Fanny's Character in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park

Jane Austen's Mansfield Park is a colorful novel of character, a study of the development of individuals as figures in a complex of emotional, social, and political tapestry. In her attempt to portray characters as figures, Austen fails to animate these characters with the life and passion that makes a character stand out in a work of literary art. Fanny Price of Mansfield Park is the ultimate example of Austen's rare capacity to create colorfully insubstantial character, full of quirks but lacking inner depth. Fanny Price not only lacks passion, but has no comprehension of passion, either objectively or subjectively. The novel's apparent lack of passion results from the alliance of the narrator to the perspective of Fanny.

One of the most common criticisms of Fanny's character involves her lack of assertion or initiative in the determination of her own fate. Feminist criticisms fail when the blame the structure of her society for its limitations of her freedom because the source of her problem lies in Austen's formulation of her character. Indeed, Fanny agrees that "I could not act any thing if you were to give me the world. No, indeed, I cannot act" (122). The acting of the play provides an opportunity for the reader to compare Fanny's character in the novel with those of others. Each of the actors, even Edmund, eagerly participates in the production of the play, quite contrary to the known feelings of Sir Bertram on the subject. Fanny alone maintains her objection to the play, not on moral grounds for she is too timid to have any developed sense of morality, but because she lacks any sense of her own character. Whatever trace of life she has Fanny draws from those around her: "Her eyes brightened at the sight of Edmund" (127). Fanny looks to Edmund for moral direction, looking to his profile "to see" if she "could catch any of his counsel" (127).

Fanny's lack of passion is counter-defined by Mary Crawford ebullience of passion. Indeed, Mary has "the same energy of character" as her brother (59), the immature and impetuous Henry. In contrast, Fanny's idea of a good time includes sitting "in the shade on a fine day, and [looking] upon verdure" (80).

If there is any hint of passionate response in the novel, such response does not come from Fanny. As shallow and insubstantial a character as he is, Henry Crawford at least is familiar with human emotion. With adolescent fervor, he passionately seeks to capture Fanny's heart. His plan is "to make Fanny Price in love with me" (191). Sir Thomas names Fanny's deficiency: "I am half inclined to think, Fanny, that you do not quite know your own feelings" (261).

Indeed, Fanny is so much an emotional and moral void, she feels threatened when the order of her world is shifted, as when she moves from Mansfield Park back to her family at Portsmouth. She laments the loss of "consideration of times and seasons, [the] regulation of subject, [the] propriety, [the] attention towards everybody which there was not" in her parents' house (317). Indeed, Fanny is defined by the novel by her relationships with other character, while other characters are people unto themselves. Edmund, as her tutor, has "taught [Fanny] to think and feel" (95). She disguises her lack of self as being "too humble" and fails to consider herself a part of the family with whom she has grown up and experienced life (148). So void of the feeling and thought that makes a character real, she is "all surprise and embarrassment" when any attention turns towards her, especially after the ball (179). She can not be the center of attention because she has no "center" to which one can be attentive. Near the end of the novel, when she should have grown and matured, "Fanny's friendship was all that [Edmund] had to sling to" (379), implying that Fanny's personal void of personality is infectious. As readers, we are inclined to lament the inevitable descent into ennui that married life with Fanny must certainly predict.

Charlotte Brontë is correct her assertion that "Passions were perfectly unknown" to Jane Austen. Mansfield Park fails to generate passionate within its cast of characters, but, inadvertently generates that passion in its readers. Since its publication, the novel has angered, bored, and challenged readers to look for something more in the text. The unique brilliance of this particular novel is the radical way in which the book teases and taunts the reader's expectations of character. The novel leads the reader on, seduces him or her, until he or she simple fumes that there is nothing more to be read. The novel elicits passion because the novel is void of passion: a unique symbiotic relationship masterfully contrived by Austen.

Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. New York: Penguin Group, 1996.