Women have so many choices these days that it may be challenging to know just what it is that we really want. Yet it is amazing how many times we, as women, take advice from men on how to be better women! Let’s change that right now.
Here are three remarkable women, Jane Austen, Willa Cather and Zora Neale Hurston, writing at the height of their powers about finding mates, making friends, and fashioning independent lives. Their heroines, Fanny, Alexandra and Janie, have something to show us about blooming where you are planted, creating a good life out of less-than-perfect options, and cherishing the people you meet along the way. That’s chick-lit for grown-ups.
A Woman of Integrity:
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
Jane Austen is a serious reader’s writer. By serious reader I don’t mean those who pick up a best seller on vacation and breeze through it. I mean the type of reader that lives partly in the real world, and partly in an imaginary world peopled with characters from myriads of books devoured through the years. This kind of reader sometimes has difficulty remembering whether Emma Woodhouse is a fictional character, or a former college roommate. Jane Austen’s novels, with their wealth of detail and finely drawn characters, offer a feast of delights for the serious reader; people like you and me. One of the lesser known Austen novels, Mansfield Park was published in 1814, just after Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. The least well-known of the novels, it is a study in manners and morals, and how one may, in Hamlet’s words, “smile and smile and still be a villain.”
Synopsis
Mansfield Park is the Cinderella story of a poor girl who is brought into a great family as an act of charity, and ends by inheriting the central position as mistress of the estate. Fanny Price is an unusual heroine, defined more by her inaction than her actions. She comes to live with her cousins, the cruel shallow sisters Maria and Julia, the drunken wastrel Tom and serious, kind Edmund. Predictably, Fanny worships Edmund and their friendship deepens through the years. Mr. Bertram, the patriarch of the family, leaves for Antigua on business just as some intriguing new neighbors arrive in the area. Henry and Mary Crawford bring a sense of sophistication and a questionable morality to the gathering, and they inspire the group to put on a play in the father’s absence. In a confusing triangle, Maria falls for Henry, Henry pursues Fanny (who is in love with Edmund) while Edmund falls in love with Mary.
Fanny resolutely resists participation in the questionable play, and resists Henry’s advances as well. Edmund, however, falls more deeply in love with Mary, though she is clearly his moral inferior. When Mr. Bertram returns suddenly, the play is canceled. Time goes on and Edmund, who wants to enter the clergy, begins to see that Mary’s amorality will not change. Maria marries and moves away, and Fanny rejects Henry’s proposal, causing her Uncle to send her back to her miserable home. Suddenly, several things happen in quick succession. Henry and Maria run away together briefly, then he abandons her. Julia marries a friend of his, and Tom comes home gravely ill from his life of dissipation. Mary’s reaction to these events shows her true lack of character, and Fanny’s strength. Edmund ends the relationship, Tom dies, and eventually Edmund and Fanny marry.
What Makes it Great
Austen’s novels are mini-masterpieces of construction. Each character is distinct, interesting, and unforgettable, and the plot unfolds with the help of creative staging. Here, in an artistic masterstroke and with an obvious nod to Hamlet, Austen borrows Shakespeare’s device of the play within a play. Fanny’s wealthy cousins and their naughty guests prepare to stage a play, “Lover’s Vows,” in their father’s absence, and through this process truths are revealed about their duplicitous natures that will influence the remainder of the drama. Like young Hamlet, Fanny refuses to act, either in the play or in the backstage dramas that surround it, but keenly observes the actions of those around her, and forms her opinions about whom to trust.
Modern critics have found much to discuss in Mansfield Park, from Lord Bertram’s involvement in the slave trade to the troubled relationships in Fanny’s immediate family. As always Austen touches lightly upon sensitive issues without hammering them. Take, for example, her examination of the effect of Fanny’s years at the Bertram estate on her feelings for her family. When, after several years’ absence from her humble home, Fanny returns to her parents and siblings in Portsmouth, she expects to find simple happiness in her poor family. Instead, she is appalled by their coarse manners. This is no romanticized English peasant cottage, but a dirty, depressing hovel that literally nauseates its former inhabitant:
Did You Know?
Like many authors, Jane Austen gave her manuscripts to family and friends for review. Here is what her brother and sister-in-law had to say about Mansfield Park:
“We certainly do not think it as a whole, equal to P. & P. [Pride and Prejudice]—but it has many & great beauties. Fanny is a delightful Character! and Aunt Norris is a great favourite of mine. The Characters are natural & well supported, & many of the Dialogues excellent.—You need not fear the publication being considered as discreditable to the talents of it’s Author.”
“She sat in a blaze of oppressive heat, in a cloud of moving dust; and her eyes could only wander from the walls marked by her father’s head, to the table cut and knotched by her brothers, where stood the tea-board never thoroughly cleaned, the cups and saucers wiped in streaks, the milk a mixture of motes floating in thin blue, and the bread and butter growing every minute more greasy than even Rebecca’s hands had first produced it.” (pp. 362-3)
Wealth and education have created a new Fanny Price, who, like Eliza Doolittle, is still poor but is now unfit for a life of poverty. She must determine a new sense of self. For a woman at the turn of the eighteenth century this could only be accomplished through marriage. Like Cinderella, Fanny must be rescued by the handsome prince, and Austen does not disappoint us. Mansfield Park is a fascinating study of English life and manners, with wonderful insights into the role of the English clergy in that society. It examines the role of money in our lives, showing how the exposure to wealth and education change our expectations and even our emotional ties. The clever use of playacting in the story reveals the hypocritical character of Henry Crawford (ironically one of the most likeable characters) and illustrates the breadth of Austen’s literary powers. Finally, for those of us who are just plain addicted to romance, it’s a great story that ends with our heroine living happily ever after. For a serious reader, it doesn’t get much better than this.
Late Bloomer
During her lifetime Austen’s books were not tremendously popular. Though she is often grouped with Bronte, Dickens and Gaskell, she preceded these great Victorian authors by several decades, and thus her stories reflected a cloistered, ordered world as yet untouched by the industrial revolution. Austen’s novels are gentle rambles through great estates where the gentry have dinners, balls, and various family crises. Emma does her match making, Elizabeth Bennett spars with Mr. Darcy, and the Dashwood sisters debate the merits of various poets. In other words, not much happens. (In six novels there is a grand total of two kisses!) It took some time before these subtle stories were taken seriously or became the best sellers that they are today.
Several of Bronte’s contemporaries, however, appreciated the genius of the gentle lady’s work. Tennyson ranked Austen “next to Shakespeare.” Sir Walter Scott read her novels several times each and envied her descriptive powers, and Mrs. Gaskell (eminent Victorian author and Bronte’s biographer) was an ardent admirer. Though it is true that Austen’s emotions are as tightly circumscribed as her plots (hemmed in by invisible barriers of class, wealth and convention) she reaches the human heart by a route unfamiliar to us today. It is through the very details of mundane existence that Austen leads us to central truths about life and love. Her restraint can be deceiving; it is not Austen’s aim to blast convention and custom, but rather to reveal a world of emotion through irony, humor and suggestion. Like many women authors of that
century, Austen’s novels were published under a nom de plume, and it is only in the last one hundred years that she has been recognized as one of the greatest writers in the world.
Of the enduring popularity of Austen, Maureen Corrigan writes:
“These romances continue to captivate readers because they throw together adult men and women with complicated pasts who have to painstakingly work out the terms of their relationships before they achieve wedded harmony. That’s the realistic, strikingly contemporary angle to these romances . . .” (Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading, p. 96)
When it comes to Chick-Lit on a grown-up level, nobody does it like Jane.
Perhaps her subtlety is the reason Virginia Woolf said of Austen, “Of all great writers, she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness.”
Jane Austen has been adapted into more TV mini-series and movies than we can count. The latest, and perhaps most creative, iteration of her genius can be found in Seth Grahame-Smith’s horrifyingly clever book, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” Try this for a great first line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”
Talk About It
The heroine of Mansfield Park is a strangely passive figure for an Austen novel. Do you like Fanny? Why or why not?
About the Author: Jane Austen
Biographical information about Jane Austen is “famously scarce.” Born in 1775 in England, she grew up in a close family of six brothers and one sister, Cassandra, her lifelong confidant. She was educated primarily by her father and brothers and through her own reading. George Austen apparently gave his daughters access to his large and varied library, was tolerant of Austen’s sometimes risqué experiments in writing, and provided both sisters with expensive paper and other tools for writing and drawing. Austen practiced the pianoforte, was an accomplished seamstress, and loved to dance.
From 1811 until 1816, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816), Austen achieved success as a published writer. But because she chose to publish anonymously, her writing brought her little personal fame. She penned two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began a third but died before completing it. Her beloved novels feature realism, biting social commentary and use of free indirect speech, burlesque, and irony.
Few authors have sold more books than Jane Austen. Written when still in her early twenties, her most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice, has never been out of print, and in 2003 was voted the second favorite novel of all time in England (after Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.) Though occasionally disparaged by critics for her careful, cautious tone, Austen’s works speak to women somehow. Her six novels have been repeatedly adapted for television and film, from Bollywood’s Bride and Prejudice to the campy Bridget Jones’s Diary, to the latest stormy version with Kiera Knightly as the delightful Elizabeth Bennett. After a slow deterioration in her health, Jane Austen died in 1817 at the age of 41.
Sources: Honan, Park. Jane Austen: A Life. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.
Le Faye, Deirdre. Jane Austen: A Family Record. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
History with Heart:
O, Pioneers! by Willa Cather
“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.” This famous first line tells us everything we need to know about O, Pioneers! In a dramatic departure from the fiction writers of her day, Cather chose the humble, poor settlers of the Nebraska prairie as her subject matter, rather than the more powerful members of urban society. By examining the heart of a pioneer woman and the lives of her family, she sheds a unique light on the history of a nation. Willa Cather’s poignant, powerful masterpiece is a perfect example of her subtle artistry.
Synopsis
O, Pioneers! focuses on the lives of four characters in rural Nebraska of the 1890’s: the young Emil Bergson; his stalwart older sister, Alexandra; her gloomy friend Carl Linstrum; and a pretty little Bohemian child, Marie Shabata. Alexandra’s father, a Swedish immigrant of some stature in the town, leaves his farm and its management to his daughter rather than his two sons, sensing that she alone has the strength to carry on the work that he has begun. Alexandra proves equal to the challenge, and eventually succeeds in growing her farm and securing farms for her two brothers. Carl goes away to live in the city, and Maria, though in love with Emil, marries a sullen drunk and suffers in an abusive relationship.
Sixteen years after the novel opens, Carl returns and rekindles his relationship with Alexandra. Her brothers, jealous of her inheritance, drive him away. Emil and Maria fall more deeply in love and he also flees the town to avoid temptation. A sudden death of a friend causes him to return, however, and Maria’s husband, finding them together, shoots and kills them. The novel ends as Alexandra tries to heal the wounds and Carl returns to comfort her. They marry, and life goes on.
What Makes it Great?
Until Willa Cather’s day, pioneering had traditionally been viewed as a kind of a battle between the land and its conquerors, who were invariably male. Instead, O Pioneers! takes a deeply feminine, almost mythological approach to the subject. Here is no conquering hero, battling savages and subduing nature, but a woman who tames the beast through her love and intelligence. Cather’s heroine, Alexandra Bergson, has one great passion, and it is not another human, but the great, unconquered prairie. After her father’s death she readily assumes management of the family farm. Though her brothers are ready to give up and return to city life, Alexandra sees that a new world requires a new way of thinking. She knows the land can be made to yield its riches if only she can discern its secrets. Cather’s description of Alexandra’s feelings toward the land reads like a love poem, with the land personified as the beloved:
“For the first time, perhaps, since that land emerged from the waters of geologic ages, a human face was set toward it with love and yearning. It seemed beautiful to her, rich strong and glorious. Then the Genius of the Divide, the great, free spirit which breathes across it, must have bent lower than it ever bent to a human will before.” (44)
As she embraces the land and tries to unravel its secrets, Alexandra prospers. In Cather’s beautiful imagery, the land is personified as a creature to be loved, and Alexandra’s description of it reveals where her true passion lies:
“We hadn’t any of us much to do with it, Carl. The land did it. It had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work it right; and then, all at once, it worked itself. It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself, and it was so big, so rich, that we suddenly found we were rich, just from sitting still.” (60)
Alexandra also experiences times of doubt about her chosen path, as when her first love, Carl, returns from the city and causes her to wonder about all she has missed, and she expresses these regrets. In Carl’s impassioned response we can feel Cather’s love for the land and her deep distrust of urban life. Alexandra says:
“I’d rather have had your freedom than my land.”
Did You Know?
The genesis of O Pioneers!, can be found in the experiences of the author’s youth. In 1881 Willa Cather’s family left their home in civilized Virginia and settled in Red Cloud, Nebraska. The great prairie divide, terrifying in its vast spaces, made an indelible impression on nine-year-old Willa, and her keen mind recorded every detail of the lives she saw unfolding around her on the frontier. Hours were spent listening to the older settlers recall their first forays into the wild new land and their attempts to build a world of order in the chaos. Later, after a successful career as a journalist and editor, she mined those memories to create a new kind of fiction.
“Carl shook his head mournfully. “Freedom so often means that one isn’t needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are tho
usands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theaters. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder.” (134)
Weary of city life, Carl comes home to the prairie and finds Alexandra stronger but essentially unchanged. Her beauty comes directly from the earth:
“Carl walked rapidly until he came to the crest of the second hill, where the Bergson pasture joined the one that had belonged to his father. There he sat down and waited for the sun to rise. It was just there that he and Alexandra used to do their milking together, he on his side of the fence, she on hers. He could remember exactly how she looked when she came over the close-cropped grass, her skirts pinned up, her head bare, a bright tin pail in either hand, and the milky light of the early morning all about her. Even as a boy he used to feel, when he saw her coming with her free step, her upright head and calm shoulders, that she looked as if she had walked straight out of the morning itself. Since then, when he had happened to see the sun come up in the country or on the water, he had often remembered the young Swedish girl and her milking pails.” (66)
As the narrative progresses Alexandra grows in strength until, in Cather’s hypnotic prose, she becomes a personification of the land itself:
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