Mansfield Park , and: Pride and Prejudice (review)

324 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION15:2 Jane Austen. Mansfield Park. Ed.June Sturrock. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2001. 521pp. $11.95; US$8.95; £4.95. ISBN 1-55111098 -9. Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Robert P. Irvine. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2002. 493pp. $9.95; US$7.95; £4.99. ISBN 155111 -028-8. Students at first often dislike Mansfield Park's Fanny Price, but are intrigued by the theatricals. Why is the usually obliging Fanny so adamant that she "cannot act" (p. 166)? And why does Sir Thomas burn "every unbound copy of 'Lovers' Vows' ... that met his eye" (p. 207)? While MansfieldPark invites questions, Pride and Prejudiceis seen as self-explanatory. Students initially fall into two categories in their response: those who like Pride and Prejudice because it is a love story, and those who do not because it is "just" a love story. Broadview Press is well known for its editions of canonical and noncanonical texts geared towards the undergraduate classroom, and June Sturrock's Mansfield Park and Robert P. Irvine's Pride and Prejudice are welcome additions to the Austen landscape, as they respond to the needs of the classroom and to current critical debates. Lionel Trilling felt confident that "Nobody, I believe, has ever found it possible to like the heroine ofMansfieldPark" ( The OpposingSelf: NineEssays in Criticism, 1955, p. 212), and many readers have agreed. Sturrock's engaging and comprehensive introduction vindicates Fanny Price: she emerges as a complex character with poignant vulnerability and admirable strength. Sturrock also draws attention to Fanny's comic foibles: Austen's heroine is not perfect and interesting parallels are made between Fanny Price and Marianne Dashwood, "with whom Fanny shares literaryardour and intensity offeelings" (p. 15), and even between Fanny and the youthful, quixotic Catherine Morland (the footnotes demonstrate the novel's richness in literary allusions). Sturrock presents a convincing psychological reason for Fanny's adherence to conduct-book ideals: Fanny "inevitably longs for the love and approval which she is consistently denied. The predictable result of this denial is that she learns rapidly to be 'a good girl'" (p. 13). Among the most compelling scenes in the novel are those in which Fanny does not do as she is told and refuses Henry Crawford. Fanny's conviction is attributed to her Christian faith (supported by selections from conduct-books and Jane Austen's prayers in appendix B), but it is also given a political edge. The novel is a "narrative of different forms ofresistance to the patriarchal values of Sir Thomas" (p. 22) and thus it "takes part in the long debate of the Romantic period about the permissible forms and extent ofauthority" (p. 23). Sturrock's context section for the theatricals is excellent: there are appropriate sections from Lovers' Vows and conduct-books, and Austen'sown REVIEWS325 participation in private theatricals is emphasized. The appendices also cover landscape improvements, the education of female characters, and slavery. While the range is admirable, there is an attempt to represent too many contemporary documents in fifty pages. Fewer, but longer, selections would allow students to examine the contemporary documents as complex texts, rather than as fairly flat "evidence" for the novel's themes. For example, the excerpt fromJoseph Lowe's An Inquiry into the State ofthe British West Indies consists ofonly six lines, and the appendix on women's education samples four sources in six pages. While Mansfield Park "is hardly conducive to romantic daydream" (Sturrock, p. 11), Pride and Prejudice seems to offer a romance more seductive , reassuring, and universal than any ofAusten's other novels. One glance at Irvine's detailed chronology of "Jane Austen and Her Time" administers an excellent corrective to the view that the novel is timeless. Irvine argues that the continued appeal oíPride andPrejudice is that it "represents afantasy of what England is like that is very familiar" and that this "fantasy has its roots in the peculiarly English social settlement of the eighteenth century, one which compromised between a system ofinherited social status and the sheer power of money" (p. 9). Irvine familiarizes students with Marilyn Butler's and Alistair Duckworth's readings of Austen in the context of Burke, and...

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.