| This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. The introductory post is here. My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. Spoilers abound in my discussion of these forgotten novels, and I report on 18th-century attitudes that I do not necessarily endorse. This blog post is a deep dive on one single phrase in Mansfield Park. |
CMP#220 Once more into the breech (ha!) with "Rears and Vices"
Jonny Lee Miller and Embeth Davidtz in the 1999 film version of Mansfield Park. I am interrupting my examination of the works of Eliza Kirkham Mathews, for which I interrupted my examination of the authorship of The Woman of Colour, to clutch my pearls so hard that my knuckles whiten over a recent headline in the British newspaper The Telegraph. ‘Don’t change books to be more PC--that’s like cutting Jane Austen’s buggery joke.”
In this article, Paula Byrne, an eminent and telegenic Austen scholar, once again asserts that Mary Crawford’s dinner-party quip about “rears and vices” in Mansfield Park is a pun about sodomy. She, and millions of other Austen fans, evidently take enormous pleasure in repeating this. In fact, I have the impression that it is now received wisdom. So by protesting, I mark myself as a pedantic killjoy, and I’m throwing myself open to accusations of being a homophobic prude. Even if I’m right, a lot of people want to believe it anyway. It’s a prime exhibit in the gallery that proves Jane Austen was a rule-breaker, a gal after our own hearts and our own enlightened principles.
Despite knowing how invested so many of my fellow Janeites are in this ribald notion, I am going to reiterate why I think it just can’t be true...
In this article, Paula Byrne, an eminent and telegenic Austen scholar, once again asserts that Mary Crawford’s dinner-party quip about “rears and vices” in Mansfield Park is a pun about sodomy. She, and millions of other Austen fans, evidently take enormous pleasure in repeating this. In fact, I have the impression that it is now received wisdom. So by protesting, I mark myself as a pedantic killjoy, and I’m throwing myself open to accusations of being a homophobic prude. Even if I’m right, a lot of people want to believe it anyway. It’s a prime exhibit in the gallery that proves Jane Austen was a rule-breaker, a gal after our own hearts and our own enlightened principles.
Despite knowing how invested so many of my fellow Janeites are in this ribald notion, I am going to reiterate why I think it just can’t be true...
A different age: "The Cully Flogg'd," 1680 erotic print, British Museum The Morals of the Age
I cannot provide any positive evidence that this interpretation is mistaken. I can only give the arguments against, as Brian Southam and a few others have already done.
At the time of Mansfield Park’s publication, cultural mores dictated that all novels be subjected to strict scrutiny about their morals. Reviewers almost always mentioned whether a novel they were reviewing held up a strict moral lesson, and they condemned or praised novels on that basis. Authors often assured their readers that their only motive for writing a novel was to convey a moral lesson. Austen didn’t go for that kind of performative virtue-signaling, but her earliest reviewers praised the chasteness of her language and the inoffensiveness of her subject matter. There is, unfortunately, no contemporary review of Mansfield Park, but for Emma, for example, an 1816 reviewer praised the: “complete purity of ideas and images which is here conspicuous.”
Women and girls were the chief consumers of novels. In a cultural regime like this, a publisher would have been insane to sabotage his business by publishing a novel with a ribald joke in it.
I grew up reading second-wave feminist tracts which asserted that well-bred Victorian girls didn’t know the facts of life on their wedding night. Now I am supposed to accept that Regency virgins would understand a pun about sodomy? All right, suppose they would. Dr. Byrne has pointed out that Jane Austen knew what sodomy was because she made a joke about James I of England in her juvenilia and she had two brothers in the Navy. Granting both points, it does not follow at all that she’d be reckless enough to publish a sodomy joke in a novel notable for its earnest morality.
I cannot provide any positive evidence that this interpretation is mistaken. I can only give the arguments against, as Brian Southam and a few others have already done.
At the time of Mansfield Park’s publication, cultural mores dictated that all novels be subjected to strict scrutiny about their morals. Reviewers almost always mentioned whether a novel they were reviewing held up a strict moral lesson, and they condemned or praised novels on that basis. Authors often assured their readers that their only motive for writing a novel was to convey a moral lesson. Austen didn’t go for that kind of performative virtue-signaling, but her earliest reviewers praised the chasteness of her language and the inoffensiveness of her subject matter. There is, unfortunately, no contemporary review of Mansfield Park, but for Emma, for example, an 1816 reviewer praised the: “complete purity of ideas and images which is here conspicuous.”
Women and girls were the chief consumers of novels. In a cultural regime like this, a publisher would have been insane to sabotage his business by publishing a novel with a ribald joke in it.
I grew up reading second-wave feminist tracts which asserted that well-bred Victorian girls didn’t know the facts of life on their wedding night. Now I am supposed to accept that Regency virgins would understand a pun about sodomy? All right, suppose they would. Dr. Byrne has pointed out that Jane Austen knew what sodomy was because she made a joke about James I of England in her juvenilia and she had two brothers in the Navy. Granting both points, it does not follow at all that she’d be reckless enough to publish a sodomy joke in a novel notable for its earnest morality.
Johnson's Dictionary, 1st and 4th editions The unmentionable vice
Sodomy as a subject was unmentionable. Absolutely unmentionable, as far as I can see. We’re not talking about Chaucer’s England, or the London underground, or Regency slang, or even the more rollicking age of Aphra Behn and Henry Fielding. Never mind, either, the experience of thousands upon thousands of British boys in boarding school. We’re talking about books marketed during the Regency period to the genteel class. Mansfield Park is not a joke-book to be laughed over by men sitting together with their bottles of port. It's a seriously profound novel about self-deception, virtue and vice.
If buggery was alluded to in the popular press, say, in relation to a criminal matter, the writer used disparaging euphemisms such as “an odious and unnatural vice, which decency forbids us to mention,” or "an abomindable act," or “a sin against nature,” which is hardly an explanation. Check here for a Google ngram for the frequency of the word "paederasty." And while we're at it, "pederasty." I can't find the terms "pederast" or "Sodom" or "buggery" in Dr. Johnson's dictionary. Nor does "rear" appear as a slang word for "buttocks". So I guess Blackadder was wrong when he quipped people would only use the dictionary to look up rude words. Or if they did, they would not be enlightened as to details.
Sodomy as a subject was unmentionable. Absolutely unmentionable, as far as I can see. We’re not talking about Chaucer’s England, or the London underground, or Regency slang, or even the more rollicking age of Aphra Behn and Henry Fielding. Never mind, either, the experience of thousands upon thousands of British boys in boarding school. We’re talking about books marketed during the Regency period to the genteel class. Mansfield Park is not a joke-book to be laughed over by men sitting together with their bottles of port. It's a seriously profound novel about self-deception, virtue and vice.
If buggery was alluded to in the popular press, say, in relation to a criminal matter, the writer used disparaging euphemisms such as “an odious and unnatural vice, which decency forbids us to mention,” or "an abomindable act," or “a sin against nature,” which is hardly an explanation. Check here for a Google ngram for the frequency of the word "paederasty." And while we're at it, "pederasty." I can't find the terms "pederast" or "Sodom" or "buggery" in Dr. Johnson's dictionary. Nor does "rear" appear as a slang word for "buttocks". So I guess Blackadder was wrong when he quipped people would only use the dictionary to look up rude words. Or if they did, they would not be enlightened as to details.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, in discussing the practise of pederasty in Ancient Greece, wrote: “The laws of modern composition scarcely permit a modest writer to investigate the subject with philosophical accuracy.” The libertarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote an essay arguing that homosexual acts should not be a capital crime, as they were at the time, but he buried it in his desk drawer, unpublished until 1978.
The subject was unmentionable outside of a criminal legal text, such as this one discussing the case of two men found guilty of "sodomitical practices." A pun about sodomy would be as unthinkable in polite society in Austen's time as a racist joke about disparate crime levels would be today.
The subject was unmentionable outside of a criminal legal text, such as this one discussing the case of two men found guilty of "sodomitical practices." A pun about sodomy would be as unthinkable in polite society in Austen's time as a racist joke about disparate crime levels would be today.
A close reading of the text
So, what happened after Mary Crawford made her sodomy joke? Let’s review—or “interrogate,” as the kids say--the conversation in which the joke arose, in Chapter 6. Mary laughingly complains about the time her uncle wanted to landscape a cottage when they were living in it: “for three months we were all dirt and confusion." The narrator tells us “Edmund was sorry to hear Miss Crawford, whom he was much disposed to admire, speak so freely of her uncle. It did not suit his sense of propriety.” Then he gets all pedantic on Mary when she talks about not being able to get a farmer’s cart and horse to convey her harp to Mansfield. Finally, she makes her “rears and vices" joke, and we are told, “Edmund again felt grave, and only replied, ‘It is a noble profession.’”
The next day, Edmund asks Fanny, “But was there nothing in her conversation that struck you, Fanny, as not quite right?” Fanny does not say, “Yes, I almost fell off my chair when she made that sodomy pun about admirals!” She says, “Oh yes! she ought not to have spoken of her uncle as she did. I was quite astonished.” So the thing that most disturbed Fanny was Mary's comic speech about her ”honoured uncle.” The sodomy joke doesn’t even come in second. The next thing Fanny resents is that Mary made a witty generalization about how all brothers write short letters.
So, what happened after Mary Crawford made her sodomy joke? Let’s review—or “interrogate,” as the kids say--the conversation in which the joke arose, in Chapter 6. Mary laughingly complains about the time her uncle wanted to landscape a cottage when they were living in it: “for three months we were all dirt and confusion." The narrator tells us “Edmund was sorry to hear Miss Crawford, whom he was much disposed to admire, speak so freely of her uncle. It did not suit his sense of propriety.” Then he gets all pedantic on Mary when she talks about not being able to get a farmer’s cart and horse to convey her harp to Mansfield. Finally, she makes her “rears and vices" joke, and we are told, “Edmund again felt grave, and only replied, ‘It is a noble profession.’”
The next day, Edmund asks Fanny, “But was there nothing in her conversation that struck you, Fanny, as not quite right?” Fanny does not say, “Yes, I almost fell off my chair when she made that sodomy pun about admirals!” She says, “Oh yes! she ought not to have spoken of her uncle as she did. I was quite astonished.” So the thing that most disturbed Fanny was Mary's comic speech about her ”honoured uncle.” The sodomy joke doesn’t even come in second. The next thing Fanny resents is that Mary made a witty generalization about how all brothers write short letters.
Details about this print given below Probing deeply
I have applied the usual research methods I use when a scholar asserts that a phrase in Austen is an allusion to such-and-such a thing. For an example, see my research on the “Lord Mansfield” allusion in Mansfield Park. Or my unpacking of the way writers of the time used term '"in the same trim." It didn't mean, "get a haircut." I search the literature of the time to study the phrase in context and to see how other writers used it. But I've come up with next to nothing for "rears and vices."
Mary Crawford was not employing a phrase in common use, so far as I can discover in a search of the digital archives of university databases. I found only one example in Google Books, from Baily's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, in 1868: “The Yachting Congress was a great success, an infinity of Commodores, Rears, and Vices taking part in the proceedings.” There, I think, the usage is innocent, though some may disagree.
I have come across only one example of the “rear,” (specifically the "rear" in “Rear Admiral”) used as a pun for “backside,“ arising in connection with a brawl involving two naval officers. When serving under Captain George Vancouver (no pun intended), young Lord Camelford was flogged for giving an “Otaheitean Venus,” that is a young woman of Tahiti, “a piece of old iron,” as reported in the St. James Chronicle for 1796. Back in England, Lord Camelford challenged Vancouver to a duel, which he refused. An enraged Lord Camelford attacked Vancouver in the street.
According to a biography of Camelford, The Half-Mad Lord, Vancouver escaped Camelford’s assault but did not escape derision for cowardice. ‘”Over the next few weeks a series of accounts and malicious squibs, clearly inspired by Lord Camelford’s friends, began to appear in the newspapers. There were suggestions that Vancouver, following his chastisement, should change his name to Rear-cover. [The "rear" as opposed to the "van"]. Worse puns were to follow with telling effect; for example, in the True Briton on 24 and 26 October 1796. ‘’Lord Camelford can boast of a power which rivals that of the First Lord of the Admiralty—He has made Captain Couver a yellow rear’’ (This pun was an allusion to the rank of Yellow Admiral: the next promotion to which Vancouver might aspire).”
I have applied the usual research methods I use when a scholar asserts that a phrase in Austen is an allusion to such-and-such a thing. For an example, see my research on the “Lord Mansfield” allusion in Mansfield Park. Or my unpacking of the way writers of the time used term '"in the same trim." It didn't mean, "get a haircut." I search the literature of the time to study the phrase in context and to see how other writers used it. But I've come up with next to nothing for "rears and vices."
Mary Crawford was not employing a phrase in common use, so far as I can discover in a search of the digital archives of university databases. I found only one example in Google Books, from Baily's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, in 1868: “The Yachting Congress was a great success, an infinity of Commodores, Rears, and Vices taking part in the proceedings.” There, I think, the usage is innocent, though some may disagree.
I have come across only one example of the “rear,” (specifically the "rear" in “Rear Admiral”) used as a pun for “backside,“ arising in connection with a brawl involving two naval officers. When serving under Captain George Vancouver (no pun intended), young Lord Camelford was flogged for giving an “Otaheitean Venus,” that is a young woman of Tahiti, “a piece of old iron,” as reported in the St. James Chronicle for 1796. Back in England, Lord Camelford challenged Vancouver to a duel, which he refused. An enraged Lord Camelford attacked Vancouver in the street.
According to a biography of Camelford, The Half-Mad Lord, Vancouver escaped Camelford’s assault but did not escape derision for cowardice. ‘”Over the next few weeks a series of accounts and malicious squibs, clearly inspired by Lord Camelford’s friends, began to appear in the newspapers. There were suggestions that Vancouver, following his chastisement, should change his name to Rear-cover. [The "rear" as opposed to the "van"]. Worse puns were to follow with telling effect; for example, in the True Briton on 24 and 26 October 1796. ‘’Lord Camelford can boast of a power which rivals that of the First Lord of the Admiralty—He has made Captain Couver a yellow rear’’ (This pun was an allusion to the rank of Yellow Admiral: the next promotion to which Vancouver might aspire).”
Chatgpt image So, what is the joke?
The obvious rejoinder is-- so, if Mary Crawford was not referring to sodomy, what was her pun about? I cannot find a plausible explanation, and I have looked in the vast Austen scholarly literature universe for an answer. And: John Mullan, someone whose opinion I respect, makes it clear in this podcast that he thinks the "rears and vices" joke is a bawdy joke.
If I came across any other novel of this era that contains a sodomy joke, or any countervailing evidence of any kind, or any worthwhile arguments, I will post my findings. But I don’t expect to find anything.
Finally, authors of the day, including females, joked about effeminate men, as I’ve posted about here, but I haven't come across any examples of anyone who named, described, or alluded to homosexual activity in a three-volume novel. By the way, I've never found a sympathetic or earnest portrait of a homosexual either. Effeminate men are comical creatures, like spinsters, or fat women. If we were really going to approach this in the modern manner, someone ought to denounce Mary's joke, and by extension Austen, as being problematic.
The obvious rejoinder is-- so, if Mary Crawford was not referring to sodomy, what was her pun about? I cannot find a plausible explanation, and I have looked in the vast Austen scholarly literature universe for an answer. And: John Mullan, someone whose opinion I respect, makes it clear in this podcast that he thinks the "rears and vices" joke is a bawdy joke.
If I came across any other novel of this era that contains a sodomy joke, or any countervailing evidence of any kind, or any worthwhile arguments, I will post my findings. But I don’t expect to find anything.
Finally, authors of the day, including females, joked about effeminate men, as I’ve posted about here, but I haven't come across any examples of anyone who named, described, or alluded to homosexual activity in a three-volume novel. By the way, I've never found a sympathetic or earnest portrait of a homosexual either. Effeminate men are comical creatures, like spinsters, or fat women. If we were really going to approach this in the modern manner, someone ought to denounce Mary's joke, and by extension Austen, as being problematic.
An example of an morally offended critic
This indignant review of the 1809 novel A Winter [at] Bath, or Love as it may be and friendship as it ought to be shows how harshly critics could come down on novels which they though were immoral, especially novels authored by women: “What renders it infinitely more disgusting is, that the whole interest of the story turns on an illicit amour… The correspondence of the male characters, in this popular novel, is so strongly tinctured with impiety, vulgarity, and libertinism, that we could never have believed it to be the production of a female, had not the authoress, unblushingly, prefixed her name.”
Alas, no copies of this novel are known to exist today (not to be confused with A Winter in Bath).
This indignant review of the 1809 novel A Winter [at] Bath, or Love as it may be and friendship as it ought to be shows how harshly critics could come down on novels which they though were immoral, especially novels authored by women: “What renders it infinitely more disgusting is, that the whole interest of the story turns on an illicit amour… The correspondence of the male characters, in this popular novel, is so strongly tinctured with impiety, vulgarity, and libertinism, that we could never have believed it to be the production of a female, had not the authoress, unblushingly, prefixed her name.”
Alas, no copies of this novel are known to exist today (not to be confused with A Winter in Bath).
| James Gillray satirical print of Vancouver and Camelford, courtesy British Museum. In addition to making fun of everyone involved for this encounter, the cartoon pillories Vancouver for being corrupt and too strict with his men. Vancouver punished Camelford for giving away ship's property, a piece of iron which was valuable to the Tahitians, no doubt with the intent of inducing a native girl to sleep with him. The British Museum's explanatory note: "The stout officer, Captain Vancouver, wears an enormous sword; a fur mantle hangs from his shoulders inscribed 'This Present from the King of Owyhee to George IIId forgot to be delivered'. From his coat-pocket hangs a scroll which rests on the ground, part being still rolled up: 'List of those disgraced during the Voyage - put under Arrest all the Ships Crew - Put into Irons, every Gentleman on Board - Broke every Man of Honor & Spirit - Promoted Spies - ' His left foot is on an open book: 'Every Officer is the Guardian of his own Honor. Lord Grenvills Letter'. From the pocket of the civilian (Vancouver's brother) projects a paper: 'Chas Rearcovers Letter to be publish'd after the Parties are bound to keep ye Peace.' Vancouver's assailant, Lord Camelford, says: "Give me Satisfaction, Rascal! - draw your Sword, Coward! what you won't? - why then take that Lubber! - & that! & that! & that! & that! & that! & - Vancouver, staggering back, with arms outstretched, shouts: Murder! - Murder! - Watch! - Constable! - keep him off Brother! - while I run to my Lord-Chancellor for Protection! Murder! Murder! Murder". Behind him, on the ground, lies a pile of shackles inscribed 'For the Navy'. Two very juvenile sailor-boys stand together (left) watching with delight. On Vancouver's right is the lower part of a shop (right) showing a door and window in which skins are suspended. Round the door are inscriptions: 'The South-Sea-Fur-warehouse from China. Fine Black Otter Skins. No Contraband Goods sold here.' After the title: 'Dedicated to the Flag Officers of the British Navy.' 1 October 1796." The Canadian city of Vancouver is of course named after George Vancouver, who pushed himself and his men to carry out the exhausting work of rowing all around the British Columbia archipelago, surveying and mapping the territory. His story is told more sympathetically in Madness, Betrayal, and the Lash, by Stephen Brown. |
| "While [Jeremy] Bentham published his political ideas widely, his personal papers found after his death contained hundreds of pages of writings on the issue of homosexuality, which remained unpublished for more than 140 years. Homosexuality, under British law, was defined as 'buggery' and punishable by death in Britain, France, and much of Europe. The word 'homosexual' itself was not used in eighteenth and early nineteenth century English; "paederast" was the preferred term." "Offences Against One's Self: Paederasty ." Gender Issues and Sexuality: Essential Primary Sources. . Encyclopedia.com. 5 May. 2025 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>. |
| Aldrich, R., & Wotherspoon, G. (Eds.). (2001). Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History Vol.1: From Antiquity to the Mid-Twentieth Century (1st ed.). A good article about Jeremy Bentham and the arguments in his essay. Routledge. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.4324/9780203986752 Cumming, Ed. “Don’t change books to be more PC--that’s like cutting Jane Austen’s buggery joke’: Writer Paula Byrne on celebrating 250 years of Austen, her obsession with literature and how a series of poison pen letters changed her life.” The Telegraph, 25 May 2025. Review of Emma, Monthly Review, July 1816. Tolstoy, Nikolai. The Half-mad Lord: Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford (1775-1804). Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979. |
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