Showing posts with label foster parents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label foster parents. Show all posts

Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen

Jane Austen (1775-1817)


There’s no much information about Austen life, mostly because her sister Cassandra burnt or destroyed all her letters; she said Jane told so many personal things about their family and friends that it would be indecorous to know their content.

We do know she was born in the rural Hampshire (or Hants), a county in the south of England, that she was the sixth of seven children in a clergyman’s family with a big library, and that this library had a wide variety of books, even Tom Jones or Tristram Shandy, novels that in that period weren’t very appropriate for girls, and less for clergyman’s daughters.

She was educated mainly at home and only went to a boarding school for a year in Reading.

She started writing stories that she read for the family and plays that they perform at home.

When she was 26, they moved to Bath; then, five years later, they went to live in Southampton, and three years later to Chawton, also in the same county.

She never married, althought she had a relationship with a man who died young.

Her novels narrate “the rocky road to a young woman’s happy marriage”, and she said she needed only three or four families to develop their plot. So, what is there in her novels?

She published Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Mansfield Park (1814) anonymously. In 1817, after her death, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published with the name of the author.




 

MANSFIELD PARK

 

This is the story of Fanny Price, the eldest daughter of a very poor and crowded family. But she is nine years old when she is adopted by her rich uncle sir Thomas Bertram, of a well-to-do family, and her living prospects change radically.

The narrative starts telling us about the three sisters Ward. The eldest and more beautiful, although very apathetic, indolent and trivial, marries Sir Thomas Bertram and gets a comfortable position in the world.

The second sister marries a clergyman, reverend Norris, who has a benefit in Sir Thomas parish, the vicarage being very near the country house.

The youngest sister, Frances, fared worse, because she married for love to the poor navy lieutenant Mr Price, and so got estranged from her sisters; and, to make matters worse, he is been licensed because of an injury and spends most of his time at home or with his friends, but not working. The family Price, besides of being poor, is numerous. But when Mrs Price is about having her ninth child, she asks for help to her sisters. Mrs Norris, a busybody bossy childless woman, suggests that Sir Thomas could adopt a Prince’s child. So Fanny got to live with sir Thomas, her wife and their children, Tom, Edmund, Maria and Julia, all of them older than Fanny.

These children, although they have an excellent academic education, are spoiled because of the indulgence of their parents and their aunt Mrs Norris. Fanny, who is very shy and honest, feels a bit uncomfortable in this house, because Sir Thomas is so serious, Mrs Norris so bossy, Mrs Bertram and her daughters so indifferent; but in the end she gets used to the Bertram’s family ways. The only person who shows some sympathy to Fanny is Edmund, who wants to be a clergyman, and whom she would fall secretly in love with.

Some years pass without any novelty. Then, Mr Norris dies, and reverend Mr Grant and his wife comes to live in the vicarage.

Mr Bertram has to go to Antigua to manage his plantations because there have been some problems. While he’s away, a friend of Tom visits the Bertrams, full of enthusiasm about reforms in the countryside. He’s a very rich man, but not very clever. He falls in love with Maria.

More or less at the same time, there are two more visitors: Mary Crawford and Henry Crawford, Mrs Grant’s step-sister and brother. There are some flirtations between Henry and Julia, Henry and Maria (although they know she’s engaged to Mr Rushworth) and Edmund and Mary.

After some days, another guest arrives. It’s Mr Yates, with his head full of acting. He infects the group with the craving of acting and theatre. And after some debate, they decide to prepare a play to perform for all the family. But when they are rehearsing for the last time, Sir Thomas arrives from Antigua and all is cancelled.

Now the novel changes its tone. Until this moment, there has been a lot of action; now, it moves to a more psychological ground. Sir Thomas has changed: he understands and loves better Fanny, he sees he has indulged too much his daughters and his son Tom, and that he has given too much power to Mrs Norris over his family.

Maria marries Mr Rushworth, and the couple and Julia go to London.

Henry Crawford tries to break Fanny’s heart, but in the end it seems that he’s fallen in love with her. He approaches her, but she rejects all his advances, even when he helps her brother in a promotion.

Edmund is indecisive about proposing to Mary Crawford, because perhaps he thinks she wouldn’t be an ideal wife for a pastor: she is trivial and wouldn’t like to be married to a clergyman.

After her refusing Henry Crawford, Fanny is sent for a couple of months to visit her family, and Tom fells very ill, almost to the point of dying.

Henry Crawford, after visiting Fanny in Portsmouth with her family and showing one more time his love, goes to London to visit the married couple. 

But we’re not going to give away any spoiler.

So some questions can be:

Is Fanny going to stay with her family forever? Is she going to get married to Henry Crawford? Is she going to go back to Mansfield? Is Edmund going to get married to Mary Crawford? Is Tom going to recover from his illness?



 

Mansfield Park. Volume One. Chapter XVIII

SUMMARY

 

We are at the last chapter of the first volume, and Jane Austen is going to offer us a very dramatic ending after a very dramatic climax, so this way the readers will be anxious to follow reading the second volume.

We have a group of people wanting to do the rehearsal of three of the five acts of Lovers’s Vows has, so all of them are very excited, or very nervous.

Tom, the eldest of the Bertrams, who had given up his preference for a comedy and accepted playing a drama instead, would perform any character, doesn’t mind which, and is very impatient for the rehearsal.

Mr Rushworth, Maria’s fiancé, isn’t able to learn by heart any of his speeches, and all the time needs a prompter, and, moreover, he is very worried about his dress.

Maria is going to have a very equivocal scene with Henry Crawford, a scene that allows them to flirt even more: in the play, these two characters (mother and son) embrace each other. Mr Rushworth starts being jealous. Henry Crawford is the best actor: he can play all the characters, giving them the exact theatrical tone.

Julia, the youngest of the Bertrams, is not playing because Henry Crawford has showed his preference for Maria for her part, although he previously had been courting her. Another role has been offered to her, but she has rejected them all out of spite.

Mrs Grant, the vicar’s wife, also has a minor part.

Mr Yates, a friend of Tom, is the man who has come to the Bertram’s home with his head full of acting, and has persuaded the rest to pass the time preparing a play. He has the main character, Baron Wildenhaim.

Edmund didn’t approve the idea of acting while their father was absent faraway and perhaps in danger, but, as Tom threatened to look for actors and actresses out of the family circle, he decided to act himself. He is going to play the part of a clergyman (in the real life, he himself is going to be ordained).

Miss Crawford plays Amelia, the Baron’s daughter, a young woman who is in love with Anhalt, the clergyman her tutor. She is who declares her love to Anhalt and persuades him to marry her; and so there is another couple in a compromising situation.

Mrs Norris is very busy with the curtains and the players’ clothes.

Lady Bertram is a bit anxious to see something of the play talked about so much and which causes so much bustle.

Fanny is required by everybody: Mrs Norris needs her help with the equipment, and the players need her to prompt them, and as sparring to try their speeches. Even Mary Crawford and Edmund need her as an interlocutor, a prompter and a critic.

All is now ready for the dress rehearsal of the first three acts, and all are very impatient, but, at the last moment, Mr Grant feels ill, and Mrs Grant has to stay at the parsonage to take care of him, and so she won’t be able to act.

In the face of this problem, they entreat Fanny —the only person who has always objected to the whole acting because she thinks inappropriate being Sir Thomas away, being some very embarrassing scenes, and being, although she doesn’t want to admit, jealous of Mary Crawford— to take the part of Mrs Grant, or at least to read it. Fanny refuses because she feels it isn’t right, but then the rest label her egoist, and stubborn; even Edmund begs her.

In the end, she yields, but, just before they start, Julia makes an astonishing announcement.


QUESTIONS


Why theatre can be viewed as something immoral, or at least as something not very appropriate in some circumstances?
What qualities must you have to be a good actor?
Henry Crawford is a very good actor. Why can this talent can be a flaw in his character, according to Fanny’s point of view?
Mr Rushworth says that Henry Crawford can’t be a good actor because is too short. How do cinema and art impose us the shape of our appearances?
Sir Thomas and Mrs Norris were thinking about the possibility that Tom, or Edmund, fall in love with her cousin Fanny. Marriage between relatives used to want permission from the religious authorities, and, in most of cultures, is a taboo. Do you think this proscription it’s something biological, or cultural?
Edmund and Mary have very different points of view about religion. According to you: can a marriage between two people of so different opinions work?
In which ways do you think plays are better than films? And films better than plays?
Why is it important (or not) for an adopted child to know their biological parents?


VOCABULARY


fret, trifling, rant, prompter, to her eye, tameness, was at little pains, deferred, catchword, forwarder, seams, trice, festoons, entreat, grate, obliged, in the aggregate, surmise, stand the brunt, had little credit with, yield

Chapter XVIII (Project Gutenberg)