Mar 19 2020
Feeling as *We* Ought about Fanny Price
First, a short video from me to say hi and check in can be found HERE.
For Monday’s class (3/23), you should finish Mansfield Park and read Nina Auerbach’s essay, “Feeling as One Ought about Fanny Price.” I’m so curious what you think of this essay! In my experience, it’s very controversial.
For this online assignment, we’re going to start pretty slowly. All I want you to do by the end of the day on Monday (3/23) is post a comment below this post responding to Auerbach’s essay. (This should be a paragraph full enough to express your ideas clearly; 250 words or so is a ballpark.) What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Give reasons and be sure to refer to a specific part of the essay (with a quotation and citation) at least once in your response. You should absolutely feel free to use your response to respond to previous comments left by classmates, but this is not a requirement.
A few thoughts to help you gather yours:
- Whether or not you agree, it’s worth thinking a bit about the argument as a powerful example of “against the grain” reading; Auerbach builds a pretty polemical (that is, strongly critical, expecting a debate) argument about Austen’s heroine on a pattern of evidence that probably wouldn’t lead us to her conclusions after a first reading of the novel. Does her argument lead you to revisit your own reading?
- One thing that might interest us is the way that Auerbach brings Mansfield Park into the Gothic tradition we’ve been discussing since the beginning of class, not by noticing explicit or literal invocations of the Gothic, but thinking about how Fanny takes the form of a Gothic villain in a more abstract way. Is Mansfield Park a secretly Gothic novel?
- Auerbach largely ignores issues of class in her reading. Does this feel limiting to you? Or just focused? What would bringing those questions back in look like? How would they change her argument?
You do not have to respond to any or all of these, but you may use them however you wish.
I’m looking forward to your responses. I’ll synthesize some of them in a short video for Wednesday’s class. I’ll also be emailing out a link to a synchronous Zoom videoconference for Wednesday’s session. PLEASE NOTE: while I encourage you to participate in the Zoom class session if you can, it is not required. This is because I know many of you have new work or caregiving responsibilities. I will post video of the class meeting and give an alternative way of registering your “presence” in class.
As always, email me if you have questions. I’ll also have virtual office hours from 2-4pm on Monday afternoon. Most importantly: stay safe and be well. I’m thinking of you.
Fanny Price…about to drink Edmund’s blood?
15 Responses to “Feeling as *We* Ought about Fanny Price”
Nina Auerbach’s essay, “Jane Austen’s Dangerous Charm: Feeling as One Ought About Fanny Price,” discusses the character of Fanny Price. She begins the essay by making the point that the “silent, stubborn Fanny Price appeals less than any of Austen’s heroines.” (446) It was interesting to read how Fanny Price compared to the notorious Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s novel–which is a comparison I would not have automatically made. Auerbach refers to Fanny as a “Romantic monster.” She is similar to the upbringing of Frankenstein in the “gloomy exile from family whose vocation is to control families and to destroy them.” In addition to this, she is also a ‘Romantic monster’ in the fact that because she does not have a kin, she finds herself yearning for the closeness of having one. Auerbach mentions that Fanny Price expresses a desire for a ‘brother-mate’ in the same way that Frankenstein desires for a partner–there is this common desire for companionship. In more detail, she writes: “The pain of her difference explains a longing in /Mansfield Park/ that is common to much Romantic literature and that, in its obsessed exclusiveness, may look to modern readers unnervingly like incest: the hunger of sibling for sibling, of kin for kind.” (454) She is also compared to Grendel in “Beowulf” with her exile from common feasting and envy feelings upon others. In fact, Auerbach believes that Fanny’s revulsion against food is what contributes to her ‘monstrosity.’ It was interesting to read about other comparisons that Auerbach has drawn out for Fanny Price, including a comparison with Hamlet as the both do not participate in a “play within a play.” The ‘jealous and stubborn’ Fanny Price insists, “No, indeed, I cannot act.” By the end of her essay, Auerbach makes the statement that Fanny Price is not a loveable character–she is not the typical heroine that Austen writes about.
In her references to Hamlet, Auerbach identifies Fanny as “…a survivor; she neither rages nor soliloquizes, revealing her power and her plans only haltingly and indirectly.” There is no doubt that Fanny is a survivor. But where are power and plans, even haltingly?
Power means having choices and making decisions with the authority to execute them. By embedding her as an adjunct to the Bertram family circle, JA severely limits Fanny’s ability to express an opinion or to engineer an outcome. She is the only character in the household who is truly at risk — if she displeases, she could be summarily back in Portsmouth ala Catherine’s ejection from the Abbey. Her economic vulnerability continues to threaten her resolve even after finally articulating her decision; she is still quite fearful of Sir Thomas’s reaction to her refusal — she thinks, “What was to become of her?” (325).
As to plans, when does Fanny even contemplate direct or indirect engagement to influence decisions, behaviors or events? The best evidence: Fanny knows what she wants (Edmund from day one) but without the power to implement, she is so stymied that she cannot imagine a way to transform Edmund’s brotherly affection into something more.
Auerbach writes in the essay’s final paragraph “of a Romantic universe presided over by the potent charm of a charmless heroine who was not made to be loved.” I don’t see any active presiding or potency, any success or triumph of value. Rather the novel’s conclusion is just an outcome, earned not from agency or engagement, but by default. Yes, Fanny ‘inherits’ Mansfield Park, but the house and its family are vestiges. Without power and plans, Fanny created nothing and hence survives as a destructive villain, deserving the soulless remains of the Bertram’s legacy.
PS Love that photo!!!!!!
While Auerbach’s essay may lead me to revisit my reading of Mansfield Park I would hardly say that the revisiting includes a reevaluation or would move me to reconsider my previous distinctions of Fanny’s character. Auerbach makes deeply selective comparisons to impose circumstances of Gothic figures on the supposed villainy of Fanny Price. It may be as well to draw some conjecture between vampires and Fanny’s tendency to blush as both have something or other to do with blood, as it would be to compare her seclusion with the likes of bloodthirsty Grendel in Beowulf. The assertion that, “like the primitive Grendel, she replaces common and convivial feasting with a solitary and subtle hunger that possesses its object,” as well as any other commonality drawn between the two “villains” is infuriating. First, Fanny may be silent and sometimes incapable of expressing herself through words but she is far from “primitive.” Second, when does she ever actually act to replace a genial interaction with anything else, or rather, when does she not take pains to avoid outward conflict? Further, the concept of her solidarity can only be spoken of with respect to her society, anyone who would consider Grendel as a “subtle” actor towards (not in) Beowulf’s society is out of his or her minds. Lastly, she starves herself at her parents house rather than speak against them and in turn is saved yet again by the object she experiences (dare I venture to say a healthy amount of) jealousy or possessiveness over. Moreover, any conclusion that Auerbach draws hinges on Fanny’s absolute removal from her society. Nearly each of the villains cited do not exist within the boundaries of humanity. As opposed to seeing Fanny’s disposition as a result of her social standing, Auerbach’s argument is suspended on (not Fanny’s role as an orphan as A. asserts, but) Fanny having no standing, having no two homes or separated familial ties to be shuffled between. I believe it important to bear in mind that Mrs. Norris (the character whom the essayist cites as “enjoyed”) is later punished for having stratified the privilege of the children and placing Fanny as far outside of the family space as to shove her to its periphery. Characters may have faults in their love for Fanny (and who can lay claim to having loved entirely without fault?) – Henry superficially, Edmund dispassionately, Sir Thomas with a lack of true understanding – but I can only consider it a folly to imagine her unloved. Personally, I will always love Fanny, I consider her delicately human in all of her flaws. Dr. Frankenstein’s creation may be emotionally fragile, (and in that way, also a very loveable character), but that likeness does not make Fanny a monstrous villain.
I enjoyed the ways in which Auerbach connects Fanny to various other genres, some of which I’m slightly familiar with. One comparison that immediately caught my eye was the comparison of Fanny to romantic poetry. Auerbach claims that romantic poetry is “the fascination of the offputting” (447), and claims that this is the same for Fanny–in which I can agree. Part of my own fascination with Fanny is that she is so off putting when you compare her to the characters within Mansfield Park. Fanny takes the Catherine trope Austen establishes in Northanger Abbey of being unremarkable to an entirely new level, in that for most of the novel Fanny is just an afterthought. From the beginning of Mansfield Park, it was hard to recognize Fanny within the sea of characters introduced, and I think Auerbach would argue that her uncongeniality is the only thing that really allows her to stand out.
Secondly, the Frankenstein connection Auerbach makes is very interesting as, in comparing Fanny’s unwillingness to participate in certain endeavors with Frankenstein’s unwillingness to heed his monster’s wishes, there is suddenly a connection to the Gothic in Mansfield Park. Auerbach doesn’t stop their in that she draws a connection between the monsters needs to find a mate, with Fanny’s own need to find a “brother-mate.” Furthermore, Auerbach highlighting Franny’s misery, which we see from the very beginning when she is traveling with Mrs.Norris to Mansfield Park, adds another connection to the Gothic as well. Auerbach labels her as a killjoy because of this, and what I enjoyed about this connection is that it finally gives Fanny a role in the novel for me as a reader. I agree with Auerbach in that Fanny is harder to travel with than some of Austen’s other protagonists like Emma, but it seems this is purposeful on Austen’s part. Auerbach says “Mansfield Park tilts away from commonality in part because it breaks the code established by Jane Austen’s other novels. Few of us could read Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, or even Emma, without liking the heroines enough to “travel with them,”” (446). In Austen doing this I’ve come to find Fanny’s uncongeniality to be her strong suit, in that you are meant to be fascinated with her because of this–especially if you are familiar with some of Austen’s other works where her heroines are more reflections of their time period than anything.
Reading Auerbach’s essay about the heroine of Fanny Price, I will admit was a bit shocking at times. I agree with Cedeem’s point that one of the most intriguing aspects about this essay was the Romantic and Gothic references, Shelley’s “Frankenstein” being the most interesting for me. That being said, I cannot bring myself to completely agree with the argument that Auerbach is making. I do think this essay looks at the novel through a very Gothic point of view, Auerbach stating how Fanny’s sensibility can be shocking, allowing that “there is something horrible about her, something that deprives the imagination of its appetite fir ordinary life, and compels it toward the deformed, the dispossessed (447)”. Being someone who is passionate about darker, gothic novels, I still cannot agree with Auerbach’s point here and I find it in general hard to assign this novel under the umbrella of Gothic. It was interesting because even thinking back to the first few paragraph’s of this essay when Auerbach states “Yet, from the cacophony of marriages with which it begins, to the depressed union which it ends, “Mansfield Park” is unlikeable (445)”. After finishing this novel, I felt the exact opposite about this comment and the character of Fanny who Auerbach continues to find fault with throughout this essay.
I started off reading this novel very confused at the point Austen was making when she decides to put Fanny in the background and why she would assign this role to her heroine. It took me until the very last page of the book to realize and appreciate the love I believe Austen had for this character. The subtle hints and passive comments that made this heroine so unique, I disagree with Auerbach in that I believe this is to be the characters strength. I never felt more connected with any of the other characters we have read so far as I did with Fanny.
One of the most fascinating scenes for me in the novel is when Fanny and William return home. I also think this is where Auerbach is wrong in her essay on how Fanny is depicted. Auerbach states, “Fanny is a more indigestible figure than these wistful waifs, for whom embracing their kin is secular salvation (454)”. Once again the language Auerbach assigns Fanny such as “indigestible” is so off-base to me and I think does a great disservice to how this heroine should be read. I think this section of both novel and essay has a great deal to do with both family ties and class. The realization that Fanny has when she returns home, I find, to be one of the most self-realizing but also self-gratifying times in the novel in respect to Fanny finding her identity and place.
In Nina Auerbach’s essay, “Feeling as One Ought about Fanny Price,” Auerbach argues not only that the novel’s heroine Fanny Price is unlikeable, but that she is in fact a Romantic monster, with the running thread of the essay being the comparison between Fanny and Frankenstein’s creature. Auerbach draws comparison between Fanny and Victor’s creature’s isolation, their looking in longingly on family life, their cravings for not just a mate, but one that functions as both a spouse and a sibling figure. According to Auerbach these characters are both joyless and on the outside looking in, and this leads them to wreak havoc upon the people around them. And while this villainizing of Fanny Price can be read as a bit dramatic, I actually agree, seeing the parallels the characters run, and yielding my own disappointment at the end of the novel. While I find it completely understandable that Fanny is an outsider, and does not take action within Mansfield Park, as she was ripped away from her home as a child, and raised with the constant reminder that she is not of the same status and worth as her cousins, I do agree with Auerbach’s criticisms. Another interesting point raised by Auerbach is that Fanny is unlikeable to the reader, as she does not experience the great love that Austen’s other heroine’s do. This is a point I completely agree with, as I never got on board with Edmund and Fanny’s relationship in the novel. Edmund and Mary Crawford’s relationship was full of passion, with the characters being able to actually hold a conversation, argue, challenge and stimulate each other. Whereas the relationship between Fanny and Edmund was stale, bland, and completely void of romance. It is repeated in the text by Austen, this point of Edmund shaping all of Fanny’s thoughts and opinions, and this is the basis of their entire dynamic. Fanny basically just serves as a yes man for Edmund, and I do not see how the two could possibly hold each other’s interests for the rest of their lives. Like Auerbach I completely can see Fanny as being an antagonist of sorts in Mansfield Park. She arrives to a happy, well off family, and in the end they are all banished and unwell, while she is left as the sole survivor amongst a bleak feeling Mansfield Park, with all of the energy and joy sucked away.
Before deep-diving into the essay, I always take a look at the title to see If It means anything. In this case, The title hints at the focus of the essay and unlikeness of Fanny Price (Ought Meaning criticizing one’s actions.)
After reading Nina Auerbach’s exposition, “Jane Austen’s Dangerous Charm: Feeling as One Ought About Fanny Price” about a couple of times and trying to analyze. Auerbach talks all Fanny Price, Jane Austen Mansfield Park, nothing like the other heroines, can be seen as a Monster/Creature ( Gothic Reference). The Gothic References came in strong towards the start of the essay. Auerbach refers to Fanny as a Classic Monster, Frankenstein, and many others. In comparison, to Frankenstein, Fanny is clearly not a monster which is an observation I probably would not make right away. Fanny Price is hard to understand in a lot of ways. For Example, “Their Flamboyant willfulness may seem utterly alien to this frail, clinging and seemingly passive girl who annoys above all by her shyness, but like the, she is magnetically unconvival, a spoiler of ceremonies.” (447) This statement talks about the shyness of Fanny and what’s it likes to be around her. Throughout the book, Fanny can see be seen or come off as Villian or such a silent killer in the presence. Another Example,” Like Frankenstein and his monster, those spirits of solitude, Fanny is like a kill-joy, a blighter of ceremonies and divider of families.”This also is another statement that adds to It.
Furthermore, While reading I came across that Fanny is totally more of just that person in the background, discovered the Edmund and Mary Crawford relationship, Fanny and Edmund’s relationship, and more.
In the end, This was a very interesting piece which I had to read a couple of times to really understand some aspects of It. There’s are few lines that stuck with me and It goes “Only in Mansfield Park does Jane Austen force us to experience the discomfort of a Romantic universe presided over by the potent charm of a charmless heroine who was not made to be loved.”
Auerbach strikes an interesting point on the uncanny similarities between Fanny Price and gothic monsters like Frankenstein’s creature and Dracula. I think this is interesting because this point brought up how there is an underlying theme of unique loneliness and isolation present, perhaps more so than in any other work by Austen.
The essay continues to support this connection between Fanny and monsterkind with examples of Fanny’s behavior towards socializing, home plays, family life, eating, and romance.
One point that I thought initially may have been a point of contradiction was the statment made by Auerbach that Fanny is a “frail, clinging, and seemingly passive girl who annoys above all her shyness”, with a later statment describing her as “magnetically unconvival” as well. Unconvival is the opposite of convival, which is to be jovial. The root definition comes from the meaning to be fit for a feast. Fanny, while not outwardly excited or dynamic as a character, is actually strangely present and alive, just like the gothic creatures, almost nocturnal. However, Fanny is not outwardly disagreeable or unfit, as it were, for a feast. If no one notices her, how can she be
Auerbach strikes an interesting point on the uncanny similarities between Fanny Price and gothic monsters like Frankenstein’s creature and Dracula. I think this is interesting because this point brought up how there is an underlying theme of unique loneliness and isolation present, perhaps more so than in any other work by Austen.
The essay continues to support this connection between Fanny and monsterkind with examples of Fanny’s behavior towards socializing, home plays, family life, eating, and romance.
One point that I thought initially may have been a point of contradiction was the statment made by Auerbach that Fanny is a “frail, clinging, and seemingly passive girl who annoys above all her shyness”, with a later statment describing her as “magnetically unconvival” as well. Unconvival is the opposite of convival, which is to be jovial. The root definition comes from the meaning to be fit for a feast. However, Fanny is not outwardly disagreeable or unfit, as it were, for a feast. If she is not noticable in the first place, how can she be a “blighter of ceremonies and a divider of families”?
I later went back and thought about why the word uncovival would be used here, and I made a connection to how Fanny, while not outwardly excited or dynamic as a character, is actually strangely passively present and alive, just like the gothic creatures, almost nocturnal. This statue like living alone is what qualifies her as an uncovival being. If you were gathered with a group of your friends and one was never really part of the conversation or activity but always watching, wouldn’t it naturally be weird?
Regardless of your opinion on Fanny Price, this piece is powerful. I have never felt such an urge to reread the book being discussed to see if I had accidentally missed key plot points. Her arguments are so jarring to the point where I felt bad for a fictional character. However, I do not agree with her delivery.
I am not a fan of Fanny Price and I don’t think anyone who reads the novel is supposed to be. Yet, comparing her to monsters from other genres was a bit much for me. She alludes to Frankenstein’s monster as well as Grendel from Beowulf. While Auerbach made valid points, the almost aggressive nature of her argument seemed to take away from the validity. She focuses in on Fanny’s behavior of being a “killjoy, a blighter of ceremonies and divider of families” (448). She completely ignores the reasoning behind Fanny’s attitude: class and privilege. She acts like a black sheep because essentially, she is one. Her wealthy cousins take her in as some sort of charitable act. She’s considered to be dull but this is not something she could help. Her socioeconomic status forces her to focus on things other than sashes and French. Austen deliberately made Fanny Price noticeable different than her other heroines because it is rooted more in the societal issues of class and wealth.
Her reaction to the play is maybe not the best but I don’t believe it was malicious in the way that Auerbach describes it. She isn’t prudish about theater itself but rather cared more for Sir Thomas’s reaction to the said play. She’s always trying to not offend anyone, which is another characteristic of her poor upbringing. The Bertram children have no such worries as they do as they please. Fanny is constantly be reminded of her status and tries everything to not be a bother to people by staying silent and out of the way.
Auerbach’s arguments are rooted in agreeable points but I don’t believe Fanny Price to be the villain that she’s described as.
I took exception to much of what Auerbach wrote about Fanny Price, because I like Fanny. No, she is not the most expressive or active person in the world, but she is also not a soul-sucking villain. Soul sucking villains, in my experience, are never passive. The whole essay reads like a consumer who’s angry that her favorite author wrote a genre other than the one she likes. Mansfield Park is not a comedy—though I laughed—and it makes one realize that sitting back and watching the drama unfold is sometimes the best option. If that’s the case, then Auerbach saying that “Fanny plays a role as ambiguous as the reader’s own” (448) is accurate, for we can only judge and internalize without influencing.
Speaking of not influencing, Auerbach classes Fanny as an outsider, going so far as to compare her to Frankenstein’s monster (455) and Beowolf’s Grendel (449). Auerbach writes “That dynamic mis reader Emma Woodhouse is forced by her own misconstructions into the limited position of actor in the comedy she is trying to control from without, while fanny’s role as omniscient outsider thrives on her continued abstention.” This is where Auerbach’s conveniently ignores issues of class. Unlike Emma, Fanny is not the mistress of her house, she did not grow up with any privilege of free speech, she is basically a handmaiden. This doesn’t focus Auerbach’s point, but rather limits it, as the comparisons to Frankenstein’s monster and Grendel becomes that they are outsiders, not by any choice of their own, but by how they are treated and by their environments. If Fanny identifies herself as an outsider, it only because her relatives have never let her forget that she is. Because she is not accepted by the family, she has no liberties, she has never been taught that she has a right to interfere in any family affair, and so has learned not to.
Fanny’s refusal to act seems like a sore point with Auerbach. She compares Fanny to Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Hamlet as nonactive (450), but Fanny’s refusal to act calls to mind Penelope in The Odyssey. Her power lies in doing nothing, as does Fanny’s.
Finally, the idea that Fanny is unlikeable: “If two wooing men cannot manage to love fanny…then surely the reader never will,” (452). I liked Fanny better than Emma, because she is a window into the drama of the others, which I rather enjoyed. Fanny was a nicer representation of the reader; I laughed at everyone’s misfortune. The ending, I found, realistic. Not everyone marries for love, and not having passion does not mean the absence of love. Edmund and Fanny may not be bright and hot, but a slow burn that will last a long time perfectly suits their religious tastes.
Auerbach, while bringing a lot of new points and details to my attention, doesn’t really alter my view on Fanny Price too much. While she may not have been my favorite character in the novel, she certainly, I feel, was not as dislikable as Auerbach makes her seem.
What caught my eye the most about this piece was Auerbach’s comparison of Fanny to Frankenstein. Perhaps that connection was originally outside of my academic scope but now introduced to it, I completely agree and feel that by making the comparison, shared traits between Fanny and Frankenstein, that are more bluntly present in Frankenstein, allow a deeper insight into Fanny Price’s character. “Fanny exists like Frankenstein as a silent, censorious all” is a great way of introducing the comparisons. They are both not the most outwardly cheerful of characters in their respective stories (despite their subtle expressions) as well as not showing an eagerness in finding a romantic partner. Fanny is completely satisfied thinking she has found a “brother” in Edmund. Frankenstein isn’t looking for a wife but rather a partner to go through life with. They also share similar feelings of being an outsider or in exile from their own versions of what family means to them. It’s a truly different and unique loneliness that can only come from being in that type of isolation. To me, they both don’t initially come across as the most likable of characters, however, by the end of Mansfield Park and Frankenstein, I did grow in some positive way of feeling towards them. Perhaps empathy or pity or just relatability but by the end, I disliked them much less than I did initially and while that’s not exactly the point Auerbach is making here, it’s the conclusion I have found for myself from it.
Possibly the biggest point of disagreeable for me was summed up at the end by Auerbach: “Only in Mansfield Park does Jane Austen force us to experience the discomfort of a Romantic universe presided over by the potent charm of a charmless heroine who was not made to be loved.” I have to really disagree that Fanny was not made to be loved. From my own reading and interpretation, Austen choosing to make Fanny her heroine and the central character of her novel implies a sense of likability to her. Austen clearly liked her enough to develop her and tell her story in Mansfield Park. Austen does not do it with a negative or spiteful tone but in the same way she has for all of her other “likeable” characters. Fanny is just a little different because real women are different. There is not just one type of woman or heroine that is going to suit every novel or every life in the real world. There is nothing so bad about Fanny that Auerbach needs to criticize her so aggressively as if Fanny has personally attacked her.
I found Auerbach’s analysis of fanny price to be quite interesting. The way fanny maneuvers herself throughout the novel keeps with you until the end. Each character starts with a much higher position than fanny. Her cousins are society belle’s, William and Edmund are starting there careers and fanny is on the bottom. Slowly you start to see her gain more and more as her cousins begin to digs themselves further into a hole. Her relationship with Edmund is particularly fascinating. Whereas many of Austen’s other relationships are almost like a dance, there relationship seems to be that of codependency. I don’t believe it’s vampiric like Auerbach but there is a parasitic nature to it.
I also believe that Auerbach skirted around the issue of class because the idea of fanny as a sort of creature is devoid of class. Auerbach referenced Beowulf and in Beowulf the demon Grendel prayed on everyone peasant or noble. It was only through the uniting of all people were they able to defeat Grendel. It’s actually interesting how in Mansfield Park the lack of discipline and disunity amongst her cousins is what led her to overtaking there position in the manor, the same thing that led the kingdom to the slaying of Grendel in Beowulf.
In reference to the gothic, It’s easy to imagine Fanny as almost like a ghost or a spirit that haunts the manor. All of the residents have long since left the manor. Throughout the book she is almost a ghost. She rarely makes her presence known and is always in the background lurking. They even make note of her pale skin, a color typically associated with ghosts. Even when spoken too, it’s almost like she doesn’t even respond. She’s not reactive most of theme, even in cases when she is triumphant she choses to disengage herself rather than have any true expression.
Well I’m not the biggest fan of going against the grain for the sake of just being a contrarianism, I do believe that Auerbach’s words come from a place of honest criticism. Her belief that Fanny’s portrayal in the story wasn’t as feminists really challenge what I believed to be an accurate portrayal of a more introverted protagonist. but her arguments seem to laboring under the idea that there is a set way of writing heroes and that they must be reading must be written as bold, likable, and “girly” all the time and unfortunately Fanny does not fall into that stereotype. She’s a more subdued and introverted person. There’s nothing wrong with that but I think I’ll Auerbach thinks there is and completely misses the point of her character. She goes as far as to call “Fanny’s refusal to act is a criticism not just of art, but of life as well” and and seems to actively target her throughout the rest of the review. I would argue that this is a very slippery slope because if we begin to target her character for being boring compared to other heroes at the time then we limit ourselves to the potential of other softer and more quieter heroes. We wouldn’t have some of the most iconic protagonist of our times and silent heroes that we know of today. Also I’d like to just point out the comparison of the monsters like vampires and Frankenstein does not necessarily make her a bad person because in a lot of versions of their tales, they were tragic heroes as well (Especially Fankie) sooo…yeah. Bad example.
From the very first page of Auerbach’s essay, she makes her opinions of Mansfield Park very clear saying, “from the cacophony of marriages with which it begins, to the depressed union which ends it, Mansfield Park is unlikable (Auerbach 1).” This statement quickly confirmed the reason why so many find the essay, “Feeling as One Ought to about Fanny Price”, controversial. Personally, I found Mansfield Park to be more intriguing and enjoyable to read compared to other novels we read by Austen.
Auerbach fixates on the faults in Fanny Price’s character, she describes Fanny as silent, stubborn and less appealing than Austen’s other heroines (Auerbach 2). From the beginning of Mansfield Park, I felt Fanny Price’s character to be more relatable than the heroines of Austen’s other novels. Fanny’s character is an unlikely heroine, but I do not agree that she is an unlikable one. Unlike other heroines, Fanny is a character introduced as insignificant, and seen as below average by majority of the novel’s other characters. Despite this initial impression of the heroine’s insignificance, Fanny is arguably the most complicated character in the novel. She is one who portrays limited social interaction but possesses a depth that is undeniably both confusing and intriguing.
Although I do not entirely agree with Auerbach’s approach to analyzing the heroine of Mansfield Park, I do appreciate her comparison to Fanny’s character and the genre of romantic poetry. Auerbach says, “One motive power of Romantic poetry is the fascination of the uncongenial (Auerbach 3).” I agree that, like romantic poetry, Fanny’s uncongenial semblance is what readers find most fascinating about her. Fanny’s unlikeliness to be liked, her shyness and ‘isolating sensibility’ are what makes Fanny such a notable character. In a novel saturated with complacent characters, Fanny’s unremarkable characteristics are what make her remarkable.