The Question
In Mansfield Park, who ever asks Fanny Price what she wants?
Almost nobody. Everyone tells her what to do, and three times she says no. The book backs her every time, and one of those noes costs her her uncle’s good opinion. This is a full summary, so it spoils everything, the ending included.
Which Edition
I read the Project Gutenberg text, ebook number one hundred and forty-one. It is headed with the year eighteen fourteen, and it has forty-eight chapters. By my count it runs about one hundred and sixty thousand words, from chapter one to the word finis.
Fanny’s name appears nine hundred and twenty-four times. The next closest is Edmund, with four hundred and twelve. When I give a chapter, it is the book’s own number. I give no first publication date, because I could not source one twice.
A Girl of Ten
The book opens with three sisters. Miss Maria Ward marries Sir Thomas Bertram of Mansfield Park. Miss Ward marries the clergyman Mr. Norris, who gets the Mansfield living. The youngest, Frances, marries a lieutenant of marines with no education, fortune or connections, and the sisters stop speaking for eleven years.
Then Mrs. Price writes, with eight children and a ninth on the way. The Bertrams agree to take one child, and Fanny arrives at ten years old, small, shy and crying. Her cousins Maria and Julia find her ignorant. Edmund finds her on the attic stairs and asks what is wrong. She misses her brother William. So he gets her paper, rules her lines, and sends William half a guinea.
The Crawfords
Years pass. Mr. Norris dies when Fanny is about fifteen, and Sir Thomas sails to Antigua to see to his property there, taking Tom. While he is away, Maria becomes engaged to Mr. Rushworth, who has twelve thousand pounds a year. Edmund privately thinks that without it, the man would be a very stupid fellow.
Then Henry and Mary Crawford arrive at the Parsonage, to stay with their sister, Mrs. Grant. Henry is called plain at first, and by the third meeting nobody calls him that. He flirts with both Bertram sisters, though Maria is engaged. Mary falls for Edmund, though she has spoken slightingly of clergymen, and Edmund means to be one.
The Locked Gate
Chapter nine and ten: a day at Sotherton, Mr. Rushworth’s estate. Julia jokes that if Edmund were in orders, he could marry Maria and Mr. Rushworth on the spot. Mary looks aghast, and learns Edmund will be ordained.
In the wilderness, Maria stops at a locked iron gate, while Mr. Rushworth goes to fetch the key. She says it makes her feel like the starling, who cannot get out. Henry offers to help her round the gate. She goes. Fanny, meanwhile, is left on a bench for a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes, by Edmund and Mary, who simply wander off.
Number One
Sir Thomas has been away for months when Tom comes home with a friend, Mr. Yates, full of acting. They choose a play, Lovers’ Vows, and turn Sir Thomas’s billiard room into a theatre. Edmund objects, then gives in, to keep a stranger out of the cast. Everyone asks Fanny to take a part. She says no, and keeps saying it, while Mrs. Norris scolds her for ingratitude.
Mary Crawford is kind to her that evening, and tells her not to mind them. At a rehearsal days later, Mrs. Grant cannot come, and everyone urges Fanny to read her lines. At last she yields. Right then, Julia bursts in. My father is come.
Sir Thomas shuts it all down. Edmund tells him that Fanny alone judged rightly. The theatre is taken apart, and Mrs. Norris takes the green baize curtain home.
The Ball
Maria marries Mr. Rushworth and leaves for Brighton, with Julia. Fanny is now the only young woman at the Park, and for the first time people ask where she is. Henry returns with a plan: he will make a small hole in Fanny Price’s heart.
William visits, and Sir Thomas gives a ball for the two of them. Before it, Mrs. Norris reminds him what a favour they have done Fanny, down to the gown, which is his own present. Mary lends Fanny a necklace. Edmund gives her a chain for William’s cross. Fanny wants to return the necklace, and Edmund tells her not to.
Number Two
Henry gets William made a lieutenant, through his uncle the Admiral, and lets her see why. The next morning he asks Sir Thomas for her hand.
Sir Thomas comes upstairs to tell her. He has just noticed that she sits in the East room with no fire, and he orders one. Then he tells her Henry has asked for her hand, and he expects her to be pleased. Fanny says no to her uncle in chapter thirty-two. He calls her self-willed, obstinate, selfish and ungrateful. She says no to Henry in chapter thirty-three. Edmund sides with his father. Henry keeps trying, and the Crawfords leave. Sir Thomas then sends Fanny to her parents in Portsmouth, as what he calls a medicinal project. He wants her to miss money.
Portsmouth
She finds her parents’ house small and loud. Her father drinks. Her sister Susan, fourteen, and little Betsey quarrel over a silver knife, and Fanny buys Betsey a new one. Henry visits and walks the ramparts with the family, and Fanny thinks he has improved. She still says no.
Edmund writes that he cannot give Mary up. Then Tom falls ill, after a fall and drinking at Newmarket. Mary writes for news, and hints that if Tom dies, Edmund would be Sir Edmund.
Number Three
Mary offers to bring Fanny home, with Henry. Fanny declines, because her uncle means to fetch her. That is her third no.
Then, in her father’s newspaper, she reads that Mrs. Rushworth has left her husband with Mr. C. Edmund writes that Julia has eloped with Mr. Yates. Edmund fetches Fanny and Susan back to Mansfield. He tells Fanny about his last meeting with Mary, who blamed the discovery, not the act. He is done with her.
The Wedding
The last chapter hurries. Mrs. Rushworth stays with Henry until it falls apart, and Mr. Rushworth gets his divorce. Mrs. Norris leaves with Maria, for a place remote and private. Tom recovers, and is better for it. Sir Thomas decides he raised his daughters badly.
Edmund stops caring about Mary, and falls for Fanny, who has loved him for years. Sir Thomas is glad. Susan takes Fanny’s place, and Fanny and Edmund end at the Mansfield parsonage.
My Reading
Here is my reading, and it is an opinion. Fanny wins by not moving. Every pressure in this book pushes her to act, to speak, to say yes, and the people who yield are the ones who fall.
If this helped, subscribe, and tap like. And tell me in the comments which of her noes you would have found hardest.
