers to imagine and perhaps prefer another conclusion” (890). Though I agree with Graham that Austen does suggest that, had Henry been more patient, he may have won Fanny’s heart, I disagree with Graham that readers are given the opportunity to imagine that this alternate ending is actually possible for Henry Crawford. Austen, who strictly adheres to Johnson’s rule with her character Tom Bertram,™"1 does the same with Henry Crawford. In close adherence to
Johnson’s rule, any redeeming or amusing qualities Henry has must be cast in the light of immorality if Austen hopes to communicate a clear didactic message to her readers.XX1V
The fact that Henry’s reformation is suggested only as a possibility but does not occur in the main plot does not expand the reader’s imagination, but instead limits it. Henry’s
“regret and vexation” are an afterthought separate from the main action of the novel, therefore mitigating the seriousness of their effects on the plot as well as on the reader’s imagination. 40
Furthermore, it is impossible, in my opinion, to leave Richardson’s Grandison out of the answer to the “why” that this plot reversal provokes. Grandison (unlike
Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa) does not feature a rake who is reformed by a good woman either. Instead, Richardson’s intent in Grandison is to show that a man can be virtuous without being reformed. According to Ralph Rader in his article, “From
Richardson to Austen: ‘Johnson’s Rule’ and the Development of the Eighteenth-Century
Novel of Moral Action,” the idea that two moral characters marry without any great need for one of the characters to reform threatens the intensity of the dramatic action of the novel. Rader states, “Richardson does all that he can to offset the inherent and essential dullness of a story in which the principals can make no real mistake and be in no real distress.... In short, we may say that the structure is such that eighteenth-century audiences were edified but we are not delighted” (227). Rader goes on to suggest that though Richardson fails in his attempt to create an action-filled plot, Austen perfects it:
“Richardson’s tripartite engagement of Johnson’s Rule left a distinct problem for his successors: how to construct an effective action in which both male and female protagonists were moral paragons. The solution was... completed by Jane Austen” (227).
Austen, whose Mansfield Park also focuses on marrying the two moral characters of the novel, is clearly in conversation with Richardson’s Grandison, though she does not succeed in perfecting Richardson’s plot as seamlessly as Rader suggests. The contrived ending of Mansfield Park betrays the realism of the text and the characters she has constructed, especially of Henry whose sudden regret seems impossible. As a result of 41
this contrived ending, Graham asks, “Has Austen stacked the deck against Henry and
Mary, or does she play her cards fairly and consistently” (870). Austen has, as Graham so wonderfully puts it (especially for my purposes in this thesis), “stacked the deck” against
Henry by setting him up for failure and finally eliminating him from the novel as a rake who cannot possibly reform.
The ending of Mansfield Park does not achieve the realism Austen is so well known for in her other novels, though she attempts to achieve it through a critique of the romance of Richardson’s Sir Charles. Austen does perfect realism in ways that
Richardson doesn’t, but Richardson was at a disadvantage as one of the first English authors to write realist novels in the eighteenth century. In The Rise o f the Novel, Ian
Watt points out how Richardson broke away from the romance genre in striking ways, especially as concerns the issue of marriage in the period. Watt states that,
[Richardson] wrote at a time when a variety of economic and social changes ...
were combining to make marriage much more important for women than before,
and at the same time much more difficult to achieve. These changes gave
Richardson the enormous advantage over the writers of romance that, without
recourse to any extraneous elements of complication, he could reflect the actual
life of his time and yet be able to expand a single intrigue into the proportions of a
novel considerably longer than any by Defoe. (137) 42
Watt explains that R ichardson could focus on the details of domesticity and marriage without having to create “extraneous elements of complication” to do so given the importance of marriage during Richardson’s time. Though this may be true, Richardson is guilty of using the tropes of romance in Grandison. For example. Sir Charles and
Harriet first meet when Sir Charles heroically rescues her from Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, subduing Hargrave in a sword fight and practically carrying the fainting Harriet home over his shoulder. Harriet recounts the encounter stating, “But when I found my oppressor... pulled out of the chariot, by the brave, the gallantxxv man (which was done with such force, as made the chariot rock) and my protector safe; I was as near fainting with joy, as before I had been with terror” (I; 167). It is this aspect of Sir Charles’ character that Austen mocks not only in Mansfield Park, but also in her play, Grandison.
Brian Southam states in the introduction to the play that: “Occasionally, Grandison is enlivened with some quite unRichardsonian [sic] humour—such as the moment in Act
Four, when his elder sister is late for tea and the hero cracks what is for him a daring joke: ‘How long Caroline has been gone! I hope no more Sir Hargrave Pollexfens have run away with her & Emily.’” (27). Austen, in this scene in her play, is in direct conversation with the outlandish romance of Sir Charles rescuing Harriet from the chariot. Austen, who stated that “Pictures of perfection ... make me sick & wicked”
(Southam 27) attempts to reveal the romance of Sir Charles’ character and subvert it through her immoral Henry Crawford. 43
The central theme that Austen takes issue with in Richardson’s Sir Charles is the character’s virtue and his romance-like insistence on the importance of marriage. She mocks Sir Charles’ perfection as a suitor by ironically giving Henry the role of perfect suitor in Mansfield Park; Harris states, “Whenever Sir Charles married ‘he would break half a score of hearts,’ an image that Jane Austen disrespectfully transfers to Henry: ‘Oh! the envyings [sic] and heart-burnings of dozens and dozens!”’ (371). Austen’s
“disrespectful transfer,” or what I have called her “cruel comparison,” shows that through
Henry Crawford, she was taking Richardson’s realism to task. This is not the only instance in the novel of Austen’s mockery of Sir Charles. She mocks Sir Charles’ position on the importance of marriage through Henry again; as Harris points out, “...Sir
Charles himself... is ‘for having every-body marry.’ In Mansfield Park, however, it is
Henry Crawford who cynically echoes [him]: ‘Nobody can think more highly of the matrimonial state than myself” (366). Austen’s characterization of Sir Charles as a character plucked from the romance genre is valid, but the way she attempts to critique
Richardson’s realism with the cynicism of Henry Crawford ultimately fails. Watt states that “[Austen] was able to combine into a harmonious unity the advantages both of realism of presentation and realism of assessment... her novels have authenticity without diffuseness or trickery” (297). Perhaps Austen does achieve this type of realism in her other works, but she does not achieve it in Mansfield Park. Though the plot of Grandison
“resolve[s] no tension, and [has] no catharsis” (Rader 227), the moderate reformation of
Everard and the wonderful transformation of Charlotte Grandison (which I will discuss in 44
chapter two) are more imaginatively fulfilling than Henry’s bizarrely tidy ending in
Mansfield Park. Henry’s narrative presents a bleak world, one that cannot be improved through imagination. 45
The Ladies’ Table: Wagers and Gains
Charlotte Grandison and Mary Crawford fantasize: through their insensitive
speech and passionate card play, these two characters disregard the confines of virtue and
risk the insurance of marriage. In an attempt to curb their fantastic qualities, both characters take up their pens and write to their virtuous counterparts. Charlotte succeeds
in transforming from a fantasizer into a playful creative writer, but Mary’s evil playfulness is exposed for what it is—unfeminine immodesty.
It is no mistake that Mary and Charlotte share so many similarities, nor is it a mistake that their narratives end so differently. Austen, who alludes directly to
Richardson’s Grandison through the male characters in Mansfield Park, turns her critical eye on Charlotte’s behavior and attempts to reveal the gravity of Charlotte’s immorality through Mary’s behavior. Though Mary’s narrative may be a testament to Austen’s realism, it hazardously prohibits the imaginative possibilities Richardson’s Charlotte illuminates for women in the period. Therefore, Charlotte’s playful transformation is more progressive than Mary’s unfeminine immodesty, which, I conclude, is indicative of
Austen’s narrow understanding of the inextricable link between virtue and femininity.
Though some theorists, like Yuko Ikeda, claim that Charlotte reforms and loses her imaginative vivacity at the close of Grandison, I argue instead that she transforms. To say that Charlotte “reforms” implies that she completely reverses the course of her behavior and “change[s] back to an original form or state... (esp. a better one)” (OED 46
Online). On the other hand, the term “transform” denotes a sense of continuity of
character that implies “development” and “metamorphoses” (OED Online). I therefore
assert that Charlotte develops through Richardson’s imaginative and transformative
epistolary genrexxvl and that this genre is especially effective in showing the possibilities
of such a transformation.
Though I argue that Austen directly alludes to Charlotte in her character Mary, it
is important to point out that there is little evidence of what Austen actually thought of
Richardson’s Charlotte (unlike the overwhelming evidence of her dislike for Sir Charles
in her play and her Juvenilia). Her characterization of Charlotte in her play is almost
identical to Richardson’s in his novel. However, unlike George Eliot, who lovingly wrote in a letter, “Like Sir Charles Grandison? I should be sorry to be the heathen that did not
like that book.... Lady G. is the gem, with her marmoset” (110), there is no evidence in
Austen’s letters of her adoration for Charlotte. Contrary to Margaret Kirkham’s claim in her book Jane Austen, Feminism and Fiction that “Like George Eliot, Austen shows that
she has laughed at Charlotte Grandison’s [sic] calling her baby a ‘marmouset [sic]”’ (31),
I argue instead that Austen’s attempt to correct Richardson’s novel shows her skepticism of the viability of Charlotte’s transformation.xxv" 47
T h e I m m a t e r ia l A c t io n o f a L is t e n in g E a r
As with most social practices in eighteenth-century England, gambling was gendered. A woman would rarely gamble at the racetracks or at a card table at a public gaming house
(women are completely left out of Tuberville’s description of gambling halls during the period). That being said, women were expected to know how to play cards in order to engage in conversation and fashionable social entertainment. The heroine of Grandison,
Harriet Byron, states, “Did my dear Grandmamma twenty or thirty years ago, think she should live to be told, That to the Dancing-master, the Singing or Music-master, the high mode would require the Gaming-master to be added for the completing of the female education?” (I; 23). Harriet only learns to play cards (though she never actually does) because it is a part of the polite education of women in the period.XXVUI A polite education taught proper behavior and manners, but not moral substance; Lawrence Klein, in his article “Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century,” explains:
Indeed, consciousness of form, a concern with the manner in which actions were
performed, was perhaps the most important component of the meaning of
politeness. Proponents of politeness frankly acknowledged the necessity, even the
virtue, of social artifice. While they did not reject sincerity outright, they did not
recognize the worth of authenticity.... (874)
Because politeness had only to do with the mastery of social etiquette, Richardson’s virtuous heroine Harriet learns to play cards, but doesn’t actually have to play. The same 48
is true of Austen’s Fanny, who during the scene where the characters at Mansfield play speculation “...[felt] herself mistress of the rules of the game in three minutes” (II; 216), but who never actually plays her own hand. Both Harriet and Fanny are said to know how to play cards in order to prove they are clever,XXIX but neither ever plays, thus maintaining their virtue.
Both heroines exhibit their virtue through private action, that is through quietly not playing cards, whereas the virtue of their male counterparts is specifically linked to public actionable qualities such as bravery in Sir Charles’ case, and, in Edmund’s case, taking on a noble profession and speaking out against the immoral actions of those around him. This difference in the understanding of male and female virtue is not only evident in the novels of the period, but also in both Johnson and Bailey’s dictionaries.
Johnson defines virtue in a few different ways, but it is clear which of his definitions pertains to which gender through a side-by-side comparison of the two. It is evident that the first definition is of female virtue through its focus on private action, while the second defines male virtue and focuses on public action: “Secret agency; efficacy, without visible or material action,” and “Efficacy, Power, Bravery, Valour” (Dictionary o f the
English Language). The contradictory aspects of Johnson’s mystifying definition of virtue show just how fragile the line between moral excellence and vice was for women in the eighteenth century. “Secret agency” is exactly what Harriet and Fanny exhibit by knowing how to play, but choosing quietly to abstain. These characters know that playing 49
cards is not virtuous and their silent refusal to play shows that they are consciously deciding to remain within the bounds of female virtue.
Bailey’s definition of virtue, on the other hand, implies that women are capable of defending their chastity from contemptible speeches just as soldiers defend their property:
Virtue which parleys is near a Surrender. As in fortified Places besieged by an
Enemy, and well provided to hold out, the valiant Soldiers, who are resolutely
bent to defend it, scorn to treat or capitulate with the Enemy, but receive their
dishonourable Offers with Contempt and Disdain: So when Virtue (the Fortress of
the Soul, which ought to be defended with the utmost Obstinacy) is attacked by
bold Assailants, they who are resolutely bent to defend it, will hearken to no
Terms, but repulse dishonourable Offers with Indignation. And when once a
Woman lends a listening Ear to Offers, though never so high, as to the Surrender
of her Chastity, it is Odds if she do not surrender it upon very low ones in the
Upshot. (897)
Although Bailey suggests that women are capable of “repuls[ing] dishonourable Offers with Indignation” as a solider would, his analogy is not genuine. In characterizing women as soldiers, Bailey is not implying that women can physically defend themselves against enemy advances, but rather that women can refuse to negotiate with “bold Assailants.”
This silent, internal battlefield is problematic. Given the fact that women in the period 50
were often in actual physical danger of being “besieged by an Enemy,” Bailey’s definition is not only unsatisfying—it is dangerous. Furthermore, the extent to which women can speak out against such offers is limited by Johnson’s definition. In Johnson’s definition a woman’s virtue depends on her private actions, and therefore the number of ways she is actually able to defend herself against dishonorable offers is limited. That is why, Fanny, who virtuously and silently insinuates her disapproval of Henry during the game of speculation, must suffer through several similar situations before Henry gets the hint (if he ever does). The same is true of Harriet, who is assailed by several lowly offers throughout the course of Grandison, but ultimately requires the heroic Sir Charles to step in and physically fight the men off.
Not only are virtuous women in the period restricted to private, internal defenses against dishonorable offers, they are also burdened by the possibility, in Bailey’s definition, that they are surrendering their chastity to offers that are actually “very low in the Upshot.” Though this is not the case for Fanny or Harriet, both of them ultimately uniting with the virtuous heroes of the novels, Bailey’s definition provokes the question: do Mary and Charlotte surrender their chastity to low offers? In Mary’s case, it is plain that in her public and passionate intent to lose the game of speculation and thereby lose the opportunity to marry Edmund she is risking the highest offer she is likely to receive.
However, Charlotte’s case is very different. In her youth, Charlotte is said to have once risked surrendering her chastity to a seaman she inappropriately corresponded with. The man, who fabricated his identity in his letters, attempted to trick Charlotte into marrying 51
him. Luckily, his true identity was revealed and Charlotte, who learned her lesson, was given a second chance. Therefore, Bailey’s assertion that women are likely to surrender their chastity to low offers does not seem to hold true in Charlotte’s case. Charlotte does only have two offers to choose from, unlike Harriet who has many, but Lord G.’s offer is never characterized as low. The complexity of Bailey’s definition of female virtue and the bet he wagers against women, stating that even when listening to high offers they risk surrendering their chastity on lowly ones, makes decoding the proper behavior of women in the eighteenth century particularly difficult.
Likewise, the fine line women of the period had to walk between virtue and vice made the creation of interesting, educated, but also virtuous female characters a challenge for eighteenth-century authors like Richardson and Austen. Much like Rader describes, the task of creating “an effective action in which both male and female protagonists were moral paragons” (227) was a difficulty Richardson (as well as Austen, I argue) had to face. Richardson, as I mentioned in the first chapter, was no stranger to debates regarding the virtue of his female characters.xxx As a result, Harriet, in Grandison, very carefully explains her actions after a dinner party wherein she appears to act boldly in sharing her opinion in a debate between men, “In what a situation, Lucy, are we women in? If we have some little genius, and have taken pains to cultivate it, we must be thought guilty of affection, whether we appear desirous to conceal it, or submit to have it call’d [sic] forth”
(I; 51-52). Richardson, who knows the virtue of his heroine will be closely observed and criticized by his readers, justifies her clever observations within the text itself—Harriet 52
explains she never would have spoken out if she wasn’t made to. Austen avoids having to fabricate a similar defense for Fanny in Mansfield Park, as Fanny conveniently does not like to speak out; in a conversation with her cousin Edmund, Fanny makes this clear:
“[Edmund] ‘Here, there are too many, whom you can hide behind; but with her [Mrs.
Norris] you will be forced to speak for yourself.’ [Fanny] ‘Oh! Do not say so.’[emphasis original]” (I; 23). Though both heroines are reluctant to speak out, the epistolary form of
Richardson’s novel captures the minutia of all of his virtuous heroine’s private thoughts and actions. Thus, Harriet fully explains her silence in private correspondences, whereas
Fanny’s silence is at risk of being attributed to her reticent personality rather than her moral uprightness. The epistolary genre of Richardson’s novel, therefore, allows his female characters more freedom to explain the reasons for their actions, whereas
Austen’s realism leaves her heroine’s actions open to false interpretation. Fanny and
Harriet perfect Johnson’s and Bailey’s definitions of female virtue, but Mary Crawford and Charlotte Grandison do not. Richardson’s epistolary novel allows Charlotte, who acts inappropriately and risks vilification, to justify her actions and learn from her mistakes.
In Austen’s novel, however, all that Mary reveals in her letters is the depth of her evil character. 53
M a r y C r a w f o r d ’ s U n f e m in in e I m m o d e s t y
Mary Crawford and her brother Henry did not have a proper upbringing. At a young age, the siblings’ parents died, leaving them to the care of their aunt and uncle. This home on
Hill Street in London was dysfunctional—the Crawfords’ aunt married their uncle for financial reasons rather than affection and, after she died, their uncle, the Admiral, moved his mistress into the home. The reader learns early on that this tumultuous upbringing is one that Mary cannot escape. Mrs. Grant, Mary’s half-sister, expresses concerns about the effects of her education: ‘“Ah! You have been in a bad school for matrimony, in Hill
Street.... You are as bad as your brother, Mary; but we will cure you both. Mansfield shall cure you both.... Stay with us and we will cure you.’ The Crawfords, without wanting be cured, were very willing to stay” (I; 41). The repetition of Mrs. Grants statement that the Crawfords will be cured, with the narrator’s foreboding, though comically ironic, response that the Crawfords do not want to be cured sets Mary
Crawford up for failure from the beginning—she does not want to be cured nor will she be XXXI Mary, in not recognizing that she is in need of being cured nor desiring to be cured, demonstrates the depth of her evil behavior. As I argued in the first chapter,
Austen strictly adheres to Johnson’s dictum (65; no. 4), and therefore Mary who is “bad” in the beginning of the novel will remain so at the end.xxx“
The “bad school” in which Mary was educated infects her character, making her unwill ing to right her immoral behavior. Regardless of “whether the Crawford siblings 54
are innately good people who have been corrupted by their upbringing or are, to quote from another Austen novel, ‘naturally bad”’ (Fuller 13), Mary is incurably evil. The fact that Mary may have been good before the damaging influence of her uncle matters little given that it is impossible for her to reverse her poor education. Even Edmund, who is initially infatuated with Mary and defends her inappropriate language, comes to understand her true character, stating in a conversation with Fanny that
‘She does not think evil, but she speaks it—speaks it in playfulness—and though I
know it to be playfulness, it grieves me to the soul.’ ‘The effects of education,’
said Fanny gently. Edmund could not but agree to it. ‘... I own to you, it does
appear more than manner; it appears as if the mind itself was tainted’[emphasis
original], (III; 243-244)
Edmund, who initially states that Mary does not think evil, only speaks it, quickly changes his mind, stating that it isn’t only Mary’s speech but her mind that is tainted by evil playfulness. The fact that Mary’s evil behavior is an incurable symptom of an infected mind and not just a curable illness of an improper education shows just how gravely readers should understand her playful language. Furthermore, the fact that
Edmund equates speaking playfully with speaking evilly shows how seriously offensive
Mary’s playful behavior is in the world of Mansfield Park.
Through speaking playfully, Mary is fantasizing or attempting, as Freud states, to effect “a correction of unsatisfying reality” (439). Mary seeks to mitigate the seriousness 55
of her poor upbringing through speaking playfully about it, or taking it less seriously than the virtuous characters in the novel believe she should. Mary speaks inappropriately on several occasions, but none is more revealing of her complete dissatisfaction with the reality of her past than when she makes a flippant statement about her uncle, the Admiral.
In this scene, Edmund informs Mary that Fanny’s brother William is in the navy. This results in Edmund asking Mary about her connections to the navy through her uncle;
Mary states, ‘“Of various admirals I could tell you a great deal.... Certainly, my home at my uncle’s brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears, and Vices, I saw enough. Now, do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat [emphasis original]” (I; 54).
Mary, in instructing Edmund and Fanny not to suspect her of punning, is clearly punning.
Southam, in his article “‘Rears’ and ‘Vices’ in Mansfield Park,” explains that this is a pun on Admirals’ ranks; Rear-Admirals and Vice-Admirals were second and third to the title Admiral, and on her uncle’s sexual promiscuity (23). The moral paragons of the novel, Fanny and Edmund, make it clear that a pun of this nature should not be made so casually. As a result of Mary’s pun, Fanny states that Mary is “ungrateful,” and Edmund feels “grave” (I; 54), though he overlooks her poor behavior for the moment, focusing instead on her ability to play the harp: “Edmund reverted to the harp, and was again very happy in the prospect of hearing her play” (I; 54). As Fuller states in her article, “The
[Crawfords’] intellectual and artistic education seems to have been more complete than their moral one” (17): that is, Mary is trained in the social entertainments of polite society, such as playing a classical instrument, but she lacks serious moral depth. This 56
proves Klein’s statement that politeness values “social artifice” while disregarding “the worth of authenticity” (874); Mary’s manner of speaking shows that her polite education only goes skin deep.
Another instance in which Mary speaks immorally to express her dissatisfaction with the reality of her situation is at the card table. During the card game speculation,
Mary learns that Edmund has decided to take up residency at Thorton Lacey and become a clergyman. This upsets Mary, who hopes he will take on a more lucrative profession.
Mary’s emotions have a direct effect on the way she decides to play her hand.
Passionately, Mary states, “‘There, I will stake my last like a woman of spirit. No cold prudence for me. I am not bom to sit still and do nothing. If I lose the game, it shall not be from not striving for it’” (II; 219). Mary is not only expressing dissatisfaction with
Edmund during this scene, but also with marriage in general. Having gone to the “‘bad school for matrimony’” (I; 41), Mary is unwilling to behave as she knows she must to win Edmund’s approval. Mary, in acknowledging that she is “not bom to sit still and do nothing,” puts herself in opposition to Johnson’s definition of female virtue during the period—passionately externalizing her inner conflict—and she actively loses “the game” on purpose. In deciding to lose to Edmund, Mary risks what Gillian Beer calls “the insurance of marriage:” “all focus the social disapproval that centred on the idea of a woman taking chances, risking all... flouting the slow pace of that other self-defensive form of gambling: insurance—which in the marriage market must mean for women the preservation of reputation and the search for a secure husband” (109). As a woman in the 57
eighteenth century, Mary should be “self-defensive” and concerned with insuring herself against losses in courtship. Mary does not defend herself, but, instead, stakes all on
William’s low card, the knave. This further reveals the depth of her evil playfulness—it is not just the way in which she plays cards that is damning, but also her verbal acknowledgement of her unashamed passion.
Furthermore, Mary’s speech as well as her letter writing reveals her evil and playful mind. Though Mary seems to give up on any affection she has for Edmund during the speculation scene, she continues to communicate with him through writing letters to
Fanny after leaving Mansfield and returning to London. Mary only writes to Fanny in hopes that Fanny will read her letters to Edmund and also to send Fanny Henry’s messages.XXXI" Instead of using this correspondence to reveal Fanny’s inner life and to reform Mary, Austen shows that Fanny must remain reserved in continuing to shield her ear from Henry’s low offers and that Mary is the same inappropriate person in writing that she is in verbal conversation. Fanny even feels that “Miss Crawford’s style of writing, lively and affectionate, was itself an evil...” (Ill; 341-342). Mary’s playfulness is again equated with the word “evil,” just as Edmund had described her manner of speaking 100 pages earlier. In Richardson’s epistolary novels, an immoral person was typically transformed through writing letters to the novel’s virtuous heroine, and this is evidently the case with Charlotte Grandison. Harriet transforms Charlotte into an “arrant scribbler” (IV; 433) after which she begins to find pleasure in being good: “I begin to think that there is almost as much pleasure in being good, as in teazing [sic]” (V; 512). 58
However, Mary Crawford does not reform through writing to Fanny, but only exposes that her “evil lies deeper... in a perversion of mind” (III; 416). Though Richardson’s novel is entirely epistolary, not all characters in Grandison write (in fact, Everard does not write a single letter in the entirety of the novel). Austen deliberately alludes to
Charlotte in this scene and therefore reverses readers’ expectations of the effect of letter writing on character. Mary does not transform as a result of writing to Fanny and, instead, only reveals her perverse mind.
The most disparaging remark Mary makes, and the correspondence that bars her from Mansfield and the Bertram estate forever, occurs in her final letter to Fanny. After
Mary learns of Henry’s adultery, she writes to Fanny in hopes of shielding her from the gravity of this discovery: “Henry is blameless, and in spite of a moment’s etourderie thinks of nobody but you.... I am sure it will be all hushed up...” (Ill; 398-399). The levity with which Mary describes Henry’s “thoughtlessness” and the fact that she uses the
French word to do so shows that she ignores the seriousness of the situation. According to Graham, “Cosmopolitan associations—foreign words or phrases used by or associated with a character—stand against Englishness, which carries implicit connotations of soundness and reliability in Austenworld.” (872). It is clear that Mary’s use of the French word is particularly negative, showing that she cannot even use her own “rational” language to describe Henry’s affair. Mary’s letter, as Harris states, “provides damning proof of her vitiation th at... could stand in a court of law” (388). The fact that Mary’s letter acts as evidence of her evil mind rather than an opportunity for transformative 59
character development, as with Charlotte in Grandison, could be due to a difference in genre—where Richardson prizes the power of writing, Austen’s realism cynically denies its capabilities. But can we equate Austen’s cynicism, in this regard, with realism? And, if we do, what then can we conclude about the power of writing to effect change in its other forms, such as the novel? It is unlikely that Austen hopes to show that writing has no effect over its readers (what novelist would hope to prove that?); what’s more likely is that, through Fanny and Mary’s correspondence, she is taking the transformative power of Charlotte and Harriet’s correspondence to task. What is at stake in Austen’s subversion of Richardson’s form is not just the transformative power of writing, but also the characterization of the minds and private lives of women in the eighteenth century.
Austen, in using letter writing to show that Mary has no moral depth, reverses the progress that Richardson makes with Charlotte. If private action is the only means available to women in the period to protect their virtue, then how women’s private correspondence is represented matters greatly. As if it were not enough to show the evilness of Mary’s mind in this scene alone, the narrative goes further. Edmund becomes aware of the depth of Mary’s immorality after she describes Henry and Maria’s adultery as “folly”: ‘“I wanted to see you. Let us talk over this sad business. What can equal the folly of our two relations?”’ (Ill; 414). This usage particularly offends Edmund who, as a result, attacks not only Mary’s virtue, but her femininity: “To hear the woman whom—no harsher name than folly given!—So voluntarily, so freely, so coolly to canvas it!—-No reluctance, no horror, no feminine—shall I say? no modest loathings [sic]” (III; 415). 60
Edmund describes Mary’s actions as not only evil, but also unfeminine. Edmund, as well as Fanny, are the moral examples in Mansfield Park, and they decide throughout the novel who is virtuous and who is not. It is clear then that Mary is not virtuous, but
Edmund’s escalation from simply concluding that Mary is not virtuous to stating that
Mary is unfeminine deserves closer analysis.
Interestingly, Austen, in having her moral character Edmund describe Mary’s immodesty as unfeminine, aligns perfectly with Richardson’s stated understanding of women’s virtue in Rambler no. 97 (Richardson wrote this piece for Johnson’s The
Rambler in 1751); Harris explains:
In Grandison and Mansfield Park education produces an ideal womanhood which
Richardson had held up a pattern in his nostalgic Rambler paper no. 97: ‘Modesty
and diffidence... were looked upon as appropriate virtues characterisk [sic] of the
Sex....’.... In Mansfield Park it is Mary Crawford who... is condemned by
Richardson’s criteria in Edmund’s mouth. Where once he thought her faulty but
‘perfectly feminine,’ he now criticises her for lack o f ‘feminine—shall I say? ...
modest loathings.’(379-380)
Harris points out that Richardson, in 1751, and Austen, in 1814, uphold the same understanding of modesty and virtue as qualities of femininity. Richardson, who makes a departure from this statement in his character Charlotte in Grandison just two years later in 1753 progresses beyond this narrow understanding of femininity, whereas Austen 61
appears to support Richardson’s nostalgia and to preserve it even in her 1814 novel.
Richardson, through disregarding Johnson’s dictum, creates a character in his Charlotte who is both inappropriately playful as well as “good.” In a letter to Lady Bradshaigh written in 1753, Richardson states, “In many instances of this Piece [Grandison\, I have, designedly, play’d [sic] the Rogue with my Readers; intending to make them think now one way, now another, of the same Characters” (248). Austen, who adheres more closely to Johnson’s dictum than Richardson, does not practice Richardson’s roguery. Mary, like
Henry, is immoral from the beginning of the novel and must remain so at the end.
Though the Crawfords’ inability to change could be understood as an element of
Austen’s realism, it ultimately stifles the imagination of her readers.xxxlv Richardson, however, gives his characters a fluidity that results in imaginatively expanding the minds of his readers, especially where women’s virtue is concerned. In another letter written the following year to Hester Mulso, Richardson states, “What a criterion of judgement you bring [against Lady G.], my dear! You write avowedly from your prejudices, to
Charlotte’s disadvantage. She says very good things (as I have been told); by accident, perhaps. But what then? If they are good things, they will be good from whatever mouth”
(314). Richardson’s defense of Charlotte’s multifaceted behavior is extremely progressive. Unlike Austen, whose Mary Crawford is immoral during the entirety of the novel and who is even shown to have a tainted mind in her letters, Richardson’s Charlotte has the ability to reform her immoral behavior while still remaining playful, and most importantly, feminine. 62
Kirkham argues that Richardson’s novels held a “double standard of morality”
(27) where women were virtuous and men in need of reform and that Austen eliminates this double standard, but this is evidently incorrect.xxxv What is Austen doing but perpetuating this double standard of morality by questioning the femininity of Mary’s immodest behavior? For Austen, it appears that virtue and femininity are inextricably linked, and that Mary, who is clearly not virtuous, is also unfeminine. Richardson progresses beyond this understanding of what it means to be feminine in the eighteenth century through his new character, Charlotte Grandison. Furthermore, Charlotte’s behavior is censured by the moral paragons of the novel, Harriet and Sir Charles, but it is also valued as an integral part of the Grandison family and, as I will show, the moral fabric of the novel itself.
C h a r l o t t e G r a n d is o n : T h e C r e a t iv e W r it e r a t P l a y
Just as is the case for Mary Crawford, Charlotte’s difficult upbringing results in her inappropriate and playful behavior. Charlotte, Lady L., and Sir Charles have a loving mother, but an immoral father. Their father, much like the aristocratic men described in the first chapter, gambles at the racetracks and has affairs with women. After a particularly awful gambling spree, Sir Thomas returns to Grandison Hall to tell his wife that he has gambled away his daughter’s inheritance. This news causes Mrs. Grandison to become ill and, as a result, she dies. Harris explains in her article that Charlotte’s sister is 63
“impressed with enough virtue to last, but Charlotte’s flightiness results from her mother’s early death” (377). I would argue, however, that this is not the only reason
Charlotte is a fantasizer—her behavior is also a result of her unmitigated exposure to her father’s improper behavior. Without moral instruction from her mother and constant exposure to her father’s dissolute behavior, Charlotte, much like Mary Crawford, grows up to fantasize about the painful reality of her childhood by describing it playfully. Just as
Mary makes the inappropriate pun about her uncle, Charlotte recounts past distressing events metaphorically and jestingly, offending her sister Lady L. When Charlotte and
Lady L. recount Sir Thomas’ initial refusal of Lady L.’s husband on the basis that he does not have enough money to support Sir Thomas’ gambling addiction, Charlotte states, “It is best for me to answer Miss Byron’s curiosity, I believe; as I was a stander-by, and only my father and sister were the players. Players'. Repeated Lady L.—It was a cruel scene”
(II; 334). Charlotte fantasizes about the gravity of this difficult situation calling both
Caroline and Sir Thomas “players” in an attempt to effect “a correction of unsatisfying reality” (Freud 439), thus turning the scene into a play she watched, rather than a life event in which she participated. Charlotte not only distances herself from the pain that this event caused both her and Lady L. by speaking of it lightly, she also upsets Lady L., who is hurt by Charlotte’s levity in describing the situation.
Another reason Charlotte speaks of this scene lightly is because she herself, like
Mary, does not take marriage seriously. Charlotte has two suitors but is not partial to either of them. Charlotte is hesitant about choosing a suitor and getting married, and she 64
cites the unequal relationships most married couples have as the primary reason for her hesitancy. Charlotte asserts herself, seeming to take an unfeminine stance on a woman’s rightful position once married:
Miss Gr. I believe, if I were to marry [Lord G.], I could be civil to him, if he
would be very complaisant, very observant, and all that.... Sir Ch. But if you
cannot be more than civil; and if he is to be very observant; you’ll make it your
agreement with him, before you meet him at the altar, that he shall subscribe to
the woman’s part of the vow; and that you shall answer to the man’s Miss Gr. A
good thought, I believe! I’ll consider of it. If I find in courtship, the man will bear
it, I may make the proposal. (Ill; 101)
According to Sir Charles, Charlotte’s desire for her husband to be complaisant is a masculine desire. Just as Edmund describes Mary’s immodesty as unfeminine, Sir
Charles accuses Charlotte of being unfeminine for speaking out about her dissatisfaction with the role women are meant to fill in marriage.xxxvl However, the tone of Sir Charles and Charlotte’s conversation is much lighter than Edmund’s condemnation of Mary’s immodesty. Though Mary is condemned by Richardson’s standards in Mansfield Park,
Richardson does not apply his dictum as strictly, or severely, to his own Charlotte
Grandison. Richardson, who stated in his letter to Hester Muslo that “[Charlotte] says very good things.... But what then? If they are good things, they will be good from whatever mouth” (314), challenges his own prescription of female virtue in Rambler no. 65
97 through Charlotte in this scene. Even though Sir Charles does question Charlotte’s femininity in this scene, the novel itself does not support his claim. Their debate proves to be entertaining rather than instructive, as Charlotte reiterates the same sentiments later in the novel after her marriage to Lord G. without risking her femininity. However, the gravity with which Edmund states that Mary is unfeminine and the fact that Mary disappears from the novel after that point strengthens the finality of Edmund’s claim.
Charlotte continues to speak for herself, but Mary is silenced by Edmund’s grave condemnation. Therefore, Charlotte is not severely condemned for making this point by the moral characters in the novel, nor is her femininity seriously in question.
Another scene in which Charlotte challenges the feminine role of married women in eighteenth-century England is in a letter to Harriet’s niece, Lucy Selby. Charlotte playfully describes marriage as a pagan sacrifice: “Ah silly maidens! if you could look three yards from your noses, you would pity, instead of envying, the milk-white heifer dressed in ribbands [sic], and just ready to be led to sacrifice” (VII; 358). Charlotte makes this observation after she has already married Lord G., playfully warning Lucy that marriage and the romance of courtship are two different things. Charlotte is not censured for her opinion and Harriet even includes Charlotte’s letter within one of her own. On the other hand, when Mary makes a similar observation about Maria’s marriage to Mr. Rushworth in Mansfield Park, Edmund becomes serious: ‘“ Don’t be affronted,’ said [Mary] laughing; ‘but it does put me in mind of some of the old heathen heroes, who after performing great exploits in a foreign land, offered sacrifices to the gods on their 66
safe return.’ ‘There is no sacrifice in the case,’ replied Edmund with a serious smile...”
(I; 97-98).xxxv" Edmund smiles seriously, just as he feels grave (I; 54) after Mary’s inappropriate pun. Edmund smiles now, but the reader knows that his seriousness prevails as he concludes at the close of the novel that Mary’s playfulness is evil.
Although Charlotte often expresses herself without being severely chastised by her family, once married, her playfulness becomes hurtful to Lord G. The height of
Charlotte’s injurious raillery is when she, much like Mary, reveals her emotions during a card game at Grandison Hall. Charlotte and Lord G. are arguing when Charlotte abruptly leaves him and flies downstairs where Lord and Lady L., Dr. Bartlett, and Emily are playing a game of whist.xxxvin Charlotte joins the card game in an attempt to flee the argument she is having with Lord G. When Dr. Bartlett offers Charlotte his hand to play, she retorts, “I will play my own cards: I shall have enough to do to play them well
[emphasis original]” (IV; 389), insinuating, in front of Lord G. and the other members of her family, that she is having difficulties with her marriage. Lord G. leaves the room and then sends for Charlotte to rejoin him in a private discussion; Charlotte replies “I am all obedience: No vow will 1 break [emphasis original]” (IV; 390). Charlotte’s use of the word “vow” is sarcastic because she has already broken at least a few of her eighteenth- century marriage vows by challenging her husband and arguing with him in public. It is during this scene that Charlotte’s family and Harriet first stand in overt opposition to her playful behavior. Charlotte, after this scene, writes to Harriet explaining that she wants to leave her husband, “Harriet, ... I am resolved to be unmarried; and therefore subscribe 67
myself by the beloved name of Charlotte Grandison” (IV; 391). Harriet, having already been informed of the events that took place, responds, “I know no such person as
Charlotte Grandison. I love Lady G. but can pity only her Lord. I will not come near you.
I have no counsel to give you, but that you will not jest away your own happiness” (IV;
391). Harriet’s response to Charlotte begins their transformative correspondence, after which Charlotte realizes that there is “as much pleasure in being good, as in teazing” (V;
512).
In writing to Harriet, Charlotte becomes a Freudian creative writer, transforming from a fantasizer who jests about the difficulties of her past into a player who creates a new way of being a woman in the eighteenth century. Charlotte does this by rearranging the roles of husband and wife in her marriage. She discovers a way to become an active participant in her relationship with Lord G. without hurting him with painful remarks.
Charlotte’s transformation is much like Freud’s description of what creative writers do to remain capable of play; Freud states:
Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he
creates a world of his own, or, rather, re-arranges the things of his world in a new
way which pleases him? It would be wrong to think that he does not take that
world seriously; on the contrary, he takes his play very seriously and he expends
large amounts of emotion on it. (437) 68
Charlotte learns to take her marriage to Lord G. seriously in her own way. She becomes an “arrant scribbler” at the same time she learns to play in the full Freudian sense of the word. Her play results in an atypical marriage in the eighteenth century—where a husband adapts to his wife’s behavior rather than the reverse. Charlotte does modify her behavior, but Lord G. ultimately praises her playfulness. Toward the end of the novel,
Lord G. enters Charlotte’s bedchamber to find her breast-feeding their child. Charlotte becomes upset, in her playful manner, and asks Lord G. to leave the room, but Lord G. refuses and begins to praise Charlotte’s raillery: “I loved you too well, proceeded he, to take any usage that was not quite what I wished it, lightly. But for some time past 1 have seen that it was all owing to a vivacity, that now, in every instance of it, delights my soul” (VII; 403). Charlotte is not the only person who needs to change in the novel. Lord
G. also has to reform his understanding of Charlotte’s behavior. Charlotte’s success in transforming Lord G.’s understanding of her behavior creates a playful union that is both loving and equal.
Therefore, it is a misconception that Charlotte’s reformation in Grandison causes her to entirely lose her playfulness. Ikeda states in her article that: “The crucial difference in the representation of playful attributes between the two novelists is that Richardson, unlike Austen, never brings it to the fore as a merit, but places it on the fringe, rather as a defect in need of modification” (35). This is simply not the case. As is evident in the case of Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park, Austen severely chastises playful behavior and has the moral exemplars in the novel label it as “evil” several times. On the other hand, 69
Charlotte’s playfulness is integral to the novel and to the moral landscape of Grandison
Hall, so much so that George Eliot wrote in a letter about Grandison (and most likely about Charlotte) in 1847 that “The morality is perfect—there is nothing for the new lights to correct” (44). Ikeda is not the only theorist to praise Austen’s female characters over
Richardson’s. Southam does so as well in his article “Sir Charles Grandison and Jane
Austen’s Men,” when he compares Grandison and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:
“Unlike Harriet Byron, whose initial liveliness and humour are subdued under the sobering influence of Sir Charles, Elizabeth’s intelligence, her critical spirit, her playfulness, her vitality, remain undiminished—those qualities of mind and spirit which place superiority so strongly on the side of the heroine” (85). Southam seems to forget
Charlotte, whose husband bends to her rule by the close of the novel. Southam also does not seem to take Mansfield Park into account. Austen does not make the spirited Mary
Crawford the heroine of Mansfield Park. In fact, Mary is severely condemned at the end of the novel.
However similar these two characters are, their treatment in these two novels is markedly different. Charlotte’s risk-taking behavior at the card table is punished but only with a view to her transformation. As a result of the advice of her family and friends,
Charlotte adopts a more socially acceptable form of play, even one that her husband Lord
G. can participate in, without losing her vivacity. Mary Crawford, on the other hand, has no hope of transforming in Mansfield Part, she cannot escape the effects of an improper upbringing nor stop fantasizing and learn to play. 70
Therefore, Austen does not perfect a feminist ideal in Mansfield Park, but instead hazardously rejects the progress of Richardson’s Charlotte-Lord G. plot. Austen asserts that Mary’s immodesty is unfeminine and that her playfulness is evil, limiting the boundaries of femininity and attempting to reverse the progress Richardson made and
Eliot prized. Charlotte continuously speaks her mind before and after her transformation and progressively expands the boundaries of the many possible ways of being feminine in the period. 71
Know When to Fold Them
The men and ladies of these chapters sometimes join together around the same table—Mary, Henry, and Tom act on the same stage in Mansfield Park and Everard and
Charlotte, much to her chagrin, engage in witty spats and suffer through each other’s company at family dinners. We can imagine these characters together outside of their respective novels, too. Because of Austen’s playful pen, we can envision Tom and
Everard choosing between the tracks and the gambling hall. Sir Charles and Henry fighting over who values marriage more, and Mary and Charlotte facing off in a competition of wit. These gatherings end, and the players withdraw to their separate lives—Tom throws off his gambling habit and leaves the table to care for the Bertram
Estate; Everard, impoverished, abandons the table for merchant life; Charlotte pushes the cards aside and, scribbling, passes along her marriage acumen to the young ladies awaiting their turn; but only Mary and Henry remain.
Henry, as we know, has felt vexation and regret, and has perhaps abandoned the gambling table for more modest entertainments, but Mary, unable to recover from a bad education and throw off the allure of fantasy, continues unchanged. On the other hand, in
Richardson’s playful Grandison, Charlotte transforms—she speaks immodestly without losing her femininity and is playfully multifaceted without being evil. Richardson’s conscious subversion of Johnson’s dictum that vice must always disgust and never please creates realistic characters that experience real change, whereas Austen’s subversion of 72
the power of writing restricts Mary, and the private lives of likeminded women, to the
confines of her behavior.
My assertions are a reversal of the existing body of Richardson-Austen theoretical works, which commonly claim that what Richardson lacks, Austen perfects. I stress,
instead, that Austen fails to correct the morality of Richardson’s characters in Grandison through her Mansfield Park, and that, unlike Austen’s work, Richardson’s supports positive change. Although I have shown that Grandison champions women’s progress in the eighteenth century more than Mansfield Park did in the early nineteenth century, I must highlight a forward-looking observation that Austen makes at the end of her novel.
In the narrative summation of Mansfield Park, the narrator explains the fate of
Henry and Maria following the adultery they have committed. Maria is condemned to live with Mrs. Norris, while Henry is momentarily embarrassed. The narrator explains that Henry’s regret will do little to curb his vice, while Maria’s public loss of virtue has ruined her life: “That punishment, the public punishment of disgrace, should in a just measure attend his share of the offense, is, we know, not one of the barriers, which society gives to virtue [emphasis original]” (III; 427). This peculiar phrasing needs to be understood in order to clarify Austen’s position on the effects of disgrace and virtue on men and women. The narrator claims that Henry and Maria are equally guilty in having committed adultery, but because society treats the virtue of men and women differently,
Henry will not be publicly punished for his affair with Maria. Maria, on the other hand, 73
has publicly lost her virtue in surrendering her chastity and pursuing Henry’s low offers.
She is publicly disgraced and—what’s worse—is destined to lead a stifled existence
under Mrs. Norris’ roof. Though the narrator suggests that disgrace acts as a “barrier” or
punishment for vice in order to protect virtue, it is not one of the barriers society gives to male virtue. Austen, in this oddly phrased sentence that occurs outside of the dramatic action of the novel, lays bare the societal double standard of publicly punishing women and forgiving men for the same offense. How much more poignant and progressive would Mansfield Park have been if this observation had been the focal point of the novel?
It is clear that Austen certainly felt that the danger of men behaving immorally, without the corrective of public disgrace, grew during the sixty-one-year period between
Richardson’s novel and her own. Richardson suggests in his novels that immoral men can be reformed through the love of a good woman, but Austen is not as optimistic. Austen’s cynicism in regards to this issue is not unfounded, as Watt states that during the eighteenth century in England, “the increase of [bachelors] was widely regarded as socially deplorable and morally dangerous” (146). Though Austen addresses this problem poignantly in the narrative summation of Mansfield Park, she does not bring this debate to life in the dramatic action of her novel.
The pleasure of Richardson’s novel, on the other hand, is that another societal double standard concerning female virtue is brought to the forefront of the novel again 74
and again by the wonderfully creative Charlotte Grandison. Charlotte challenges the constructs of marriage in the eighteenth century and speaks out in opposition to the restrictions of female virtue, advocating for a more equal role in her marriage. Her playfulness and verbosity carve out a new space for women in the eighteenth century— one wherein women can be feminine mothers and wives without being silenced. Austen’s novel fails to reward readers with the same imaginative possibilities that Richardson’s vivacious Charlotte promotes. What’s more is that Austen, in attempting to correct the morality of Richardson’s Charlotte through Mary, turns back the progress Richardson makes for women in the period. Mary’s mind is evil, her immodesty unfeminine, and writing cannot save her; Charlotte’s inappropriate and lively speech is integral to the
Grandison family circle and, through writing, it is perfected into feminine play. Austen’s morally corrective novel does little to dissuade this reader, at least, from finding amusement, instruction, and hope in the endlessly playful Charlotte Grandison. 75
Notes
1. Although the title of Freud’s piece refers to creative writers and not novelists specifically, the translator of the essay, Peter Gay, points out that, “Freud uses the economical, untranslatable German word ‘Dichter,’ which embraces story-tellers, novelists, poets, and playwrights,” (436). Therefore, the term “creative writer” can encompass Richardson as a novelist, and Austen as a novelist, playwright, and satirist.
2. In the first chapter of my thesis I will discuss how Austen puts Sir Charles’ phrasing in the mouth of her untrustworthy character, Henry Crawford, and how this parallel acts as a critique of Sir Charles, one of Richardson’s most virtuous characters.
3. In a letter to Sara Hennell dated October 13, 1847, Eliot states, “I had no idea that Richardson was worth so much.... The morality is perfect—there is nothing for the new lights to correct” (44).
4. In the preface to Grandison, Richardson states, “... the present Collection is not published ultimately, or even principally. ..for the Sake of Entertainment only. A much nobler End is in View. Yet it is hoped the Variety of Characters and Conversations necessarily introduced into so large a Correspondence, as these Volumes contain, will enliven as well as instruct...” (4).
5. In the introduction to Austen’s play, Grandison, Brian Southam states,
“‘Pictures of perfection’, Jane Austen told one of her nieces, ‘make me sick & wicked’... 76
the play is a shrewd and amusing swipe at the character of Richardson’s ‘happy man’”
(27). Austen may only make a “swipe” at Sir Charles in her play, but her comparison to
Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park, I will argue, is more severe.
6. Austen’s heroine Emma is an example of a character who is, in a Freudian sense, a fantasizer. Her playfulness is completely disconnected from the reality of her social encounters. She must reform in order to marry the hero of the novel.
7. Margaret Kirkham, in her critical text Jane Austen, Feminism and Fiction, argues that Jane Austen’s moralism is not “indicative of strongly conservative ... political commitment,” but is instead, “indicative of her sympathy with the rational feminism of the Enlightenment” (xxii). I disagree with Kirkham on this subject.
8. See P.G.A Pocock’s The Machiavellian Moment.
9. Behaving consistently and virtuously is a central theme in Austen’s Mansfield
Park. In the final section of this chapter, I show that Austen did not believe that Sir
Charles behavior was virtuous.
10. My reading of Austen as an author who adheres more closely to Johnson than
Richardson does is contrary to the widely held belief that Austen is the first realist.
Austen is commonly understood to be the first author who mixes contradictory character traits in one character, making that character more human and thus more realistic. In my 77
thesis, I argue that the opposite is true as is evident through a side-by-side comparison of
Mansfield Park and Grandison.
11. Before Grandison, Richardson’s novels focused solely on the reformed rake plot. For example, in Pamela, Mr. B is the head of the household as well as an immoral rake. Mr. B, although he behaves more offensively than even Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, reforms after his marriage to Pamela. Therefore, it is possible to argue that had Everard been in Tom’s position (which is similar to Mr. B’s as they are both heirs to their families’ estates) his treatment in the novel would have remained the same or might have even been less severe. However, it is important to acknowledge that Grandison is a very different novel than Pamela in that its primary object is to show that a man can be virtuous without having first been reformed by a good woman.
12. Interestingly, Austen uses the same phrasing in Mansfield Park in regards to acting, an activity nearly as damning for Austen as gaming is for Richardson: “Happily for [Mr. Yates], a love of the theatre is so general, an itch for acting so strong among young people, that he could hardly out-talk the interest of his hearers [emphasis added]”
(I; 109).
13. The same was true of Sir Charles’ father who was also a gambler. His father sends Sir Charles abroad for an extended period of time so that he can continue to gamble and have affairs with women and without risking the chance that his son will reform him. 78
14. It is important to note that Sir Charles, the symbol of eighteenth-century male virtue, never gambles, even when asked to directly by Clementina’s father, “The General would have accompanied me to the Casino; saying, that we might both be diverted by an hour passed there: But I excused myself. My heart was full of anxiety, for the welfare of a brother and sister, both so much endeared to me by their calamities...” (V; 472-473).
15. It is important to note that Sir Charles does conceal his goodness from the
Grandison family in the beginning of the novel so he does not appear boastful or egoistic.
This is because Richardson did not want Sir Charles’ virtue, or modesty, to be questioned. To be forthright with his good deeds without being prompted would send the wrong message to eighteenth-century readers.
16. Listening is a sign of virtue in Mansfield Park. The heroine, Fanny Price, is often described as a listener. The fact that Tom only pretends to listen signals that he is morally deficient.
17. It is important to note that Tom travels to Antigua with his father, Sir
Thomas, in order to “... detach him from some bad connections at home” (I; 28).
However, this trip is unsuccessful, as Tom returns before his father and leaves his father to travel home on his own in a terrible storm. Further proof that Tom’s time away had no positive effect on his character is that shortly after returning to Mansfield, Tom and his friend John Yates persuade the Bertram family to act in a play, even transforming their 79
father’s den into a theater. The actors are depicted as extremely immoral during this episode.
18. Acting out private family plays was a favorite past time for the Austens. Brian
Southam, in the introduction to Austen’s Sir Charles Grandison, states, “[The play] takes us into Jane Austen’s private writing, the pieces she set down not with any thought of publication but simply to please herself and entertain the family” (3).
19. As I mentioned in a previous footnote, had Everard been the heir to the
Grandison estate, it is likely that the good example of Sir Charles would not suffice and that a more Pamela-like character would be required. But then, this would be a different novel, one that utilizes the reformed-rake plot.
20. The fact that Tom is a plot device rather than a character in the novel strengths my claim that Richardson’s characters are more realistic than Austen’s. However, this fact does not temper the extent to which we can dwell on Austen’s moral punishment of
Tom because he is an integral part of the novel’s didactic and moral messaging.
21. This is not the only scene wherein Henry’s poor behavior occurs onstage, literally. Graham states that, “Although the Lover’s Vows episode is set up to be a sort of moral litmus test in Mansfield Park, it is not, when we come right down to it, a test for the Crawfords” (877). I disagree. During the Lover's Vows episode Henry acts very 80
immorally by performing romantic scenes with Maria Bertram in front of her soon-to-be husband Mr. Rushworth without feeling ashamed.
22. This is not the only instance wherein Henry Crawford is described as
“gallant.” K.C. Phillipps points out in his book that Austen uses Richardson’s peculiar phrasing in her novel. Interestingly, this quote also includes a description of Henry’s supposed gallantry and Sir Charles’ opinion of immoral men:
The eighteenth-century reflexive use of allow, to allow oneself in, now quite
obsolete, occurs once in the novels: Mr Crawford allowed himself in gallantries
which did mean nothing (MP 363). We may compare Richardson: Persons ... that
yet allow themselves in liberties which no good man can take, [emphasis in the
original] (Sir Charles Grandison I, 279) (69).
23. See page 7 of this thesis.
24. I understand that Austen’s purpose in this novel is to communicate a clear didactic message to her readers via a close adherence to Johnson’s dictum. The points I make are predicated on this understanding.
25. When Austen mockingly refers to Henry as gallant in Mansfield Park, her mockery is not only reserved for Richardson’s Everard, but also for Richardson’s Sir
Charles. 81
26. Another example of the reformative power of letter writing can be seen in
Richardson’s Pamela, wherein the goodness of Pamela reforms the immoral behavior of
Mr. B.
27. Though Austen ends her play Grandison in a double marriage, one between
Sir Charles and Harriet and Charlotte and Lord G., this is not the destiny of the characters in Mansfield Park. Austen suggests, however, that a double marriage of Fanny to Henry and Edmund to Mary might have occurred if Henry had not had an affair with Maria
Bertram: “Would [Henry] have persevered, and uprightly, Fanny must have been his re ward... within a reasonable period from Edmund’s marrying Mary” (III; 426).
28. It is important to note that Harriet never actually plays cards in the novel, sometimes because she is unwell and other times because she is so overcome with feeling she cannot see the deck through her tears. Harriet writes in one of her letters: “... I over writ myself, and was obliged to lie down for about two more [hours]. At night we had Sir
John Allestree, and his nephew, and Miss Allestree, and Miss Clements, and Lady Betty, at supper, and cards. But, my Stomach paining me, about eleven I was permitted to retire to bed” (I; 193). Harriet is often too ill to play cards or even to enjoy the prospect of playing cards. 82
29. Harris points out that, “[Richardson states] only if women are good may they be allowed to be clever...” (380). Harriet is good and therefore can be clever and know how to play cards.
30. See chapter one, page 6.
31. As Graham proposes in his article, Austen has “stacked the deck” (870) against the Crawfords.
32. It is necessary to point out that Mary does not “always disgust” the other characters in novel or the readers, but she never quite wins Fanny’s approval. Fanny is of course correct in her opinion of Mary when, at the end of the novel, her consistently inappropriate behavior is shown to be the product of a playfully evil mind.
33. Austen, in showing that Mary only writes to Fanny to send word of her brother Henry, is mocking the fact that much of Charlotte and Harriet’s correspondence is concerned with Sir Charles’ letters to Dr. Bartlett wherein he expresses his feelings for
Harriet.
34. For a discussion on realism in Mansfield Park, see the final section of chapter one, A Cruel Comparison: Henry Crawford and Sir Charles Grandison.
35. This is untrue, especially in the case of Sir Charles Grandison. Charlotte reveals that her brother Sir Charles Grandison is a virgin (V; 497), a fact Richardson must 83
defend. In a letter to Lady Bradshaigh, Richardson describes Mr. Cibber’s reaction to the idea of a male virgin:
Did I ever tell you, Madam, of the contention I had with Mr. Cibber, about the
character of a good man, which he undertook to draw, and to whom, at setting
out, he gave a mistress, in order to shew [sic] the virtue of his hero in parting with
her, when he had fixed upon a particular lady, to whom he made honourable
addresses? A male-virgin, said he—ha, ha, ha, hah! when I made my objections to
the mistress, and she was another man’s wife, too, but ill used by her husband;
and he laughed me quite out of countenance!” (171)
36. Though the two narrative situations are very different—Mary is unfeminine because she does not speak seriously about the consequences of her brother’s adultery, whereas Charlotte’s femininity is challenged because she wants to take an active role in her marriage—they are similar in that neither sentiment should be understood as exclusive to one gender or another. On the other hand, these scenes are very different in that Sir Charles challenges Charlotte’s femininity playfully, whereas Mary’s femininity is attacked seriously.
3 7 .1 credit Harris with first noting this comparison in ‘“As if they had been living friends’: Sir Charles Grandison into Mansfield Park,” 366-367. 84
38. Of course Harriet is not present; she explains, “I was not in spirits, and declined staying to cards” (IV; 389). 85
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