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CMP#82 A Good Understanding

1/12/2022

"There is a quickness of perception in some, a nicety in the discernment of character, a natural penetration, in short, which no experience in others can equal, and Lady Russell had been less gifted in this part of understanding than her young friend."
-- Jane Austen narration in Persuasion

CMP#82: Nature versus Nurture: Understanding

Sylvestra La Tousel and Jonathan Stephens

introduction and Recap
In the previous post we looked at how Austen and other writers of her time used the terms "temper" and "disposition" to describe innate personality. For example:

Fanny Price is taken aback when she meets her fractious sister Susan: "it was at least a fortnight before she began to understand a disposition so totally different from her own."
Mrs. Grant has "a temper to love and be loved" and a "happiness of disposition."

People of Austen's time made a distinction, just as we do, between natural disposition and the way that people are shaped by circumstance...

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CMP#81 Disposition and Temper

1/5/2022

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"[T]his was not a case of fortitude or of resignation only. A submissive spirit might be patient, a strong understanding would supply resolution, but here was something more; here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself, which was from nature alone. It was the choicest gift of Heaven..."
-- Anne Eliot's thoughts about Mrs. Smith's innate personality in Persuasion

CMP#81: Nature versus Nurture in Regency novels

In my last post, I started a series about Mansfield Park and the theme of education. I think Jane Austen tells us repeatedly and directly that it is a novel about education and the consequences of failing to raise your children properly. Mansfield Park also teaches us that conflict often arises out of a clash of personalities, not something so theatrical as malice.
The book opens with just such a clash. The marital fortunes of the three Ward sisters vary a great deal, and so do their tempers and personalities. The imprudent marriage of Frances Ward leads to an "absolute breach" between the sisters. Mrs. Norris, as Austen says with delightfully wry understatement, has a "spirit of activity" and she sends a scolding letter to Frances. Frances, nettled, writes back an angry letter which Mrs. Norris "could not possibly keep to herself."
Lady Bertram, the former Miss Maria Ward, has a "temper remarkably easy and indolent." In giving up her sister Frances, she is guided, as she is in all things, by the meddling Mrs. Norris. The personality dynamic between Mrs. Norris and Lady Bertram has significant consequences throughout the story.
The word "personality" wasn't around in Austen's time, nor was the term "nature versus nurture," but the concepts certainly were. In addition to analyzing people in terms of their "tempers," the term “disposition” was frequently used to describe innate personality.
Austen herself remarked in a letter about her great-nieces: “How soon, the difference of temper in Children appears! — Jemima has a very irritable bad Temper (her Mother says so) –and Julia a very sweet one, always pleased & happy.-I hope as Anna is so early sensible of its defects, that she will give Jemima’s disposition the early & steady attention it must require.” Likewise, when discussing her brother Charles's daughters, she wrote: "[Cassy] ought to be a very nice Child - Nature has done enough for her - but Method has been wanting... She will really be a very pleasing Child, if [her parents] will only exert themselves a little. - Harriet is a truely sweet-tempered little Darling."

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CMP#81-A What Austen said about Maria

1/4/2022

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Here are the passages from Mansfield Park in which Austen gives us information about Maria Bertram either as narration or commentary. Maria is not portrayed in a sympathetic light.

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CMP#80 "Give A Girl An Education"

1/2/2022

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"Give a girl an education, and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without farther expense to anybody."
-- Mrs. Norris, Mansfield Park

CMP#80 Mansfield Park and the Theme of Education

1983 Mansfield Park mini-series

Introduction
Mansfield Park is--by far--the most misunderstood of Jane Austen’s novels in modern times. Canadian author Douglas Glover says: "Mansfield Park is a brilliant book, a great book, breathtaking in its invention and orchestration. The British critic of the novel Q. D. Leavis called it 'the first modern novel in England.' And yet it is alien territory for the contemporary reader."
This next series of blog posts is a resumption of my earlier discussion, last April, about Mansfield Park. Back then I disputed the contention that Mansfield Park is an extended symbolic protest of slavery. I’ve shared evidence to show that it was not controversial or dangerous to oppose slavery in Austen's day and many novelists did so. See here, here, and here. In short, last year I discussed what I think Mansfield Park is not about. Now I plan to talk about what I think it is about.
Notice that Glover speaks of invention and orchestration; his first focus is on Austen's craft. I hardly feel qualified to opine about the development of the novel, but I am afraid that many university students today are signing up to learn about English literature and they walk out having learned nothing about the development of the novel. This is because their professors are intent upon giving them a history lesson instead, a particular type of history which treats the past not as a chronicle of progress but a catalogue of crimes.
Yes, Glover's "alien territory" refers to Austen's stern moral universe. If you have an understanding of the economics and the religious beliefs of the Regency period, then you can better understand that moral universe. You can also better understand what makes Austen a great author by studying her work in its literary as well as its historical context...

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CMP#82 A Good Understanding

CMP#81 Disposition and Temper

CMP#81-A What Austen said about Maria

CMP#80 "Give A Girl An Education"

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