The Promise
The last chapter of Mansfield Park begins with a promise. Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery, says the narrator, who is in a hurry to be done with all that.
Then the narrator breaks the promise. I counted, and about fifteen hundred words of that last chapter go to what happens to Maria and Henry Crawford. The scene where Edmund finally turns to Fanny gets about five hundred and eighty. This is the ending explained, with full spoilers.
Where She Is
Let me set the table. Fanny has been in Portsmouth for nearly three months, sent there by Sir Thomas as a cure for her judgment. Henry Crawford visited her, walked with her family on the ramparts, and behaved so well that she thought him improved. He even said her judgment was his rule of right, and she told him to trust his own. She still said no.
Edmund wrote that he could not give Mary up. Tom fell ill and was brought home to Mansfield. And Mary Crawford wrote. In one letter, she hinted that if Tom died, Edmund would be Sir Edmund, and that wealth could fall into no more deserving hands. In the same letter she offered to carry Fanny home with Henry. Fanny wrote back that her uncle meant to fetch her himself. She is homesick for Mansfield, which she now calls her home, and Portsmouth is only Portsmouth. That ache is what the ending answers.
The Newspaper
Then comes a short letter from Mary. A scandalous rumour has reached her, she says, and Fanny must hear nothing, say nothing, and believe nothing until she writes again. Henry is blameless. It will be hushed up.
The next afternoon, Fanny’s father reads his newspaper, and says there is the devil to pay among her fine relations in Wimpole Street. The paper reports a matrimonial fracas. The beautiful Mrs. R. has left her husband’s roof, in company with the well-known Mr. C. Fanny says it must be a mistake. Her own words do not convince her.
Edmund Arrives
Edmund writes, and the news is worse. They have been in London two days and cannot trace the pair. And Julia has eloped to Scotland with Mr. Yates, a few hours before Sir Thomas and Edmund arrived.
Sir Thomas wants Fanny home, for her aunt’s sake, and she is to bring Susan. Edmund arrives at Portsmouth at eight the next morning. He holds Fanny and calls her his only sister, and his only comfort now. Then he is gone, walking the ramparts until the carriage is ready.
What Happened
At Mansfield, Fanny hears the story from Lady Bertram, who is no tidy narrator but sees it plainly. To her it is the loss of a daughter, and a disgrace that will never be wiped off. Fanny spends her days beside her aunt, doing every old office with more zeal than before. Maria had spent the Easter holidays at Twickenham, with a lively family, and Henry came and went freely. Mr. Rushworth was in Bath, fetching his mother.
Sir Thomas’s friend Mr. Harding wrote to warn him, and then wrote again that Maria had left. Mr. Rushworth’s mother, and her servant, made sure the story was out. Mrs. Norris is the most broken of the family, because she made the match. She even blames Fanny for refusing Henry. If Fanny had said yes, she thinks, none of this would have happened.
Mary’s Last Visit
On Sunday evening, Edmund finally tells Fanny about his last meeting with Mary. Lady Stornaway had sent a note asking him to call. He went in sorrow, expecting shame. Mary said, let us talk over this sad business, and called the whole thing the folly of two relations.
Edmund says that the horror was not her words, but what she left out. She did not reprobate the act. She reprobated the detection. Henry had been careless, and Maria had put herself in a servant’s power. Her plan was that Henry should marry Maria, and that Sir Thomas should stay quiet, so as not to spoil the chance of it. She also said it was all Fanny’s fault. If Fanny had accepted Henry, he would have been too happy to stray.
Edmund told her she was treating a crime as a mistake. She laughed, and asked if that was part of his last sermon. He walked out. Behind him, she called his name, with a smile that, he says, seemed to invite him back to be subdued. He did not turn round.
Fanny, hearing this, calls it cruel. Edmund disagrees. He says it is not cruelty but a mind that has only heard such things spoken lightly. His verdict is that her faults are of principle, and her mind is spoilt. The charm, he says, is broken, and his eyes are opened.
What It Costs
The rest of the cost falls quickly. When Sir Thomas comes back, he shows Fanny nothing but approval and increased regard. His own cost is heavier. He decides he made two mistakes with his daughters. He had contrasted his own severity with Mrs. Norris’s flattery, and had taught them to hide their real selves from him. And he had taught manners but not principle. He also blames himself for allowing Maria’s marriage when he knew her feelings.
Maria would not leave Henry, and hoped to marry him. They lived together until she accepted it was hopeless, and then until they could not bear each other. Mr. Rushworth got a divorce. Sir Thomas would not receive her in the neighbourhood, so Mrs. Norris went to live with her in a remote, private place, where, the narrator says, their tempers became their mutual punishment. Sir Thomas calls Mrs. Norris’s leaving the great supplementary comfort of his life. He had felt her as an hourly evil, and her going lifts it.
Julia’s match, with Mr. Yates, turns out less awful than feared, because his estate was bigger and his debts smaller. Tom recovers, and is the better for ever, because he suffered and learned to think.
Henry’s What-If
Then the narrator gives Henry a long what-if. If he had been content with one woman’s affection, he could have had Fanny, and his love had already done something. Had he persevered uprightly, she would have been his reward, within a reasonable period of Edmund marrying Mary.
He meant to go to Everingham after Portsmouth. But he was pressed to stay for Mrs. Fraser’s party, where Mrs. Rushworth would be. She received him coldly, and his vanity could not bear it. He set out to win her back, and it went further than he meant. The narrator says he missed Fanny even as he left, and missed her more afterwards.
Edmund and Fanny
Mary’s fate is shorter. The Grants leave Mansfield, because Dr. Grant is given a stall at Westminster. Mary lives with her sister, and after Dr. Grant dies, she still lives with her. She is long in finding a man who can satisfy the better taste she learned at Mansfield.
And Edmund? Through the summer evenings he wanders and sits under trees with Fanny, talking his mind into calm. Scarcely has he done regretting Mary, when it strikes him that a different woman might do as well or better. The narrator refuses to give dates, so every reader can pick their own. The proposal is never shown. We get only that Edmund prefers soft light eyes to sparkling dark ones, that Fanny’s joy no description can reach, and that Sir Thomas had wished for exactly this. Sir Thomas looks back at his early opinion of the poor little girl’s coming, and sees how plans change.
Who Marries Whom
So here is the full list. Fanny marries Edmund. Maria’s marriage to Mr. Rushworth ends in divorce. Julia is married to Mr. Yates, with hopes of his steadiness. Mary and Henry are not married in the last chapter. William gets rising fame, and Tom is steady and useful to his father.
Susan becomes the niece who stays, and is soon the favourite. Fanny and Edmund are settled at Thornton Lacey, and when Dr. Grant dies, the Mansfield living comes to Edmund, and they move to the parsonage Fanny had once been afraid to approach. The last word is finis.
The Size Of It
One last count, to put this in proportion. The last four chapters, forty-five to forty-eight, are about ten percent of the whole text. The final chapter alone is roughly forty-five hundred words, out of about one hundred and sixty thousand.
So the fall takes most of four chapters, and all of the comfort is packed into the last one. That is not an accident. It is how the narrator wants you to feel the cost before the comfort.
What It Means
Here is my reading, and it is an opinion. The book is not shy about guilt. It is shy about the joy. The proposal is never shown, because it was never the point.
What the book rewards in Fanny is that she did not move. She would not act, she would not marry Henry, and she would not hurry home. Each time, the people who pushed were the ones who fell.
And I think the late turn is meant to feel a little too convenient. The narrator jokes about cures for unconquerable passions, and says Edmund changed exactly when it was natural. I read that as a wink.
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