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bethanydelleman · 27 days

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Fanny Price reminds me of Cinderella(specifically the og Disney version) in that both girls suffered abuse, tried to make the best of their situation and remained kind despite their circumstances, yet have been viewed as weak for not fighting back or leaving their situation.

Totally! It's so strange. Fanny Price cannot do anything to improve her situation or she might be sent back home. She's been told that staying at Mansfield is the best thing for her, so she endures. She's even been instructed to be grateful for what meagre things she is given. What can she do? Where else can she go? It's not like she has any power to improve her life, she's entirely dependant. She does have a meek personality to begin with, but she has no other option but continue to be that way.

What is Cinderella supposed to do? Run away as a woman with no money in the medieval era? Her home is horrible but at least it's relatively safe and usually she's being forced to work but not physically abused. This is why we have shelters and escape programs nowadays, because figuring out how to get away from a situation like this is really difficult. Difficult for an adult, harder for a dependant child (not sure what her age is supposed to be and it varies).

If Fanny Price acted like Elizabeth Bennet, there would probably have been no story because Mrs. Norris would have demanded she be sent home and she'd have died along with her sister Mary.

#mansfield park #fanny price #fanny price defence squad #cinderella

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wheelie-butch · 4 months

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when critics are like 'fanny price is a difficult heroine to like' i simply say 'skill issue.' sorry I'm built different (has empathy for disabled people)

#mez speaks #austen posting #mansfield park #fanny price #fanny price defence squad

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misscrawfords · 3 years

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For the bad Austen take game: Fanny Price is boring. (I hated even typing that)

Aaaaahhhh, you went straight to the jugular!

Mansfield Park was published in 1814, a year after Pride and Prejudice. The latter contained a spirited, active, and witty heroine. The former, a heroine who was shy, physically weak, and very introverted.

Fanny Price is actually closer to what a lot of contemporary heroines were like. Elizabeth Bennet, bursting in on the scene with her “pert opinions” and physical vigor and her direct challenges to the hero is not ahistorical because clever and witty heroines do exist in literature of the time, but she takes that to the next level.

The “perfect heroine” of the early 18th century in many novels was sweet, virtuous, morally dutiful, and somewhat passive. She was prone to fainting, basically had no faults, and at the end of the novel was rewarded with the love of the hero. She is not always a particularly interesting figure and often such narratives have a foil in a lively, witty anti-heroine who brings the fun to the novel but cannot be rewarded with a happy ending because she does not display the appropriate morals. That way the author and reader can get the pleasure of a “bad girl” or at least a “fun girl” without disrupting the expected didactic morals required of (many) novelists at the time.

Fanny Price and Mary Crawford are interesting variations on that. Fanny, like all of Austen’s heroines, challenges contemporary notions of what being a heroine was about. Austen does this in all her novels though Emma is the most obvious example. Fanny has many of the qualities that you would expect from a contemporary heroine but she is also not particularly attractive (a heroine should always be the most beautiful woman in the room) and it is hard to read her excessive passivity and not feel irritated by it. She has a much deeper inner life than most of her contemporaries of this type. We see her jealousy of Mary Crawford, we see her misery, we see her unrequited love for Edmund, her complicated feelings regarding her home in Portsmouth in ways that make her fully rounded internally, only little of that is spoken out loud. These feelings are very human and understandable, but they are not always to her credit and knowing them, we wish she could act on them. Austen seems to be asking the reader to take the classic novel heroine and then ask, “How would she really respond to novel situations?”

Austen’s plot also challenges expected novelistic plots. Edmund Bertram is not a satisfactory romantic hero. He is as quiet and rigidly moral as Fanny... except he blows all his convictions by his blind infatuation on Mary and he spends 99.9% of the novel oblivious to Fanny’s feelings or even that she’s an eligible woman at all. I have sympathy for him as well as for Fanny because he’s very young (only 22/23) and making poor judgements over women at that age and being an oblivious numpty over your childhood best friend’s crush seems pretty normal to me. Nevertheless, following Mr. Darcy, he’s hardly the stuff of dreams.

The character and plot that does seem more novelistic is Henry Crawford and his pursuit of Fanny. He’s handsome and rich and a bit of a rake. Then he meets Fanny who he attempts to seduce, falls in love with her for real, proposes to her and is rejected, then changes his behaviour, tries again and is accepted now that he is reformed and worthy her love.... wait. Rewind. That’s not what happened! Think this plot looks familiar? It should. Henry Crawford is what a lot of people think Mr. Darcy is who don’t understand Mr. Darcy on any level. Henry Crawford genuinely is a handsome bad boy who is reformed by the love of a virtuous woman after being rejected by her. And Austen teases readers with a redemption arc and a real enemies-to-lovers plot. But Henry is as real and complicated and human as Fanny and Edmund - he fails at the last hurdle and cannot complete his redemption arc. He relapses at the last moment. Isn’t that true to life? And is reforming a rake really Fanny’s destiny in life? She doesn’t think so. She sees right through his charm and hates who he is underneath. She doesn’t reject him as Elizabeth does Darcy because she doesn’t understand him; she rejects him because she understands him perfectly. She is the only person in the novel who does. I feel it would be a poor ending for Fanny to make her marry a man she despises and become the mistress of a large estate which brings with it the kind of social duties she must have been unhappy executing.

Fanny gets what she wants. She quietly, patiently does not change. She is surrounded by the superficial, the brash, the badly behaved, the immoral, the weak and she remains strong and stoical and by doing this and remaining true to her values, she triumphs. She wins. She gets the man she wants. She is truly and fully adopted into the heart of Mansfield Park with all her enemies and rivals removed. She is acknowledged as the best of them all. Without even needed to do anything except endure and stick to her guns, she defeats every big boss in her path.

These are not attractive modern values. Our concept of a “strong woman” (*shudder*) is Elizabeth Bennet. But not all of us are Elizabeth Bennets. Most of us aren’t in fact. Most of us are quiet and insecure and filled with envies, jealousies, private sadnesses. Many of us have experienced at some point less than ideal family situations and reacted not by being spirited and clever but by curling up in a ball and just waiting it out. Shouldn’t Fanny be held up as an icon for winning in absolutely the worst of circumstances? But she is an Aeneas in a society that only wants to read about Odysseuses and Achilleses.

Finally, another way in which Austen was distinctly saying in MP, “Hey, so, if you thought I was going to write another P&P, JOKE’S ON YOU, MATEY!” is that the entire novel is an anti-romance. Of course you’re going to be frustrated with Fanny and Edmund if you’re looking for a pair of exciting characters who fall in love and get a swoonworthy romance. But if you read MP as an examination of bad love, inappropriate love, selfish love, inexperienced love, love that taints and goes wrong through the eyes of a quiet and insightful observer who herself suffers the crushing and all too familiar pangs of hopelessly unrequited love - then you find a character and a novel that are rich, satirical, and deeply intimate and clever.

#jane austen #mansfield park #fanny price #mansfield park defence squad

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imissthembutitwasntadisaster · 2 years

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Jane Austen’s novels for the fandom ask game??

I'VE BEEN PREPARING MY WHOLE LIFE FOR THIS ACTUALLY

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most)

I know we're the Fanny Price defence squad but it has to be Cathy for me she is THE heroine! she's true and honest! she's brave! she's clear-eyed even if it comes out in a strange way! she learns to understand people better! she's funny! she's everything to me!!!

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped)

Also Cathy she's just! so cute! she's adorable!!!

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave)

FANNY SHE'S SO IMPORTANT her arc??? her arc is so good??? learning to speak for what's right and not to bend? quite stubbornness??? beloved beloved beloved girl!!!!!

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week)

I am a proud supporter of the Gardiners I love how elegant and normal they are compared to the Bennets, they're sensible, they're polite, they're everything needed! and I love them!

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave)

All the other characters in persuasion think Anne is a poor little meow meow but obviously we know she is not. I'm trying to come up with one? I don't hate Edmund tbh? Like a lot of people do and I don't, I think he's not that bad? I can't say Emma because she does annoy me so I'm with the majority on that one. Have to say Edmund I think.

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason)

Willoughby angers me a lot tbh he's just really annoying. Like dude absolutely not.

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell)

Tried and true I hate Wickham on a personal level he's just such a problem.

Fandom tumblr terms ask game

#ask games #fandom ask game #<3<3<3 #quite-but-not-blind #thank you!!!!

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