Revisiting Mansfield Park

 

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Fannie Price is one of my least favorite Jane Austen heroines. To be sure, she has had a hard life—sent at the age of ten to live with well-to-do relatives, who were not particularly happy to have her. Her cousin Edmund is a friend, but her female cousins are the typical Mean Girls of the era, catty, insulting, and not caring about much beyond their own fashions and prospects. But Fanny is a wimp and a ninny, afraid to speak up and doesn’t spend her time in self-improvement. She moons after Edmund, who is besotted by the flashy and questionable Mary Crawford. There is a brief mention of slavery at the dinner table, which is how the family’s fortune is maintained.

Fanny is sent to Portsmouth  to stay with her family—there are many children and her father is a coarse drunkard. Henry Crawford, who has decided to pursue Fanny as a lark, pursues her to her home and ingratiates himself to her family. But Fanny has grown too fine for her family, and wants to return to Mansfield Park.

There are at least three film versions of Mansfield Park. I watched the 1999 version, which was quite an eye opener. Fanny was described as a “spirited girl,” which I certainly would never call her after reading the book. Dispirited would be more appropriate. But in this film, Fanny interrupted, flirted, kissed in public. Slavery played a central part in this version, with Tom arguing with his father about the family’s treatment of slaves in Antigua. There were also a couple of scenes between Fanny and Mary Crawford which had lesbian undertones, surprising to say the least.

Some of the actors are familiar to anyone who watches BBC programs. Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey) was Rushworth. Charles Edwards (Michael Gregson on Downton Abbey) was Yates. Francis O’Connor (Mr. Selfridge) was Fanny. And Harold Pinter (the Nobel prize winning playwright!) was Sir Thomas.

There was a tv series of Mansfield Park in 1983. In this one Fanny was a plain and timid young woman, more in keeping with Austen’s original character.

Samantha Bond (Lady Rosamond on Downton Abbey) plays Maria Bertram.

Longbourn by Jo Baker

While the Bennet girls were giggling over officers and practicing piano, the servants of the household were boiling laundry and emptying chamberpots. “Longbourn” is Jo Baker’s look at what life is like downstairs at the Bennet residence during the same period of time as “Pride and Prejudice.” While Elizabeth Bennet drags her petticoats through the mud to visit Jane at Netherfield, it is housemaid Sarah who, with cracked and bleeding hands, has to launder them. And when new shoe-roses are wanted for the upcoming ball, it is Sarah who is sent out in the rain to get them, only to suffer miserably from the cold she caught while on her errand.

Elderly Mr. and Mrs. Hill, and young Polly, a maid, and the sum total of help who run the household of the Bennets and their five marriageable daughters. That is, until the mysterious James Smith is hired on as a coachman and all around laborer.

Readers expecting the gentle narrative of the original book should expect some graphic scenes of war, flogging, and expletives that the genteel folks would not use. A fresh look at the Austen classic, and one I thoroughly enjoyed.