In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The Frailties of Fanny: Mansfield Park and the Evangelical MovementMary Waidron She is never, ever, wrong." This estimate of Fanny Price, made by Tony Tanner in 1966 in his Introduction to the Penguin edition, is often taken for granted by critics writing about Mansfield Park and is frequently assumed as the basis for her present-day position as Austen's most unpopular heroine. Not all, it is true, take up exactly the same unequivocal position. For instance, in 1967 Robert A. Colby found some faults in Fanny—she is occasionally jealous and uncharitable. Avrom Fleishman, in the same year, suggested that "Fanny is presented not as a paragon of virtue, but as a weak woman with self-defensive and selfaggrandizing impulses." Kenneth Moler in 1968 said "Jane Austen did not intend Fanny to be ... the moral paragon that many readers take her to be." At least one other more recent critic has seen imperfections in Fanny but has considered them unintended fallout from the author's struggles with her material: Bernard Paris (1978) says "It is difficult to feel as positively about Fanny's goodness as Jane Austen wants us to ... it is rigid, desperate, compulsive. Fanny is not actively loving or benevolent." Nina Auerbach, in a very unusual view of Fanny, relates her to most of the predatory villains of literature from Grendel to Dracula.1 Alongside such as these, however, a more traditional view of Fanny persists: in 1975 1 Tony Tanner, ed., Mansfield Park (London: Penguin Books, 1966), Introduction, p. 8; Robert A. Colby, "MansfieldPark: Fanny Price and the Christian Heroine" in Fiction with a Purpose: Majorand Minor Nineteenth-Century Novels (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1967), pp. 66-104; Avrom Fleishman, A Reading of "Mansfield Park": An Essay in Critical Synthesis (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), p. 46; Kenneth Moler, JaneAusten's EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 6, Number 3, April 1994 260 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION Marilyn Butler called her "an exemplary heroine" and bases her radical criticism of the novel's structure upon this assessment, which is not modified in the reissue of her book in 1987. In that year Park Honan still regarded Fanny as "a potent, deeply effective redeemer of Mansfield ." Sometimes critics see faults but excuse them. In 1988 Claudia L. Johnson saw that in Fanny Austen criticizes too great a reliance on the patriarchal system of family organization—she blinds herself to the inadequacy of the men in her life, but is not to blame for the outcome. Oliver MacDonagh (1991) asserts that "Fanny is no saint or ranter ... within limits ... her principles can be overborne, though it is also made clear that her inner citadel is inviolable." For MacDonagh, Fanny's principles remain superior to those of others in the novel despite the assaults made on them. Recently Roger Gard has noted "Fanny's half-misleading reputation for moral rigour"2 but, having pointed out incidents in which Fanny behaves less than perfectly, he attributes them to a vulnerability built into the plot to emphasize the moral dilemmas which she finally resolves . These references must necessarily be selective; in the great mass of comment on this essentially puzzling novel there are many shades in the assessment of the character of Fanny, but the great majority of critics finally see her as guiltless in a venal world. Even Claudia Johnson , who otherwise seriously questions the more common estimates of the novel, sees Fanny as ultimately triumphing over the errors of the deluded males, remaining innocent herself. I believe this represents an inadequate reading of a prismatic and complex work. This essay will examine these conflicting views in more detail and with closer reference to the action, and will offer, in the light of this novel's probable genesis and its interaction with some aspects of contemporary ethical and religious thought, a less confused and more justifiable assessment of the character of its heroine. From the time of its first appearance in 1814, Mansfield Park has attracted controversy and criticism. Some contemporary readers objected Art ofAllusion (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968; reprinted. Landmark, 1977), p. 146; Bernard Paris, Character and Conflict in Jane Austen's Novels: A Psychological Approach...

pdf

Share