Feels great to get back to the Nabokov…you'll be seeing a LOT this week, readers, just giving you fair warning.
48
Once Fanny is in Portsmouth, the entire structure of the book changes, as the letters between Fanny, Mary, and others are now no longer social correspondence but exchanges of information. Nabokov calls the conveying of important narrative points through letters a "dismal" characteristic of the 18th-Century English and French novel. "Dismal" may be too strong a word. Using letters could result in horrid contrivance, as it did for that early visionary of the novel, Samuel Richardson. Richardson's Pamela and Clarissa were both told entirely through letters, and the latter's sex-and-violence-filled action reads a bit ridiculous at this point. However, there is an argument for adopting the format. With the postal service becoming easier and cheaper each decade, the literate, fiction-reading classes were used to long letters to far-off friends and enjoyed writing them (there are references in Trollope about various techniques on how to fill up an entire sheet of paper) and reading them (The Life of Samuel Johnson and its strong-selling predecessors contained a bulk of Johnsonian correspondence). Thus, if a ground-breaking novelist wanted a way to make the new long-form style accessible, to ease people in, using a method familiar and popular with his or her audience was a wise choice, no matter how much havoc it played with realism.
49
It is possible that if Edmund had married Mary and Henry had kept up his suit and good behavior, Fanny would have ended up with him in the end. Fanny does develop a kinder opinion of Henry during his visit to Portsmouth, as he is warm and attentive to her every need and change of mood, unlike her family…whom he works his charm on as well. But as Austen says, for Fanny, "the pleasure of talking of Mansfield was so very great!" Fanny's feelings are quite possibly influenced by her longing for Mansfield Park, and Henry, while not the best reminder of that place, is still a bringer of better memories for Fanny, which would be enough to well-dispose her to anyone. If they had made a commitment and returned to Mansfield and society, how long might Henry have kept this good behavior up, considering what happens as soon as he leaves Portsmouth? Nabokov also glances over Mary's continual disdain of Edmund's values, which by this point no wooing could win over. He might have been looking for a last bit of good narrative development and suspense before a conclusion he despised.
"The novel, which shows signs of disintegrating, now lapses more and more into the easy epistolary form. This is a sure sign of a certain weariness on the part of the author when she takes recourse in such an easy form." Austen may have been weary, as a certain remark a few pages hence will show, but I can think of another reason. The "most shocking event" in the novel is now approaching: Maria and Henry running off together. Austen spent most of Volume I railing against her characters for their impropriety. Would such an author be able to narrate these parts with integrity? Why not have the telling of these deeds go to the flighty Mary and the newspapers, thus freeing her from having to describe the action?
50
Fanny's reaction to Edmund's assertion of continuing love for Mary is an early example of stream-of-consciousness or interior monologue. Not quite the way Virginia Woolf and James Joyce would apply it, as Fanny's thoughts are always centered in her distaste for Mary. But the non-stop rush of flowing, thematically linked sentences racing from condemnation to a self-crucifying urge that Edmund ask her to marry him and be done with it are written in almost exactly the same style. Has anyone else besides Nabokov noticed this?
51
With Tom's illness taking up his time, Edmund does not declare his intentions to Mary. "Nothing but obstacles, which he SEEMS TO KEEP IN HIS OWN PATH, cross their relationship." (Caps mine) My original note on the subject was "very convenient." Austen, skilled novelist she is, keeps creating situations which sympathetic Edmund nobly gives his attention to, distracting him from Mary. However, and please ignore the fact that I first learned about this from an episode of Frasier, there is a psychological condition where people consciously tell the world they want to do one thing and take steps to follow this desire, but in their subconscious have a different need to fulfill and so keep tripping themselves up in pursuit of the goal. Might Edmund, having always felt the sympathy between himself and Fanny, have a subconscious mixing well with his pure instincts which keeps him from taking the final step with Mary? Both the narrative and mental solutions to the problem are, I feel, feasible.
52
Fanny finds out about Henry and Maria's elopement from a newspaper—essentially the same as a letter—read by her father in the sitting room: "in a dirty room…dirty news." Part of Austen's genius is how, like in a play, she finds the most appropriate settings for her actions. The first romantic intrigues occur in the Sotherton "wilderness," the Crawfords decide about their futures while playing a high-stakes card game in the rectory, etc. And Nabokov's griping has a ring of truth, for the newspaper in these centuries was much more conversational, personal, opinionated, and sensational compared to now. In fact, tonally the old papers dealt with their readers along lines similar to People, US, and their offspring, only Joseph Addison was trafficking in ideas, not gossip.
Nabokov estimates that Austen would have needed 500 more pages to document the Crawford and Bertram romances in Volume III with the similar detail she used in Volume I. "Too much [happens] behind the scenes…this letter-writing business is a shortcut of no great artistic merit." I wish Austen had spent 500 more pages on these scenes, but she had a limit of time and length, and more stories to tell. I would like to get a peak at her notebooks and diaries to see if there were initial plans for an expanded Mansfield Park, if she let the sweep of the story get away from her. Agreeing with Nabokov, this letter-writing is a disappointment after the variety of styles and language in the first two volumes, but I am not prepared to say this was not Austen's design from the beginning. Again, Austen might conceivably have not wanted to write about such goings-on…for instance, Tom's illness is venereal disease if one follows the context, but she never says so…and having the now-not-that-likable Mary and others tell the story for her may have been comfortable for her. Also, Fanny is the audience/author stand-in. No major event is fully described unless she is personally bearing witness to it. So if she's in Portsmouth while her friends and "enemies" are elsewhere, there is no sensible way under the narrative logic to fully tell the story...and Fanny has to go to Portsmouth so there can be distance between her and Henry which will cause him to give up his efforts, resume his old habits, and clear the path for the happy ending…and Fanny would not have been summoned out of Portsmouth after Henry left because Sir Thomas hoped time away from Mansfield Park would tilt her mind in Henry's favor. Again, narrative logic. It's not the best narrative logic, but hasn't Nabokov said that in a story a character can behave however they want and any action can happen as long as everything makes sense IN THAT PARTICULAR STORY'S WORLD?
55
There is a "slight suggestion of incest" when Edmund chooses Fanny as his wife. But only slight. Yes, they were raised to think of each other as brother and sister, but in Austen's opinion this seems to make them only more suitable for each other, knowing each other inside out and ready to be compatible with each other to the best of their abilities.
56
"Life, for all the characters, runs a smooth course. God, so to speak, takes over." Nabokov makes this disparaging observation after bemoaning how it upsets the careful attention to detail Austen used in documenting the characters' foibles in the preceding volumes. Yates's fortune is a bit too tidy an affair, but since Mansfield Park is structured like a play, the return to a peaceful, improved status quo at the end is fine Structure for Austen, who even recreates the inciting incident by placing the devoted Susan at Lady Bertram's side when Fanny goes off to be a wife and mother.
From here, Nabokov moves on to some more general thoughts…
No comments:
Post a Comment