This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments.
Mansfield Park
Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price
3.5 Mrs Norris
“If I had known you were going out, I should have got you just to go as far as my house with some orders for Nanny,” said she, “which I have since, to my very great inconvenience, been obliged to go and carry myself. I could very ill spare the time, and you might have saved me the trouble, if you would only have been so good as to let us know you were going out. It would have made no difference to you, I suppose, whether you had walked in the shrubbery or gone to my house.”
“I recommended the shrubbery to Fanny as the driest place,” said Sir Thomas.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Norris, with a moment’s check, “that was very kind of you, Sir Thomas; but you do not know how dry the path is to my house. Fanny would have had quite as good a walk there, I assure you, with the advantage of being of some use, and obliging her aunt: it is all her fault. If she would but have let us know she was going out but there is a something about Fanny, I have often observed it before—she likes to go her own way to work; she does not like to be dictated to; she takes her own independent walk whenever she can; she certainly has a little spirit of secrecy, and independence, and nonsense, about her, which I would advise her to get the better of.”
As a general reflection on Fanny, Sir Thomas thought nothing could be more unjust, though he had been so lately expressing the same sentiments himself, and he tried to turn the conversation: tried repeatedly before he could succeed; for Mrs. Norris had not discernment enough to perceive, either now, or at any other time, to what degree he thought well of his niece, or how very far he was from wishing to have his own children’s merits set off by the depreciation of hers. She was talking at Fanny, and resenting this private walk half through the dinner. (III.I)
In trying to understand the ethical scheme of Austen’s novels it as well to pay attention to the parents and stock villains—and they often overlap. In Pride and Prejudice we find Mrs Bennett rash and unbearably vulgar and Mr Bennett’s cynical stand-offish philosophy ultimately culpable. Austen is careful to give us every opportunity to join with her favourite heroine in general disdain—the celebrated wit of the novel being quite caught up in its presence in the heroine.
I do enjoy reading David Brooks, perhaps because there are few I disagree with so agreeably. David has 
Carrying on a series posts in which I snatch random fragments, magpie style, from Marilynne Robinson’s enchanting Death of Adam Essays I offer a couple of fragments from the Family essay.
Paul Helm has an interesting series on John Calvin over at the Guardian CiF belief (
After Virtue: First Thoughts
MacIntyre opens the prologue to the third edition with the confident statement that ‘If there are good reasons to reject the central thesis of After Virtue, by now I should certainly have learned what they are.’ This is too good an opportunity to miss. OK, its late, I am in The Sidewinder, I have had a wee dram of Laphroaig to sustain me (you have been warned), but lets see what we can find.
Firstly, I will put on the table the things MacIntyre and I agree on:
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