Why the Show Must Not Go On: "Real Character" and the Absence of Theatrical Performances in Mansfield Park

This article revisits the question of why Jane Austen refuses to portray any theatrical performances within Mansfield Park (1814), even though much of the plot concerns a group of young people attempting to put on a play. While scholars have generally abandoned the idea that this choice reveals Austen's puritanical distaste for the theatre, it remains unusual in the context of other roughly contemporary novels that also involve the theatre or theatricals. Looking at examples of such theatrical novels shows that their staging of performances tends to disrupt the idea of character as stable identity, in much the same way that Lisa Freeman has suggested theatre itself did at the time. Though her use of interiority has been much discussed as the tool Austen employs to construct a sense of essential identity for her characters, her decision to forego the direct representation of various theatrical moments while focusing readers' attention on their consequences is another way Austen convinces us that the novel is able to distinguish "real" character from the performance of it.