Austen and The Woolf

“When she was laid in the cradle again she knew not only what the world looked like, but had already chosen her kingdom.”
It is unusually long for a blogpost I know but I can’t resist posting this essay in it’s entirety. Virginia Woolf’s essay on Jane Austen was published in her 1925 collection of essays [...]

Notes of E.E. Duncan Jones

“Dr Chapman has shown that Jane Austen often preferred to use or adapt proper names from other writers. An instance of this which, I believe, has not previously been noted, is that of the heroine of Mansfield Park. In The Parish Register, Part II (1807), Jane Austen’s favourite poet Crabbe had written:

Sir Edward is [...]

Impropriety by the Seaside I

Modern day readers of Jane Austen may well be baffled by the scandalous reputation of seaside resorts in Georgian Britain. The word ‘resorts’ refers not to those mega complex hotel monstrosities that can currently be seen ruining the landscape of exotic locales the world over but simply a destination that is an attraction in itself, [...]

Austen and the Picturesque. Part Four Concluded.

Beginning of Part Four here
“I like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles. I do not like crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall, straight, and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more [...]

Sex in the Park. Mansfield Park. Part Seven – Conclusion

I have to wonder if the Crawfords are not Austen’s way of offering a lesson for the reader. Their attractiveness is undeniable and the narrative informs the reader that happy marriages would have come to pass between Henry and Fanny, and Edmund and Mary had the vanity and desires of Henry not overpowered his better [...]

Sex in the Park. Mansfield Park. Part Six.

Due to his wealth, status and power, there is little in the way of physical punishment that could be handed down to Henry Crawford for his adulterous affair with Maria. Unlike his unfortunate guilty partner, there is no one with the power to shut him up in a far off cottage for the rest of [...]

Sex in the Park. Mansfield Park. Part Five.

Despite their attractiveness & appeal to everyone at Mansfield par Fanny, in Henry & Mary Crawford’s shadowy background, there always hovers the spectre of the sexual misconduct of their friends & relations. The Crawford’s parents, including the one they share with Mrs Grant, are dead and the siblings have been reared by their uncle & [...]

Sex in the Park. Mansfield Park. Part Four.

Maria Bertram is of course the character who suffers the worst change of circumstances and the most dire consequences for her sexual misdemeanors in Mansfield Park, and it is with the arrival of these dashing and careless Crawfords that she begins to act on motives of sexual attraction and jealousy. Maria has, rather understandably, no [...]

Sex in the Park. Mansfield Park. Part Three.

There is no sexual deviance under the roofs of the Mansfield rooms, naturally. Woe betide the unthinking young Master or Miss who has misbehaved under Sir Thomas’ delicate watch. The extravagant ways of his son and heir Tom Bertram causes Sir Thomas much grief, and his drinking, gambling, partying and general gadding about like a [...]

Sex in the Park. Mansfield Park. Part Two.

Even from her infancy the evils of an ill-judged sexual alliance are working against our heroine. The marriage of her aunt Lady Bertram to the wealthy baronet Sir Thomas had given rise to hopes that the other two sisters would likewise do well for themselves from the connection to a nobleman with considerable influence, power [...]

Sex in the Park. Mansfield Park. Part One.

No matter how many times I read Mansfield Park, how excellent and complete the narrative, how much I sympathise with Fanny Price, her plight, her desires, her goodness and her motives and no matter that I know that Fanny finally getting Edmund Bertram is just and ought to be gratifying, I still really want her [...]