While on the subject of Fanny Price

This is, I suppose, as good a time as any to expand on something I mentioned in my previous blog (and by the way, P.D. James's P & P mystery is already published now! That was quick: in the newspaper piece I read it sounded as if it was only in the pipeline). What I'd like to chew over a bit is the - to me - baffling hostility often shown towards Fanny Price in "Mansfield Park" by various commentators. Shepherd with her parallel universe take of the character was clearly not impressed by the original, and she can join a large and thriving club. Everywhere Fanny is roundly condemned for her "self-righteousness" and "humourlessness". Austen famously said about Emma that in her she would create a heroine "no-one but myself will like". Yet Emma is doing all right, although people tend to share Mr Knightley's censorious view of her behaviour (for my money, Mr Knightley needs to be hit over the head with something hard: talk about humourless and self-righteous). It is Fanny who is the most unloved of the Austen heroines.

Why is this, exactly? And how judgemental is Fanny? You'd think, by the way she's described not least in sequel fiction where she occasionally pops up as a secondary character, that she's some kind of 19th century Oliver Cromwell, calling "Guards!" Horrible-Histories-style every time anyone even mentions something fun. Yet Austen's timid Fanny hardly ever ventures an opinion on anyone or anything. She certainly doesn't set herself up as being morally better than the family at Mansfield: it's Austen who does that. How can this shrinking violet have provoked so much loathing among the Austen-reading public?

The answer is, largely, because she is a shrinking violet. In our day and age, we are more into the feisty kind of heroine (the "f" factor, also mentioned in a previous post) personified by the warm, witty and spirited Elizabeth Bennet. I like a heroine with bite myself: someone who can "answer back", like Elizabeth or Jane Eyre. Perhaps it's understandable that modern readers - and maybe not just modern ones - are bound to compare goody-goody heroines like Fanny unfavourably with the more spunky Elizabeth Bennet kind. Clearly, heroines didn't have to be self-effacing in the 19th century. So why on earth does Fanny choose to be?

Because, now as then, individuals are different, and we can't all be spunky. Fanny's position as a poor relation taken on in sufferance and continously bullied by Mrs Norris does not exactly encourage spunkiness, either. With time, I have become more and more tolerant with the non-spunky heroine type. We should cut them some slack and not assume that just because they are good, they are dreary and two-dimensional. Fanny's unrequited love for Edmund is so feelingly portrayed by Austen that I rather warmed to her. Besides, she is trying to do her best as she is thrown into one impossible situation after the other.

If you ask me, Edmund is the real stinker in "Mansfield Park". Fanny may utter some prissy lines, but you can always trace Edmund's influence in them. He is the one who moralises, while at the same time drooling over the funny but extremely worldly Mary Crawford. His treatment of Fanny is unfeeling even by cousinly standards - depriving her of her horse, a hard-earned privilege, so he can give Mary riding lessons; abandoning her and forgetting her altogether at Rushworth's place so he can stroll around with Mary - and becomes even more heart-breaking when you consider Fanny's love for him, which it would not have been difficult for him to guess at if he had cared more about her. If this is supposed to be Fanny's mainstay and support in the Bertram family, one wonders what the rest of them are like. To add insult to injury, though, or rather injury to insult, the way Edmund tramples on Fanny's feelings is probably another reason for her unpopularity. Why does she put up with this ghastly fellow? readers ask. And some female readers may also add in an undertone: "It's not as if she didn't have options..."

Which leads me to Henry Crawford. Apparently, he has quite a following among female readers: many sequels/retellings on "Mansfield Park" are designed to exonerate him and sometimes to give him another chance with Fanny. Of course, and I know this from experience, when a heroine scorns a man you would very happily have taken on board yourself, especially if you sense that there is some moral reason behind her unwillingness to give him the time of day, you can't help muttering "silly cow!" and "she should be so lucky" at regular intervals. Why Henry should be considered such a catch beats me, though. I never did care for salon-savvy layabouts (Sir John Chester in "Barnaby Rudge" being the great exception). What does Henry ever do except chase skirt? A villain should do something more to show a bit of drive, verve and efficiency - like defrauding his boss, building a fortune on stolen goods or snooping into the private affairs of his clients and using his findings against them. I know my villain taste is somewhat bourgeois, but honestly - I can't see what Henry's got that could make up for the fact that he started the whole Fanny-winning enterprise wanting to make "a small hole in Fanny Price's heart".

Austen, though, seems to have anticipated that some readers could be irritated by Fanny's refusal of Henry Crawford. She makes it clear that he would have stood much more of a chance, in spite of being a seducer and wastrel, if Fanny had not already been in love with Edmund, and she hints that he would have won Fanny with time if Edmund had married Mary. Henry does win some ground when he meets Fanny and her family in Portsmouth, and might have prevailed if he hadn't been just as flighty as Fanny predicted and gone off with Maria Rushworth. I should think it's just as well he did, though. Fanny herself put it best when contemplating a future with him (and I try to think of her perceptive words when I grumble about other heroines wilfully refusing villains): "I am so perfectly convinced that I could never make him happy, and that I should be miserable myself."

So, next time there is an adaptation of "Mansfield Park", it might be a novel idea to have a Fanny Price who actually bears some resemblance to Fanny in the book. (Sylvestra Le Touzel was a wonderful Fanny in the old TV adaptation from -83, but that was a while ago now.) A Fanny who is not a tomboy - as in the ITV adaptation - or a saucy slave-defender - as in the dreadful film: don't get me started! - or has extra feistiness injected in her in some other way. Please?