#fannyprice

Finished reading this for a second time yesterday-- still the best. 

In fact, this time it was even better. I was more attuned to the most eloquent and touching passages in the book. 

I think the less-celebrated works by Jane Austen are actually better. Granted, I have not read Emma for over a decade (and was too young to properly understand it at the time), nor Mansfield Park. But I did reread Sense and Sensibility last year, which is definitely better than Pride and Prejudice. 

Whilst rereading Persuasion, I kept having to pause and appreciate just how brilliant the story is. The fact that it may be loosely based on Jane Austen’s own thwarted love story with Tom LeFroy (or someone else), the fact that she was ill and dying whilst finishing this, and the sad beauty throughout narrative passages, enhanced my reading experience. 

Anne Elliot’s quiet dignity, honesty, and dedication throughout are incredible. I think that Jane Austen’s quieter heroines deserve greater credit: Anne Elliot, Elinor Dashwood, and Fanny Price. They have great character, inner strength, resolve, and a strong moral compass-- all whilst having relatable and understandable flaws. For example, Anne Elliot feels on reflection that she had a duty to listen to Lady Russell when the latter warned her against marrying Captain Wentworth. I don’t agree, and neither did he. But this scene gives her complexity. 

One of Jane Austen’s great strengths is adding a twist at the end of the romance. My favourite by far is when the rogue Willoughby from Sense and Sensibility fools around with Marianne Dashwood, only to fall irrevocably in love with her and continue being in love with her whilst she eventually married. On the very last page, Austen writes that Willoughby considered Marianne the gold standard in womanhood and thus offended other women. 

In Persuasion, the threat of Captain Wentworth dying in war remains on the very last page, the only way that Anne Elliot’s happiness could end. I view this as a glimpse into Jane Austen’s own declining health and the sense that she will not write another novel. Very poignant, sad, but powerful. 

For this week's Tumblr, I've selected a meme I found on Pinterest, originally cut from a clip of the TV series "The Office" and adapted by janeaustengeeks online. I've selected this image in particular because it encapsulates my feelings about Mansfield Park perfectly.

In class last week we spent a significant amount of time discussing whether or not characters could be considered stagnant or growing in the novel, particularly when it came to Fanny. Much of everyone's reservations about the novel had to do with Fanny's stagnation and how, on the whole, her character makes very few changes from start to end. Fanny begins the book a quiet, shy girl who is hopelessly trapped in an unrequited love for her cousin. At the end of the novel, the point could easily be made that Fanny is still that same quiet and shy girl, while the only real difference she faces, is Edmund's growing affection. This, among other traits, could at times make Fanny a tiresome heroine to follow.

However there was one hope (at least for me) in this novel for some development. Before I expand though, I would like to clarify that morally, I find it extremely tedious when a woman's only growth, salvation, happiness is dependent on her connection to a man. I am in no way advocating that Fanny could not have, or should not have been able to find such things on her own independent of a man. But as everyone who has read Mansfield Park will likely note, Fanny does not do that when given the opportunity. There is a lot of room for growth throughout the novel and a lot of confidence builders Fanny could have taken that she chose not to. The largest of which I believe was Henry Crawford.

Henry is an obnoxious player and flirt for the first third of the novel. I genuinely hated him during that period. But Henry is also the only character in the novel to express any sort of growth. He is the only person who condemns their previous behavior and endeavors to do better with his future. He is a confident, wealthy, and relatively good man from a good family. My biggest disappointment with Austen's writing in this book is that she did not use Henry's infatuation to teach Fanny her power and show her worth.

Henry and Fanny had the opportunity to be ludicrously happy together. In the novel, Henry repeatedly says that he finds each of Fanny's interests alarmingly endearing and he would gladly follow her around willingly for the rest of his life, if only she asked him to. No, I also am not in favor of subjugating men entirely and eliminating their voices everywhere to elevate women. But I do believe that their relationship had the potential to show each of them a greater worth in themselves than they might otherwise have found. Fanny might have shown Henry that he deserved more meaningful relationships than casual affairs or gold-diggers. And Henry might have shown Fanny that despite her lower status of birth, her intelligence and compassion qualify her for a great deal more respect than her cousins and others have ever given her.