#henrycrawford

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.