Book Review: Mansfield Park
I was very glad to finish this book. VERY. It was one of those books that you just sludge through and you think there isn’t an end in sight. It was a book filled with bad whoodo. Okay, sure it’s by Jane Austen whose literary heroes have stolen hundreds of women’s hearts for centuries. But good lord this one takes the biscuit for being the most painful.
I’ll give her that it's her most original work. You watch our heroine, Fanny Price, grow from a small child into adulthood. She is mistreated by her wealthier aunts- Mrs Bertram and Mrs Norris (she is honestly the WOST) for no other reason, than that she is poor – her cousins Julia and Maria are also mistreated by the two women – their mother by indifference and by Mrs Norris through over-indulgence. In short, it was a tough read.
I wish I could say it got better, but as we watch Fanny get older, she becomes a wallflower – meek and unassuming. Fanny’s only friend is Edmund, the only one who tries to give her a little joy when she is always denied. And then you have the arrival of the Crawford siblings: Henry and Mary. Henry flirts outrageously with Maria and Julia (despite Maria being engaged to a man purely for his money) and Edmund becomes smitten with Mary, despite her disdain for him wanting to enter the church. Like I said earlier: a lot of bad whoodo.
This leads to an important aspect of Mansfield Park and one that doesn’t typically crop up in fictitious writing from this era: Slavery. The Crawford’s were so bold in their flirtatiousness to Maria, Julia, and Edmund due to the absence of their father, Sir Thomas Bertram, who leaves for Antigua to handle business on his plantation, that yes, used slaves. Sure. Have I enjoyed this book? Not at all. But is it still relevant in 2023? Yes – obviously! Conversations about slavery and colonialism will never go away, they are always important. Slavery was the foundation of many an empire, not just the British – it was, perhaps not the cornerstone, but its standing within the global economy was significant at that time.
I wish I could say it gets better in this book: and sure, for Fanny it does, she gets her Happily-Ever-After, but it comes at a price. The price is Julia and Maria and the reputation of Sir Thomas takes a rather massive hit. Henry, being your average regency Fuckboy, decides to try and get Fanny to fall in love with him. Which is funny because it backfires, and he falls for her and asks her to marry him. Multiple times by the way. But Fanny, seeing how outrageous he has been with Maria and Julia repeatedly turns him down as she does not trust him. Naturally, it all ends in tears when the flirtation is renewed with a now very MARRIED Maria, and they run away together. I’d say it speaks volumes that he’d run away with Maria, never tells her he loves her but asks Fanny to marry him because he loves her. It's very telling.
It’s a joy that everyone gets their comeuppance at the end – but the version I read was 560 pages long and the resolution was done in 10 pages. It took way too long. Sure, the lush rich details Jane Austen provides give us a look at regency life, but my god! There was a lot of misery for Fanny to go through. If you want to read this book, go ahead – but buckle up for a long ride.