I recently listened to Karen Savage’s excellent reading of this book on Librivox, and it reminded me that I have opinions about this flawed, messy novel by Jane Austen.

-The absolute most important thing to understand is that Austen thinks Fanny and Edmund are a couple of intelligent, well-meaning introverts with an adorkable lack of self-knowledge and social “polish.” Take Mia Goth’s Harriet Smith from the 2020 Emma, make her more intelligent but still humble, earnest and insecure, still someone who makes you chuckle indulgently at her awkward moments. Take one of the more dignified and less half-witted versions of Charles Bingley (the 1980 guy is good, for instance) and make him more introverted and religious, but still faintly absurd and still oblivious about stuff that’s not Right Under His Nose. That is how the omniscient narrator sounds about the two romantic leads in Mansfield Park.

-They’re also ridiculously, boringly compatible and (to the narrator’s mind) obviously destined for each other. The whole drama about him pining after Maria Crawford and Fanny pining after him and then it all wraps up in a highly abstract, fourth-wall-breaking handful of paragraphs in the last chapter…it’s something of a bitter joke. The fact that Edmund is emotionally dependent on Fanny (note his reactions when he’s all peopled out at the end of the ball) while he’s obsessing over Mary is part of the joke. The fact that he thinks he molded all Fanny’s opinions and personality while the author drops hints that nature as well as nurture was involved…also part of the joke. The fact that they’re first cousins? That, too, I regret to say, is part of the joke.

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