well yeah, it was an extremely naive recension, you seem to be ten year old. Btw, Mrs Norris´s behaviour not "would be a child abuse", it was child abuse. I don´t know how you guys "love to hate" some character- it is something the new generation had discovered :))
to even discuss slavery talking about JA novel is just unbelievable. Why not dicsuss global warming or migration problems when you are already on that kind of 21th century topics. Austen, being deeply religious, could morally judge the system of slavery in America, but she did not discuss it in her novels. After all, the social standing of low classes in England was not much better in that period
if you think that Fanny was treated like a slave you know nothing about the slavery. And about Regency era. And again, she had no foster parents, you misunderstood the whole situation. Yes, she was abused and neglected, first of all by her biological parents, but her aunts and uncle had no actual obligations towards her. Apart from normal human decency of course but the lack of it is exactly what Austen discusses in the book
you definitely need to reread the novel since there are many things you didn´t get from the first time. Funny not being adopted is the first thing here, for example. Just try to pay more attention
There is one other character in Austen (Anne Elliott's friend, Mrs. Smith) who is identified as a slaveowner. Both references are treated so casually that I get the impression that neither Austen nor her society in general had much of an opinion about it. It seems to be just one way to have money.
I liked Sir Thomas. He treated Fannie more like a person than the others (except Edmund), especially when his daughters left. He had a dance at Mansfield Park and encouraged Fannie to marry well (even though that would have been a terrible mistake. He still wanted her to do well in the way he understood.) I think going to visit her family was good for her. She came to realizations about herself that she couldn’t have come to at Mansfield Park, even though she didn’t enjoy the visit.
My favourite was always Uncle Fred in springtime. It’s a Blandings story. Uncle Fred is a sort of god of chaos who keeps increasing the stakes to complicate his already complicated situation while also terrorizing the “bright young things” who inhabit his world but lack his bravado. It’s quite fun.
Well done. I'm a huge Wodehouse fan myself, I keep reading and rereading his stuff and I can't get enough of it. There's one that stands apart from all the rest, being non-fiction and autobiographic, based on a series of letters to a friend. It's called 'Performing Flea' and it is Wodehouse on Wodehouse and at his best.
Great discussion! I especially liked what you said about how the writing itself reflected Marianne's openness and Elinor's reserve. I'd never thought about it that way, and it makes so much sense! (Pun not intended, but I'm leaving it there. ;) )
Thank you for this video on a brilliant and unique comedic author. For any of your viewers who don't know Wodehouse I would recommend a few of my own personal favorites: Very Good, Jeeves; Thank you, Jeeves; Right ho, Jeeves; and The Code of the Woosters in the Jeeves series. Also Summer Lightning and Uncle Fred in the Springtime as well as stand-alone novels The Luck of the Bodkins and Laughing Gas. Anything with "Mulliner" in the title is a guaranteed good read too!
My intro to MP was the 1980s miniseries, which I found so boring that I didn't finish. Later, the 1990s movie sparked my interest. It inspired me to take another look and I fell in love with Austen's MP. I enjoy the book and the faithful 1980s miniseries. Now the 1990s movie rubs me the wrong way with its liberties, but I enjoy it for what it is and am grateful to have found it as a gateway into Fanny's world. Great review video, BTW 😊
It's actually not clear that Sir Thomas owned slaves, only that he was knowledgeable about the slave trade. Fanny would likely not have wanted to draw him out about the slave trade (only holding back so she wouldn't make her cousins look bad for their own lack of interest) if he was actively participating in something that he knew was morally wrong or even questionable.
Hey I was wondering why you stopped making videos.. are you not on youtube anymore? is it because of the lack of success from the videos? loss of passion?
@ Boylit it is very nice to see a respectful discussion about women in service to this play from a man, sadly less common than you’d think. Would you think that this is just a product of its times though, or worse?
Fanny is a tough-fiber doormat that can absorb a lot of abuse, but she's still a doormat. The book is the LEAST interesting of the completed novels because none of the characters are easy to identify with, and most are unlikeable. Yes, it is a serious story and it is better written than, say, S&S, but the experience of reading it never made me want to repeat it. Even the dude she ends up with doesn't come off with a lot of positives to counteract his liking for skanks and his drip-dry personality. Everyone is entitled to their own assessment, and yours is likely better informed than mine, but you have not persuaded me to give it another go. In fact, I put this one in the same box with Wuthering Heights. They are interesting productions, but the characters are mostly repellent. I don't read to be bored or disgusted, and besides those two characteristics, the Mansfield story is insufficiently novel to sustain enthusiasm.
I think it's impossible to justify this play in any kind of literal terms. But I think this play should be understood in a broad comic tradition much like Punch and Judy, Tom and Jerry, Bugs and Elmer. We should see the plot in some kind of ironic sense and the action as almost slapstick humor. What motivates the play: Catherine is a kind of angry middle child who always sees herself as a victim, so she constantly makes everyone around her miserable. Where did this come from? The play implies that the good child/bad child favoritism was the norm in her household, with her sister Bianca playing for praise and Catherine getting blamed. So she became worse and the syndrome deepened. These insights are not out of date. However, certainly, in British European Christian culture of the time, wives were supposed to be obedient to their husbands. As Shakepeare said: Such duty as the subject owes the prince Even such a woman oweth to her husband; And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel And graceless traitor to her loving lord? So the parallel is clear to feudalism: loyalty from below, love from above. Where did this model come from? Most obviously from St Paul (Ephesians 6): 21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church- 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[c] 32 This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Paul then goes on to counsel children to obey parents, slaves masters, etc. The play certainly follows in this tradition (love from above, respect from below) but it also questions the idealized behavior of the time, with its courtly mannerism. Petruchio and Kate are passionate, lively, real people, not mannerly fakes. All in all, though our values have changed, people are as problematic as ever. That is why, until recently, this play was performed quite regularly, far more frequently than its literary merit would suggest.
On Nature v Nurture: I wonder to what extent the doctrine of Predestination played a role in JA's writing of this book. Her father was a minister and, given the conflict of branches of Protestantism within England (more Catholic v more Calvinist), it seems like this could have been an influence with regards to the characters. They don't change and in the case of the Crawfords they cannot change, even though they feel inclination to do so. The Crawfords cannot turn from what they are (Nature). Or, JA is instead promoting the importance of good parenting, noting the bad influence of the Admiral on the Crawfords and the bad influence of Sir Thomas' strictness on his daughters (Nurture).
Was Mrs Norris so evil? Some have described her behavior as child abuse but as I contemplate what child abuse is legally, then she is not that bad. She certainly believes that Fanny should be put back in her low place at every turn but does she berate her with pointless cruelty, does she strike her when no one is watching? Significantly, when she gets the chance to have Fanny live with her, where Fanny would be completely under her thumb, she sees only the threat of expense, not the opportunity for torture and total domination. Am I being too kind? I don't think so. There are people exactly like this. Much more evil people. Is it possible that Willoughby (Sense and Sensibility) is that kind of evil (gratuitous deflowering and abandonment of Miss Williams)? Instead, I think the slavery parallel is more instructive. Mrs Norris sees Fanny as a pack animal who should be made to work as much as is possible to recover the expense laid out for her upkeep. And as all slaves and pack animals, they must be psychologically managed to train them for perfect obedience and productivity. From the first, Mrs Norris and Sir Thomas see Fanny as an expense and possible hindrance to the household: a utility experiment, where the pluses and minuses are tallied to see if the venture has a net positive value. Ok, so that sounds pretty evil, equating Mrs Norris' behavior to that of slave holders. But I would say that one of the greatest costs of slavery is the temptation to sadism and the outlet for sadism and Sir Thomas is a strict but not cruel master to Fanny and Mrs Norris is in effect his local overseer, eager to prove her worth by pushing the slave a bit more harshly than the master. I would not say that they are sadists. Fanny could have had it much worse. And that's exactly what she thinks too. Sir Thomas is effectively vindicated in his belief that Fanny will regret leaving Mansfield Park when she lives with her birth family. Sir Thomas side note: One of the intriguing aspects of JA's story is the clear transformation of Sir Thomas as he returns from his slave plantation: he is less strict in general and much kinder and more thoughtful towards Fanny. What happened in Antigua? Perhaps he just has become more indulgent due to the fondness stemming from long absence. (Of course, only Fanny questions slavery, basically the only time she ever speaks up and as usual without stimulating conversation or exchange, because she is too moral for her companions.) But is it possible that he simply likes the progress his pack animal has made? She is looking more valuable on the marriage market due to her improved looks. JA portrays Mrs Norris and Sir Thomas as essentially conservative utilitarians: morality is what makes my family better off. Clearly, JA reproves of this attitude. Last thought on Mrs Norris: JA or Fanny observes that Mrs Norris and Mrs Price should have been in each others' shoes. Part of the smallness of Mrs Norris is her lack of children and if she'd had nine on a small budget, her personality would have come off far better. Probably her children would have resented her but they would have grown up in a more orderly environment. Is JA even suggesting that Mrs Norris would have possibly been a more loving person if she'd had her own children to dote on? Given her lack of moral guidance of Maria and Julia, it doesn't seem likely that she would have done better with children of her own.
One parallel I noticed: that detail of Aunt Norris’s character (her interference in the business of others to make herself feel important) reminded me of Lady Catherine in Pride and Prejudice. Both are portrayed as self-important and snobbish and not very amiable or sensible.
Mrs Norris is really the 'Wicked Stepmother" of the piece (her conniving to get Fanny excluded from the visit to Sotherton calls to mind Cinderella's not being allowed to go to the ball for one thing). I see her as a disappointed woman. She is childless, and her elderly husband dies early in the book. By contrast, her one sister has made an excellent marriage and has four children and her other, despite making a bad marriage, is even more fertile. Mrs Norris, as a result of Lady Bertram's indolence, is able to express her thwarted maternal instincts to some extent through her nieces (especially through Maria), and of course makes a disastrous hash of it. That would all be quite poignant were it not for her taking her frustrations and disappointed hopes out on her other niece from the sister who made an 'unfortunate' marriage. Psychologically one of JA's 'truest' characters.
I love how Jane Austen so masterfully portrays how Mary Crawford can be so manipulative. Her joy is to see Edmund's will and principles break. Great character development.
Beautiful analysis. Thank you. I could relate to FP - I was also sent from a poor, dysfunctional home to my aunt and uncle in the US...it was very surreal reading the book now as an adult aged 40. Austen is at her best when she bucks the trends and shows a different side to her talents.
In my teens and 20s, I was an apologist for this play...mostly because this mirrors the environment I grew up in. These are the same beliefs that I was immersed in - socially in my peer group, and with my mother, her friends, and other adults - throughout my childhood. I was actually labelled "a shrew" in middle school by the boys and the men at my school. I was admonished by my mother for disobedience and not doing as men told me to do, since my earliest memories. I had an adult male babysitter when I was 5-6, and I was often telling him "no" and being disobedient when he wanted to touch me - and I was my typical b**chy self when I refused to sit next to him and watch a movie of nude adults doing gross things to each other. My mother said I messed everything up - because I can't just do what I'm told. I was called "surly", and "contrary". Women would talk about me in front of me saying that I had almost no chance of getting married. I was called "argumentative" and I "always had an opinion". I was bad. A bad child and a bad person. And I knew it. "Women are like horses - only there to be ridden." "Bros before ho's." Petrucio is not abusive to women by today's standards - he is downright kind! Compared to the world I grew up in, the play has a normal attitude towards women - not at all sexist.
Just because it's a "normal attitude" towards women doesn't excuse it.. it doesn't make it right or ethical or moral It is stlil a piece of literature that projects misogyny
Thank you SO much for your thoughtful, gentle presentation. It is obvious that you have read this book with an open mind, beautiful sensitivity, sharp perception and great intelligence. Thank you.
You're right, I hadn't thought of it before but we do not see a great deal of Edward Ferrars in S&S; further interactions with him would have enriched the story.
I'm planning on reading northanger abbey in October so far I have read Pride and prejudice Persuasion Sense and sensibility Mansfield park my least favorite is Mansfield park my favorite pride and prejudice and persuasion
I might have to re-read Shirley in the future, to see if I like it better, because on my first read I didn't really enjoy it. I thought it felt dragged out, dry and hard to get through. I wasn't happy with the ending either. It's my least favourite Charlotte Brontë book (Villette is my favourite and Jane Eyre my second favourite)
