| “Have you among your story books Mrs. Woodlands Tales, let me my dear child recommend them to you.” -- Southern gentlewoman Mary Telfair, in a letter to a friend, 1827 |
CMP#106 Julia Marchmont, the Suffering Heroine
Family harmony in Mansfield Park In the previous posts I introduced a discussion about the “bear and forbear” heroine, a girl who endures mistreatment without resentment. However far such portraits of girls strayed from reality, there is no doubt that heroines of this sort were held up as models to emulate. Bear and Forbear or, the history of Julia Marchmont (1809), shows us just how far an author can push the moral lesson for young people--to the brink of death, in fact.
This book, and others, argued that being yielding and sweet-tempered was not only the best course for society and for your family, but also for you. Conduct books suggested that you would have more influence over your husband if you were sweet-tempered and obliging, not cross and demanding. In the opening of Bear and Forbear, we have this advice: “Nothing is more conducive to female happiness, or more certain to insure the affection of those with whom we live, than a yielding forbearing temper. It not only produces that harmony which is so desirable in families, but teaches fortitude and patience; two qualities which cannot be too highly estimated, and which young women cannot too assiduously cultivate.”
We might object that continually biting one’s tongue, or suffering, as Fanny Price does, under the tongue lashes of her Aunt Norris, is not exactly what anyone should call family “harmony."...
This book, and others, argued that being yielding and sweet-tempered was not only the best course for society and for your family, but also for you. Conduct books suggested that you would have more influence over your husband if you were sweet-tempered and obliging, not cross and demanding. In the opening of Bear and Forbear, we have this advice: “Nothing is more conducive to female happiness, or more certain to insure the affection of those with whom we live, than a yielding forbearing temper. It not only produces that harmony which is so desirable in families, but teaches fortitude and patience; two qualities which cannot be too highly estimated, and which young women cannot too assiduously cultivate.”
We might object that continually biting one’s tongue, or suffering, as Fanny Price does, under the tongue lashes of her Aunt Norris, is not exactly what anyone should call family “harmony."...
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