Mansfield Park Revisited

Have had a busy Saturday, had the roots done this morning so now all blonde again, nails done, collected Aged P and took her over to a friend for the weekend, shopping and am now at home with curtains drawn against the dark and looking forward to Strictly in a bit and thought I would spend a happy half hour or so posting to Random Readers.

I have had a bit of an Austen week as you will have seen from the Sense and Sensibility post and I have also just finished reading Mansfield Park Revisited by Joan Aiken.  This was published some time ago but has just been reissued in the US by Source Books who seem to specialise in turning out beautiful editions of not only a lot of Austen sequels, but are also responsible for some gorgeous reprints of the Divine Georgette Heyer.   

I have an old copy of this book by Joan Aiken which I remember reading and not much caring for, but this time around I really enjoyed it. I can only think that back in 1985, the original publication date, I had not learned to love Mansfield Park as much as I do now.  I found Fanny Price acutely irritating and always felt that I wanted to give Edmund a kick up the backside (as I also used to do with Marianne Dashwood), I thought the novel was somewhat lacking and rather tedious and had it down as one of my least favourite Austens.  Well, since then I have totally changed my mind.  I think it is a wonderful book and the more I read it, the more I like it.  Ok, yes I can see that Fanny is still probably too good to be true for a modern reader and can at times appear priggish, but she is essentially a good person who sticks to her principles through thick and thin and ultimately gets her just reward.

In this sequel, Sir Thomas has died and his elder son is now the baronet at Mansfield Park.  Attention is needed to the property in Antigua and as it was felt that the climate out there would not be good for Tom, whose health has never been fully the same since his illness, Edmund and Fanny embark on the voyage thus removing them neatly from the scene and leaving the way clear for the reader to concentrate on Susan, Fanny's younger sister who came to live at Mansfield at the end of the Austen novel.  She is much more fearless than Fanny, less shy and nervous and has made her mark at Mansfield and settled in well.  Out of the blue a letter arrives from Mary Crawford, who has been unhappily married, is now ill and who wishes to come and stay in the environs of Mansfield Park for the summer to convalesce.  This letter is, of course, addressed to Fanny but arrives after she has gone and it is with some trepidation that Susan goes to meet this notorious and fascinating person and gradually falls under her spell as do all who meet with her, including Tom.

Mansfield Park Revisited is really a rehabilitation of the Crawfords.  I, personally, always liked the Crawfords and, while the reader notes Mary's shallowness and her lack of proper thinking on certain matters, her charm and vivacity maker her most attractive not only to Edmund, but to the reader.  Her most likeable aspect was her support of Fanny and how she very much disliked Aunt Norris's attitude and treatment of someone she viewed as an interloper. She appreciates Fanny more and more and, in turn, so does Henry who professes to love her.  There was a time when reading Mansfield Park that I felt it would have been a good idea to have Fanny marry Henry Crawford and I do sometimes wonder if Jane Austen felt the same.  In Revisited we learn that the gossip of him persuading Maria to leave her husband and run away with him was spread by her when he turned her down and he was more sinned against than sinning.

Mary is seriously ill and is not going to get better and her last summer is spent at Mansfield where she forms a close friendship with Susan, makes Tom fall in love with her a little, in order she says to make him behave better when the right woman for him comes along ("My art, like the potter's guiding hand, has transformed Tom into something more approaching a useful domestic vessel; some female unknown to me will, in future, have cause to thank me though by that time I shall be long forgotten"), leaves what little she has to Susan so that she will not be wholly dependent on the Bertrams and generally makes the reader fall in love with her too.  Henry appears to be a loving brother with excellent qualities which only now come to the fore and by the end of this sequel the Crawfords had proved themselves to be much nicer characters than we have been led to believe.

I thoroughly enjoyed my re-read Mansfield Park Revisited.  Joan Aiken avoids the main trap of any Austen sequel or prequel in over egging the style of writing and speech which make some of this genre so difficult to swallow, and I found the fascination of this story all over again.  It has now made me feel that I would like to revisit Mansfield Park myself.  In the end, I found myself liking Mary Crawford enormously and feeling for her as her illness drew to its inevitable conclusion.

A lovely book and one that I found I could not put down and really wanted to finish even though I knew the ending, always a sign of an enjoyable and absorbing read.  And the ending?  Well, it is a happy one despite Mary Crawford's demise and proves just how well the transplanted Fanny and Susan Price have settled in Mansfield.  I won't say any more....

Joan Aiken has not stopped at Mansfield Park.  She is the author of Emma Watson (which completes the fragment of The Watsons), Eliza's Daughter a sequel to Sense and Sensibility, and Jane Fairfax, a companion read to Emma.  I am not sure these are still in print, my copies have been on my shelves for some years, and it would be wonderful if Source books Inc turned their attention to these as well.  They are worth keeping an eye out for and reading.  Joan Aiken wrote these sequels and companion reads to Austen long before the Firth Factor made everyone an Austen fanatic and before the explosion of all Austen related literature and, in my opinion, they are among the best.

PS - Harriet Devine over on her lovely blog, has just posted about this as well so do have a read. We are both in accord on our opinion of this delightful book:  Harriet's post

Comments

[Harriet]

By coincidence I have also read (and blogged about) this book this week. I also loved it to bits, though I was a bit disappointed by the final outcome -- can't say more of course but I had high hopes of a different one. I'm sure you will know what I mean.

[Elaine Simpson-Long]

Harriet - I have just read your post on this and agree with everything you say, including the ending. I can guess which ending you wanted and so did I!

[Darlene]

I just can't bring myself to read any Jane Austen sequels. I see the books, know I'd probably love them and then I get the feeling my fingers would burn if I touched one!