The Philosophy of Jane Austen's Novels

This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments.

Mansfield Park

Preface

1. Introduction
2. Method
3. Critiques
   1. The Moral Law Within
   2. Fanny and Edmund
   3. The Crawfords
   4. Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram
   5. Mrs Norris
   6. The Quiet Thing
4. Enlightenment
   1. Kantian Deontology
   2. King Lear
   3. Romanticism
   4. The Satirical Inheritance
5. Conclusion

Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price

4.4. The Satirical Inheritance

Ian Watt has shown how Burney and then Austen unified the realism of assessment, Fielding’s comic irony, with Richardson’s psychological realism of presentation and improved on Defoe’s analysis to expose ‘The economic basis of society’.  But, as Southam has noted, Jane Austen ‘can get the loftiest of Professors to unbend, abandon, for a time, his academic ways and speak from the heart’ and Mansfield Park makes a very self-conscious reference to Laurence Sterne’s A sentimental Journey.

“You have, undoubtedly; and there are situations in which very high spirits would denote insensibility. Your prospects, however, are too fair to justify want of spirits.  You have a very smiling scene before you.”

“Do you mean literally or figuratively?  Literally, I conclude.  Yes, certainly, the sun shines, and the park looks very cheerful.  But unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. ‘I cannot get out,’ as the starling said.”  As she spoke, and it was with expression, she walked to the gate: he followed her.  “Mr. Rushworth is so long fetching this key!”

— Mansfield Park (I.X)

In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over; and, looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage. – “I can’t get out, – I can’t get out,” said the starling.

I stood looking at the bird: and to every person who came through the passage it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approach’d it, with the same lamentation of its captivity.  “I can’t get out,” said the starling. – God help thee! said I, but I’ll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turned about the cage to get to the door: it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. – I took both hands to it.

The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis pressed his breast against it as if impatient. – I fear, poor creature! said I, I cannot set thee at liberty. – “No,” said the starling, -  “I can’t get out – I can’t get out,” said the starling.

I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; nor do I remember an incident in my life, where the dissipated spirits, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so suddenly call’d home.  Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and I heavily walked upstairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down them.

— Laurence Sterne, A sentimental Journey, ‘The Passport—The Hotel at Paris.’

There is much happening here—all the others are in motion, with Mary, unable to sit still, taking Edmund over the serpentine path, Julia is imprisoned by her politeness, wretched under it, Maria feels constrained by the locked gates of conventionality with Henry offering her a way out (that a locked garden represents virginity in Medieval iconography is probably significant), while Mr Rushworth is ‘posting away as if upon life and death’ (I.X) to retrieve the key.  Only Fanny is stationary, trying to come to terms with her unrequited love of Edmund and jealousy of Mary.

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