A Capability Brown landscape at Badminton House As a reader, I delight in coming across a subtle allusion, a literary Easter egg, tucked into a story. I’m convinced that Jane Austen hid some Easter eggs amongst the groves and lawns of Sotherton for her readers to find.
The Sotherton episode in Mansfield Park provides a brilliant foreshadowing of the disaster to come for the Bertrams and the Crawfords. Fanny Price, our famously unassertive heroine, watches helplessly as the man she loves falls under the spell of the witty Mary Crawford, and her cousins Julia and Maria compete for the attentions of Mary’s brother Henry.
Mansfield Park is not Austen scholar Devoney Looser's favourite novel. But she told the Bonnets at Dawn podcast that the scene with Fanny sitting on the bench is "an amazing moment where each of their characters come into view, all of the challenges that they’re facing as they are on the precipice of what their adult lives are going to be, that is a beautiful, amazing scene, and a kind of nothing scene. Fanny sitting on a bench, how can that possibly be interesting? But it’s incredibly interesting and incredibly moving, and so beautifully conceived and written."
In conceiving this cleverly crafted portion of the book, Austen drew inspiration from her favourite poet, William Cowper. Cowper is mentioned when the trip to Sotherton is first discussed, because Mr. Rushworth, Maria’s fiancé, wants to update the landscaping there. Fanny quietly laments the planned destruction of an avenue of oak trees. “Cut down an avenue!” she murmurs to her cousin Edmund. “What a pity! Does it not make you think of Cowper? 'Ye fallen avenues, once more I mourn your fate unmerited.'”
The Sotherton episode in Mansfield Park provides a brilliant foreshadowing of the disaster to come for the Bertrams and the Crawfords. Fanny Price, our famously unassertive heroine, watches helplessly as the man she loves falls under the spell of the witty Mary Crawford, and her cousins Julia and Maria compete for the attentions of Mary’s brother Henry.
Mansfield Park is not Austen scholar Devoney Looser's favourite novel. But she told the Bonnets at Dawn podcast that the scene with Fanny sitting on the bench is "an amazing moment where each of their characters come into view, all of the challenges that they’re facing as they are on the precipice of what their adult lives are going to be, that is a beautiful, amazing scene, and a kind of nothing scene. Fanny sitting on a bench, how can that possibly be interesting? But it’s incredibly interesting and incredibly moving, and so beautifully conceived and written."
In conceiving this cleverly crafted portion of the book, Austen drew inspiration from her favourite poet, William Cowper. Cowper is mentioned when the trip to Sotherton is first discussed, because Mr. Rushworth, Maria’s fiancé, wants to update the landscaping there. Fanny quietly laments the planned destruction of an avenue of oak trees. “Cut down an avenue!” she murmurs to her cousin Edmund. “What a pity! Does it not make you think of Cowper? 'Ye fallen avenues, once more I mourn your fate unmerited.'”
Austen’s contemporaries would have been familiar with the poem Fanny quotes: The Task, which features descriptions of refreshing rambles through the English countryside. In the poem, Cowper praises a wealthy landowner, “the lord of this enclosed demesne,” who “admits” him into the park beyond the “folded gates.”
A locked gate, of course, plays an important role in the Sotherton episode. For Maria Bertram, the gate represents “restraint and hardship.” Henry Crawford persuades her to “pass round the edge of the gate” and she goes off alone with him, to the alarm of the hapless Fanny.
This gate is at one end of an enclosed forest called the Wilderness. Mary Crawford, Edmund, and Fanny are the first to enter the Wilderness: “[T]hey were all agreed in… leaving the unmitigated glare of day behind… They all felt the refreshment of it.” In The Task, Cowper wrote of walking under shade trees:
Refreshing change! where now the blazing sun?
By short transition we have lost his glare,
And stepped at once into a cooler clime.
A locked gate, of course, plays an important role in the Sotherton episode. For Maria Bertram, the gate represents “restraint and hardship.” Henry Crawford persuades her to “pass round the edge of the gate” and she goes off alone with him, to the alarm of the hapless Fanny.
This gate is at one end of an enclosed forest called the Wilderness. Mary Crawford, Edmund, and Fanny are the first to enter the Wilderness: “[T]hey were all agreed in… leaving the unmitigated glare of day behind… They all felt the refreshment of it.” In The Task, Cowper wrote of walking under shade trees:
Refreshing change! where now the blazing sun?
By short transition we have lost his glare,
And stepped at once into a cooler clime.
Mary tries to dissuade Edmund from becoming a clergyman. “A clergyman is nothing,” she protests. Edmund responds, “I cannot call that situation nothing which… has the guardianship of religion and morals... No one here can call the office nothing. If the man who holds it is so, it is by the neglect of his duty...”
Cowper took Edmund’s side of the debate. The Task derides worldly fame --“The laurels that a Cæsar reaps are weeds” – and includes a lengthy criticism of clergymen who neglect their duties.
…loose in morals, and in manners vain,
In conversation frivolous, in dress
Extreme, at once rapacious and profuse,
Frequent in park with lady at his side,
Ambling and prattling scandal as he goes…
Like Edmund, Cowper asserts the importance of the clergymen to the moral fiber of the country:
The pulpit…
Must stand acknowledged, while the world shall stand,
The most important and effectual guard,
Support, and ornament of virtue’s cause…
Soon, Fanny is left behind while Edmund and Mary go off to settle a friendlier dispute—what are the dimensions of the Wilderness? Mary thinks they must have walked at least a mile, because they “have taken such a very serpentine course, and the wood itself must be half a mile long…” This appears to be a coy reference to The Task:
We tread the wilderness, whose well-rolled walks,
With curvature of slow and easy sweep--
Deception innocent—give ample space
To narrow bounds.
Cowper took Edmund’s side of the debate. The Task derides worldly fame --“The laurels that a Cæsar reaps are weeds” – and includes a lengthy criticism of clergymen who neglect their duties.
…loose in morals, and in manners vain,
In conversation frivolous, in dress
Extreme, at once rapacious and profuse,
Frequent in park with lady at his side,
Ambling and prattling scandal as he goes…
Like Edmund, Cowper asserts the importance of the clergymen to the moral fiber of the country:
The pulpit…
Must stand acknowledged, while the world shall stand,
The most important and effectual guard,
Support, and ornament of virtue’s cause…
Soon, Fanny is left behind while Edmund and Mary go off to settle a friendlier dispute—what are the dimensions of the Wilderness? Mary thinks they must have walked at least a mile, because they “have taken such a very serpentine course, and the wood itself must be half a mile long…” This appears to be a coy reference to The Task:
We tread the wilderness, whose well-rolled walks,
With curvature of slow and easy sweep--
Deception innocent—give ample space
To narrow bounds.
As Austen scholars have noted, the moral message of Mansfield Park has a lot in common with Cowper's views. The contemplation of nature refreshes the spirit. People who lead quiet, virtuous lives are better and happier than people who chase fashion and worldly acclaim. The glittering Crawfords are rejected in favor of the upright Fanny and Edmund. As Fanny sits and waits for Edmund’s return, the other young people come and go.
As she waits, Fanny Price might say with Cowper:
I see that all are wanderers, gone astray
Each in his own delusions; they are lost
In chase of fancied happiness, still woo’d
And never won.
As she waits, Fanny Price might say with Cowper:
I see that all are wanderers, gone astray
Each in his own delusions; they are lost
In chase of fancied happiness, still woo’d
And never won.
Update: Katie Halsey has noticed more references to The Task in Mansfield Park. in which Lady Bertram's laziness and her ineptitude at card playing might well be references in Cowper brought to novelistic life.
The sedentary stretch their lazy length
When custom bids, but no refreshment find
and
The paralytic, who can hold her cards
But cannot play them, borrows a friend’s hand
To deal and shuffle, to divide and sort
Her mingled suits and sequences, and sits
Spectatress both and spectacle, a sad
And silent cipher, while her proxy plays.
Halsey, Katie. “Spectral Texts in Mansfield Park.” British Women’s Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century, Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 48–61
The sedentary stretch their lazy length
When custom bids, but no refreshment find
and
The paralytic, who can hold her cards
But cannot play them, borrows a friend’s hand
To deal and shuffle, to divide and sort
Her mingled suits and sequences, and sits
Spectatress both and spectacle, a sad
And silent cipher, while her proxy plays.
Halsey, Katie. “Spectral Texts in Mansfield Park.” British Women’s Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century, Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 48–61
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