My Mansfield Park essay (in progress) has led me to King Lear, and I thought I would sketch some of the connections between the two works.
Much the clearest account I have come across is the brief summation by Jane Stabler in her introduction to the Oxford World Classics edition of Mansfield Park. The basic outline of losing parental authority, getting distracted from the virtues of his youngest daughter (though adopted in Fanny’s case) by the pleasing surfaces his older daughters, leading to her banishment, a catastrophe and a final recognition and reconciliation are all present. But Goneril and Regan fight for the treacherous Edmund as Maria and Julia do over the ultimately treacherous Henry; it is Cordelia stands up to Lear over his dishonest auction, as Fanny stands up to Sir Thomas’s mercenary scheming in trying to make Fanny ‘herself a dowry’ (I. i. 240).
Stabler also catalogues some of the ‘tiny but telling verbal echoes’ that Austen uses to remind us of the connection.
Lady Bertram writes ‘in the language of real feeling’ about ‘”Poor Tom”‘ (p. 335), reminding us of the piteous refrain adopted by Edgar in Acts III and IV of King Lear. More than once Fanny is charged with ingratitude, the sin that Lear feels most in his offspring because it negates his influence and identity. When Edmund advises Fanny to ’succeed at last’, she bursts out ‘”Oh! never, never, never; he will never succeed with me”‘ (p. 272), which just stops short of repeating Lear’s defiant and despairing cluster of negatives@ ‘Thou’lt come no more | Never, never, never, never, never!’ (v. iii. 306-7).
Stabler finishes her comparison with the bleak question ‘is there any cause in nature which makes these hard hearts?’ (III. v. 75-6) and returns to the theme at the conclusion of her introduction with ‘Is this the promis’d end?’ (V. iii. 262).
Some observations:
- Nowhere is the critical element of Lear abdicating his authority mentioned. If Austen had a correspondence in mind then wouldn’t we expect to see such a tragic flaw in Sir Thomas (and there is of course such a flaw, though there may not have been space in Stabler’s brief discussion to consider it).
- Shakespeare may (or may not) have intended the nihilistic doubts suggested by Stabler to be integral to his tragedy but it would look like a critical cop-out where Austen is concerned, making Mansfield Park radically different in conception from everything else she published.
- Austen indeed spends the entire length of the action making a case for the ’cause in nature which makes these hard hearts’ (bad ethics and lack of principles rooted in parental mismanagement).
See also Sarah Emsley’s The Tragic Action of Mansfield Park for a discussion of the merits of considering Mansfield Park a tragedy, something I touch on in the second instalment of my Mansfield Park essay.
Mansfield Park and King Lear
My Mansfield Park essay (in progress) has led me to King Lear, and I thought I would sketch some of the connections between the two works.
Much the clearest account I have come across is the brief summation by Jane Stabler in her introduction to the Oxford World Classics edition of Mansfield Park. The basic outline of losing parental authority, getting distracted from the virtues of his youngest daughter (though adopted in Fanny’s case) by the pleasing surfaces his older daughters, leading to her banishment, a catastrophe and a final recognition and reconciliation are all present. But Goneril and Regan fight for the treacherous Edmund as Maria and Julia do over the ultimately treacherous Henry; it is Cordelia stands up to Lear over his dishonest auction, as Fanny stands up to Sir Thomas’s mercenary scheming in trying to make Fanny ‘herself a dowry’ (I. i. 240).
Stabler also catalogues some of the ‘tiny but telling verbal echoes’ that Austen uses to remind us of the connection.
Stabler finishes her comparison with the bleak question ‘is there any cause in nature which makes these hard hearts?’ (III. v. 75-6) and returns to the theme at the conclusion of her introduction with ‘Is this the promis’d end?’ (V. iii. 262).
Some observations:
See also Sarah Emsley’s The Tragic Action of Mansfield Park for a discussion of the merits of considering Mansfield Park a tragedy, something I touch on in the second instalment of my Mansfield Park essay.