Eleven. Mansfield Park
Eleven
Mansfield Park
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
June 29, 1865
“What is our opinion on Mansfield Park ?”
Chief Justice Adam Fulbright raised his right eyebrow momentously. Although on summer recess, the six justices continued to meet at the courthouse, finding their private chambers most conducive to lengthy and spirited debate.
“It is remarkably short on admirable characters compared to the other works.” Justice Roderick Norton snorted. “Fanny Price is nothing to a true Austen heroine.”
“I must concur with Roderick—for once!” Justice Conor Langstaff conceded with a grin.
“Perhaps we are to regard Fanny Price as more moral construct than character,” the chief justice suggested, revealing his hand up front as he always did. “After all, who in the book has less freedom than Fanny? She is treated as property, even by someone as low as Aunt Norris. For Austen’s theme here to work, Fanny needs to be fully at the mercy of everyone else in the book—she cannot have Anne Elliot’s ease of likability, or Lizzy’s intelligence. In this way, I consider Mansfield Park to be first and foremost a treatise on power and the harm that comes from ownership, and how to maintain self-respect in the face of it.”
Justice William Stevenson looked up, intrigued, from the glass of Madeira in his hands. “How so?” With Connie’s assistance, he continued to mull over the ramifications of his own behavior when it came to his daughters. What might have happened if he had respected instead of commanded? Perhaps they would not have run off—perhaps the three of them would have ended up touring England together instead.
“Let us consider how so many in the book, good or bad, urge Fanny to marry Henry Crawford not out of duty to herself but in service to him , to civilize him ,” continued the chief justice energetically, warming to his case. “This is the very notion still enshrined in British law, and ours to nearly as great an extent: that regardless of a man’s behavior toward her , a woman’s duty is first to him . This view is, I posit, the very antithesis of freedom—and the very reason there is so much increasing discontent among our female populace.”
“Exactly!” Langstaff, the doting new father of twin daughters, jumped up in his seat. “Well put, Adam!”
“That word freedom ,” Justice Philip Mackenzie mused aloud as he rhythmically tapped the cover to his copy of the book. “There is something rotten in Sir Bertram’s house—a fundamental misunderstanding of freedom which inevitably leads to its abuse. Freedom is not about ensuring you get everything you want, but rather becoming the best self that you can be. Therein lies life’s great reward for us and for those around us. I always come back to Cicero,” he added to the playful groans of the other men. “‘When each person loves the other as much as himself, it makes one out of the many.’ E pluribus unum: such a motto takes care of it all.”
“Our state legislature put those words on Massachusetts coppers for a reason,” agreed the chief justice.
“Yet during the fighting, the Union took up ‘In God We Trust,’” Norton interjected, “and now Americans can hold that motto, too, in their pocket change.”
“Ah, yes, the so-called Sovereignty of God amendment, which sought to add those same four words to the beginning of our constitution.” Langstaff sighed. “How interesting, that the strictest constructionist among us”—he nodded pointedly at Norton—“would permit legislative revamping of the very preamble to that great document—so much for its ideas being set in stone! Thank goodness this Christian constitutional amendment failed last year to reach Congress. To regard our Civil War as God’s punishment for omitting Him from the constitution is to deny our moral responsibility for the scourge that was slavery.”
Norton and Peabody, the two most conservative and religious members of the court, both started forward at his words, and the chief justice was next to jump up.
“I am going to refill our glasses, and we shall discuss this matter calmly and judiciously.” He poured each justice more Madeira wine from the decanter, a unifying gesture that he often made at such tense moments. “Now, since the matter of religion has been raised, let us ponder: Where is God in Mansfield Park ?”
There was a long, stunned silence.
“Perhaps there is no God in Mansfield Park because Austen is there in his stead,” Langstaff suggested to gasps from several of the men.
“Conor—how blasphemous!” exclaimed Peabody.
“Please, this is a novel we discuss,” protested Langstaff with a dismissive wave of the hand. “No one has more power over it than the author. Who else can create a world, populate it, then decide how and when to mete out justice?”
“We should only have such power here,” moaned Norton, “limited as we are by the whims of our legislature.”
The chief justice continued to stand in the center of the room, decanter of Madeira still in hand. “How, then, does Austen rule the world of Mansfield Park ? Is she a benevolent god who morally guides and inspires, or a god who leaves her creatures to their own devices?”
“Chief Justice.” Ezekiel Peabody put his hand to his chest as if struck. “This discussion!”
“No, Adam is onto something,” insisted Mackenzie. “In Mansfield Park , power is fully unchecked—wealth and other attractions trump all. If a Mary Crawford can viably tempt Edmund Bertram, there is no hope for anyone. Yet we can see Austen’s godlike hand in how each character ultimately reaps what they sow. This retributive form of justice is not always the outcome in our own world—much as we here on the bench may try,” he wistfully added. “In our world, Fanny might end up forever banished by Sir Bertram to the slums of Portsmouth for refusing to marry Henry Crawford, and Edmund a lovesick dupe.”
William Stevenson finally rendered his own opinion on the text. “I would argue that Mansfield Park is about more than just power, which both bestows and requires freedom—it is about whether freedom itself requires property .”
The chief justice turned to him. “Fanny has nothing—hence she can’t be free?”
William nodded. “That’s what those trying to control her believe to be true. That’s the only way Sir Bertram’s threat of her banishment can work. But there is always the freedom to aspire within ourselves, no matter how dire the world about us or our poverty in relation to it—to heed duty to the self, no matter one’s lack of property or options. Fanny’s refusal to accept Henry’s proposal is assertion of the self at its purest.”
“Ah yes, well said!” the chief justice readily agreed. “Everyone in Mansfield Park believes they can manipulate Fanny—they assume lack of opportunity engenders lack of self-respect. People in power too often assume such weakness in those they govern—something both England and France have been made to understand with the blood of revolution.” He placed his hands on the worn leatherbound volume of Mansfield Park before him. “Powerless as she is, Fanny is very much a true Austen heroine in taking responsibility for her own decisions and the thinking behind them.”
“Connie recently shared with me—”
“Connie?” Conor Langstaff teased William, who reddened at his slip.
“Miss Davenish. She is a great proponent of the teachings of John Stuart Mill, who argues that duty to oneself means self-respect or self-development. Not self ishness—and certainly not blind adherence to others or to religion or the past. Such development of the individual requires examination and education. And if there is education, there will be less susceptibility to the power of others—and if there is examination, there will be more genuine power in the self.” With these concluding words, William could only think of the three remarkable women in his life, who had each found a way to heed their inner spirit no matter their lack of freedom in comparison to men.
The judges fell silent as they contemplated the unprepossessing heroine of the half-century-old book before them. Of all the characters in Mansfield Park , Fanny Price somehow remained the most unblemished by the ill will of others, despite possessing the least amount of freedom and opportunity. She achieved this through duty to, and respect of, herself. And in this respect, she appeared to have ended up the freest of them all.
Connie had been the one to introduce William to John Stuart Mill’s lesser-known but no less passionate views on the rights of women. These had taken a radical turn following his friendship and mar riage with another great thinker, Harriet Taylor. In 1851 they had written an essay together, The Enfranchisement of Women , which cited the example of the Unites States of America as a democracy that rested on the constitutional right of everyone to a voice in government:
We do not imagine that any American democrat will evade the force of these expressions by the dishonest or ignorant subterfuge that “men” in this memorable document, does not stand for human beings, but for one sex only… that “the governed,” whose consent is affirmed to be the only source of just power, are meant for that half of mankind only, who in relation to the other, have hitherto assumed the character of governors. The contradiction between principle and practice cannot be explained away. A like dereliction of the fundamental maxims of their political creed has been committed by the Americans in the flagrant instance of the negroes: of this they are learning to recognize the turpitude.
Connie had taught William much in the course of their nightly conversations. With a philosopher’s intellectual dexterity, she could hold contradictory truths simultaneously in her mind. She took the view that nothing in the world should ever be viewed so strictly that it would fail to serve or account for the complexities of a future time (“ What use is history at all, if we can’t adapt it to today?” she once posited to him. “We will end up back in the jungle, at the mercy of autocrats, with nothing of our own left to inform and inspire”) .
They were sitting together in her rococo parlor, a room that William especially loved, after the judges’ discussion of Mansfield Park had run late into the night. The parlor was grand and unequivocal, just like Connie herself, and the couple regularly retired here after an evening out. Samuel and Mrs. Pearson knew not to expect William home again until the early morning, and seemed even happy for that fact as they waved him out the door.
“I always know there is something more insidious at play, when there is such a glaring division between principle and practice.” Connie sighed. “You men have long urged that women’s lack of property eliminates the need for suffrage, yet married women in Massachusetts and other states now enjoy many of the property rights of men. Tell me then, why are we still not allowed to vote, hmm?”
William had no answer for her; Connie always made perfect sense.
“What is worse,” she bemoaned, pouring more coffee for them both, “England remains stubbornly behind us. Everything that I might bring into marriage over there”—Constance waved her hands at all the artwork, sculpture, and books that she had acquired over the years—“becomes my husband’s the very instant that vows are exchanged. And the fact that an Englishman can presently sue for divorce on the grounds of adultery alone, but Englishwomen must prove additional causes such as desertion or cruelty? It makes my blood boil!”
“The rationale being the difficulty for men in ascertaining the legitimacy of a child?” William pondered his own question with all the attention he would give a legal factum. “Why should that require such difference between the sexes in the right to divorce?”
“Parliament argues there is insufficient harm—insufficient cruelty —to the wife from adultery alone. Another way childbearing is turned against us.”
“But men and women both suffer from unfaithfulness.”
“Exactly! Yet English law is purely punitive of women on that point.” Connie smiled and tapped his forearm with the tip of her fan. “Well done, my boy. We shall make a féministe out of you yet. Even if you started for less lofty reasons.” She gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Men in power have long argued a sort of rampant risk of illegitimate children in order to suppress women. Meanwhile, they can be unfaithful, sexually violent, or fully absent, and yet we owe them total fealty in return. Could we be more unequal or at their mercy?”
“This goes back to the discussion tonight on Mansfield Park —how we must show respect for each other, for there to be self-respect at all. You see, my love, one can always apply Austen.”
“So you say.”
William hesitated, trying to summon his nerve. “We have noticed a pattern in the books—the number of heroines who turn down marriage.” He had never forgotten the extravagant diamond ring Connie had worn during their first carriage ride together, which had inexplicably not made an appearance since.
“A striking of the blow, in its way.” She shrugged. “Perhaps the only way for women at that time.”
“Have you?”
“Turned down a proposal? Why?” She gave him a playful look. “Hedging your bets, are you?”
“I am no gambler, as you know.”
“I do know.” She smiled. “Why is that, William?”
“I try to be content with what I have—I will lose it soon enough. We all will.”
“To answer your question, yes, I have. A few times.”
“A few ? You have?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“Do you regret any of them?”
“Not at all. Why—do I seem unhappy?”
“No, but these men… you loved them?”
She shrugged again. “Yes and no. They needed marriage—I didn’t. In fact, under our state laws at the time, I would have lost all this. I know they look like things ”—she waved again about the beautiful room—“but they are an extension of me. Here, no matter the constraints of the world about me, I can express myself. I feel inspired—and much more productive when I do head out to fight the world.”
William stared at her. “But what does this mean for our life together?”
“We go on exactly as we’ve begun.”
“But I would want you with me, in my home…”
“No, William, that was your and Alice’s home. Besides, I enjoy living by myself.” She stroked his hand next to hers. “And these little reunions of ours are quite nice, wouldn’t you agree?”
“But you would make such a mother to my girls,” he heard himself stammer. “They adore you so already!”
“William, your girls don’t need a mother. And neither do you.”
“Me?”
“Oh, my love, do you not see how worried everyone is about you? Poor Nash jumping onto that ship, Samuel and Mrs. Pearson keeping vigil for you late into the night. Even the other justices—they accelerated your literary circle this summer for a reason, you know.”
“I’ve been an imposition.” His own words surprised him. In fact, it was a moment of such unusual self-awareness that he wondered what else she might help him see, especially when it came to his daughters.
“Yes, but only because you’ve been loved. You are, my boy, wonderfully easy to love.” She took both his hands in hers and bowed to kiss them. “And I do love you.”
It was the first time she had said the words, which had already escaped him in a moment of ardor. But as wonderful as it was to hear such sentiment from a woman again, William also worried—as was his wont—whether he could ever be content enough with only that.