J A N E T I L I T Y

          One engaging feature of Austen’s novels is her technique of aligning character traits with their natural (as in nature) affinities or aversions. Elizabeth Bennet’s appreciation for talent and virtue over money and rank is reflected in her reaction to the grounds of Pemberley, i.e., that their “…natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste”; Marianne Dashwood’s propensity for dwelling upon loss is reflected in her musings upon Norland’s dead leaves. Mrs. Elton’s affectation is comically rendered in the running monologue that expresses her eroding zeal for strawberry picking. There is an allusion to Catherine Morland’s maturing in an exchange between her and Tilney; when she says that she has learned to love a hyacinth – the flower symbolizing the juvenile attributes of playfulness and sport – he asks whether she might then learn to love a rose – the flower symbolic of romantic love. The selfishness of Sir Walter Elliot and his eldest daughter corresponds to their reluctance to allow a tenant to enjoy the use of their gardens. Sir Walter is “…not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable [by a tenant]”, and Anne has been dispatched to instruct the gardener in “…which of Elizabeth’s plants are for Lady Russell” – presumably to preserve them from Kellynch’s new occupants.

Sylvestra Le Touzel, as Fanny Price

          In Mansfield Park, when Fanny Price and Mary Crawford stroll the parsonage grounds, their conversation expresses Fanny’s appreciation of nature and Mary’s indifference to it, but the particular object of Fanny’s admiration are the evergreens. “The evergreen! How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen!” Even while Mansfield Park is symbolically channeled through Fanny – her musing on how the same soil can nurture such variety of plants represents the disparate characters who occupy or pass through the Bertram estate – it is the unchanging evergreen, the manifestation of permanence, fidelity, immutability and self-renewal that embodies the character of Fanny Price.

Frances O’Connor, as Fanny Price

          Yet, every so often, Austen readers will encounter an article or a speaker whose topic is something on the order of “In Defense of Fanny Price”; “defense” implying that Fanny Price is deficient when compared to Austen’s other heroines, and therefore requires vindication. Even C. S. Lewis, in “A Note on Jane Austen” maintained that Fanny had “…nothing but rectitude of mind; neither passion, nor physical courage, nor wit, nor resource.” True, she is not as witty as Elizabeth Bennet, nor as passionate as Marianne Dashwood, and her resources are not tested in the manner that Catherine Morland’s are; moreover, Fanny is not as beautiful as Jane Bennet, nor as accomplished as Jane Fairfax; she does not even provide the comic intervals that the reader enjoys by way of Mrs. Bennet or Mrs. Elton.

Billie Piper, as Fanny Price

          Fanny Price is the only Austen heroine who is defined by intrinsic virtue and moral integrity, rather than her failures of character and objectivity. Elizabeth Bennet is susceptible to prejudice, Marianne Dashwood is emotionally indulgent, Emma is self-important and manipulative, Catherine Morland’s limited intellect is warped by popular novels and self-serving acquaintances, Anne Elliot abdicates her natural good judgment in favor of well-meaning (and not-so-well-meaning) relations and friends. As their tales advance, the mechanics of plot are linked to the flawed heroine’s self-realization and eventual contrition. “These recollections will not do at all,” concludes Elizabeth Bennet. “I assure you that I have long been most heartily ashamed [of her language].” Marianne states that, “Whenever I look towards the past I saw some duty neglected or some failing indulged.” Emma comes to hope that “…every future winter of her life…would yet find her more rational, more acquainted with herself, and leave her less to regret when it were gone.” When Catherine understands how far her imagination has offended Henry Tilney, it “…opened her eyes to the extravagance of her late fancies”. Even while the long-suffering Anne justifies her deference to Lady Russell, she concedes that “…for myself, I certainly never should in any circumstance of tolerable similarity, give such advice.”

          In contrast, Fanny is always correct. Her affection is never misplaced, her character assessments are borne out in a plot that, rather than exposing her errors of judgment, reveals where the judgment of the others has gone awry.

            Fanny experiences unhappiness, but no moral regret, unless you count those “…feelings so near akin to envy as to make her hate herself for having them.” Her uncomplaining submission to the indolence of Lady Bertram and the tyranny of Mrs. Norris may aggravate the reader; her steadiness, when compared to the spirited repartee of Elizabeth Bennet or the resolute folly of Emma or Catherine, may appear static and colorless. If Fanny does not possess the buoyancy and wit of Austen’s other heroines, she does have – without the accompanying advantages of wealth, status, accomplishment or even physical stamina – a moral intuition that is as intriguing (considering the households in which she was raised) as cleverness and charm.

          Fanny may not, as Lewis observes, have “physical courage” (though I think the same may be said for most of Austen’s heroines), but she does have to draw upon emotional reserves in a way that other heroines (with the possible exception of Elinor Dashwood) do not; Elizabeth, Anne, Catherine, Emma may face an obstacle to romance, but the obstacle does not materialize in the form of a competitor. Darcy is not attached to Anne deBourgh, nor would Knightley ever marry Harriet Smith; Wentworth dallies with Louisa and Henrietta without being serious about either, and Tilney is not in love with anyone else. Even Willoughby’s choice is a matter of fortune rather than affection. But Fanny does have a rival for Edmund’s affection in the beautiful and accomplished Mary Crawford. Unlike Darcy, Tilney, Knightley, or even Edward Ferrars or Willoughby, Edmund Bertram is the one Austen hero who falls in love with someone other than the heroine. Unlike Fanny’s response to Henry Crawford, Edmund rationalizes Mary’s impropriety, and continues to hope that she will overlook the fact that he is a second son and a clergyman, until her sentiments prove to be so corrupt that Edmund cannot continue to justify them. Fanny, on the other hand, is able to witness Henry’s newly-expressed gentleness and consideration, without weakening, and views it as sign that he may just enough of a changed character that he will “not much longer persevere in a suit so distressing to her”. She can appreciate the improvement in his conduct, but her opinion of him as a potential husband is not swayed.

          Perhaps in an era where undeserving “celebrities” reap undeserved attention there are those who consider “rectitude of mind” to be “nothing”. But Austen readers should know better.

“The Play, on Saturday, is, I hope, to conclude our Gaities here….” Wrote Jane Austen from Bath in June, 1799. The play referred to was a comic melodrama by the popular playwright Augustus von Kotzebue, The Birthday, also known under the titles The Reconciliation (Die Versöhnung), Fraternal Discord, and The Veteran Tars, the title varying with the translator.

Augustus von Kotzebuem

The plot of The Birthday/The Reconciliation/Fraternal Discord/The Veteran Tars concerns the invalid Mr. Philip Bertram, his devoted daughter Charlotte, his estranged twin brother Captain Bertram, and the kind-hearted doctor, Bloomfield. Charlotte has vowed never to abandon her invalid father for a husband, unless, as Bloomfleid proposes, “But suppose there was a man willing and able to…make a third in the circle of domestic felicity, who would dwell under your roof…”- the same proposal Mr. Knightley makes to Emma and Mr. Woodhouse. The play concludes with a reconciliation between the brothers being effected by Charlotte and Bloomfield. Mr. Bertram throws off his crutches, the brothers embrace, and Charlotte, presumably, is released from her pledge.

Austen’s situation in life did not permit her to be a regular theatre-goer, but it would have been unusual for even an occasional patron to avoid seeing a play by Kotzebue, who, critics notwithstanding (Sir Walter Scott declared that Kotzebue’s work displayed “…an affectation of attributing noble and virtuous sentiments to the persons least qualified by habit or education to entertain them”) was among the most prolific and widely produced playwrights of the latter 18^th and early 19^th century. If Austen did not catch one of his plays while at Bath, she might have seen one in London; Kotzebue’s plays were frequently to be seen at Covent Garden, The Haymarket and the Drury Lane. His plays were produced everywhere, from Russia to the United States. Of the six new German plays produced for the 1798-1799 New York season, four were Kotzebue works; twenty years later, of the seven German works produced for the New York stage, five were Kotzebue works.

It was a Kotzebue play, in fact, that Austen selected to work into the plot of Mansfield Park. When the young people gather at the Bertram household to put up a play, they immediately reject Shakespeare, the popular tragedies The Gamester and Douglas – though Tom Bertram was familiar with the latter, as his “I am sure my name was Norval-“ (the main character in Douglas) “- every evening of my life through one Christmas holidays.” They reject several comedies, though Tom Bertram, who has his eye on two of the choice roles, suggests The Heir at Law five times. At last they settle upon Lover’s Vows, aka A Child of Love, and The Natural Son. This adaptation of Kotzebue’s play was the work of the actress/playwright Elizabeth Inchbald, who is sometimes credited as the writer, though hers was only one of three English translations that appeared in the same year. It is likely that the Bertrams and their friends decided upon the Inchbald translation, over the more faithful ones by Stephen Porter and Anne Plumptre because it re-formed the work to exclude the elements of illegitimacy, which may have been tolerable on the London stage, but would not have been tolerated by Edmund Bertram.

Lover's Vows

Elizabeth Inchbald

In reflecting upon the parallels between his professional life and episodes from the novels of Jane Austen, Sherlock Holmes would likely have seen a good deal of Mansfield Park’s Mary Crawford in Irene Adler, his adversary in A Scandal in Bohemia. Both Sherlock Holmes and Mansfield’s Edmund Bertram are second sons who find themselves captivated by brilliant, but morally compromised women. For Holmes, the “adventuress” Irene Adler is The Woman, who “eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex”; Edmund Bertram believes it “impossible…that he should ever meet with such another woman [as Mary Crawford].” Mary is “the only woman in the world whom [Edmund] could ever think of as a wife”; and while Holmes is not a marrying man, “there was but one woman to him, and that woman was…Irene Adler.”

There are the obvious similarities – Mary and Irene are brunette, charming, accomplished, musical – and the similarities of character: Mary is “active and fearless”; Irene is “quick and resolute”. Holmes’s client describes Adler: “She has the face of the most beautiful of women and the mind of the most resolute of men” with “a soul of steel”; Mary Crawford describes herself: “I will stake my last like a woman of spirit…I am not born to sit still and do nothing.”

Even before Holmes sees Irene Adler, the case would suggest Mansfield Park. When his gauche client, under the alias of “Count Von Kramm”, parades into Holmes’s sitting room in his “deep blue cloak lined with flame-colored silk”, would he not immediately call up an image of the obtuse Rushworth/Count Cassel and his “blue dress and a pink satin cloak”?

Count Cassel is a character in the play “Lovers’ Vows”, which the young people of Mansfield Park attempt to stage, with Mary Crawford taking the part of Amelia. Amelia is caught between an arranged marriage to the immoral Count and the possibility of a love match with the poor clergyman, Anhalt. Irene Adler, likewise, is between lovers – the hereditary King of Bohemia who has jilted her and the young lawyer who wants to marry her. It is interesting that Mary urges Edmund Bertram to at least “go into the law” rather than the church, implying that she could condescend to marry a lawyer (as Irene Adler does) but not a country clergyman.

Sherlock Holmes, always conscious of irony, would have recognized the ironic contrast between Irene’s real marriage, and the play upon marriage during the Bertrams’ visit to Sotherton, Maria Bertram’s future home. When Maria and her fiancé stand at the altar of the family chapel, their friends/witnesses remark that it is a pity Edmund is not yet ordained; only a clergyman is wanted for Maria and Rushworth to be married immediately. Irene Adler and her husband-to-be have secured a clergyman, but their vows are stalled for the lack of a witness – until Holmes is drafted into the role. It is an ironic touch – “a distinct touch”, as Holmes would have called it – that he infiltrates Adler’s household disguised as “a dear, kind old clergyman”.

Each story ends with the lady’s departure; Mary Crawford leaves Mansfield Park and settles in London. Irene Adler leaves England for the Continent “never to return”. But what of their futures?

Austen leaves Mary Crawford “long in finding among the dashing representatives or idle heir apparents…anyone who could satisfy the tastes she had acquired at Mansfield.” But it is unlikely that a woman who relishes the sort of “pure, genuine pleasure” she experiences in horseback riding, or the attractions of the Mansfield theatricals sat still and did nothing. Irene Adler, while married at the end of A Scandal in Bohemia, seems no closer to domestic tranquility than Mary. She has married a London lawyer and they have left England – but what are they to live on? Unless her husband is independently wealthy, they will have had to rely upon Irene’s talent to support them.

I wonder whether Mary Crawford, like Irene Adler, was formed for a life on the stage. “I have been trained as an actress myself,” Adler writes to Holmes and Edmund Bertram, thinking of Mary’s eagerness to take a part in “Lovers’ Vows” concludes, “…the charm of acting might well carry fascination to the mind of genius.”

Perhaps it was Mary Crawford, under the stage name of “Miss Rock” who portrayed Amelia when Lovers’ Vows was performed on January 6, 1820 at the Theatre-Royal in Edinburgh.

Another distinct touch, as January 6 was Sherlock Holmes’s birthday.

Janetility welcomes comments provided they are made with good humor and civility.