STAGING A LESSON: THE THEATRICALS AND PROPER CONDUCT IN "MANSFIELD PARK"

Author(s): ANNA LOTT

Source: Studies in the Novel, Vol. 38, No. 3 (fall 2006), pp. 275-287
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29533765
Accessed: 13-02-2019 09:06 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Studies in the Novel

This content downloaded from 77.219.185.20 on Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:06:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
STAGING A LESSON: THE THEATRICALS AND
PROPER CONDUCT IN MANSFIELD PARK

ANNA LOTT

Studies of Mansfield Park often explore the rehearsal of August Von

Kotzebue's Lovers' Vows, adapted for an English audience by Elizabeth
Inchbald. Simply by acting in a play, the Bertrams transgress the unstated
rule of the absent Sir Thomas: Edmund warns his siblings, "I am convinced
that my father would totally disapprove it" (114). Lovers' Vows is especially
shocking because it portrays inappropriate female passion: the play is about
women teaching men, a theme that foregrounds Austen's own exploration
of contemporary expectations that women use their exemplary conduct to
influence men (see Pedley). Austen questioned the efficacy of women's conduct
as a vehicle for social change; however, she also recognized its potential force
as concomitantly protective and disruptive of the social structure.
Austen published Mansfield Park in 1814 in the context of a widespread
public dispute over the theater's didactic purpose. The conflict involved various
parties, one that saw drama (and by extension theatricality) as a destroyer of
existing social and moral hierarchies and another that felt that drama was a
reinforcer of social stability. Anxiety about the unpredictable forces inherent
in representation, particularly in female acting (both public and private), is
at the heart of Mansfield Park. The debate about the nature and force of the
theater and theatricality was widespread, and Mansfield Park "figures in a
broader cultural discourse about theatricality, a discourse shaped by authors
whose differences appear even more irreconcilable than those between Fanny
Price and Henry Crawford" (Litvak 6).1 Questions about female acting, both
on stage and off, are apparent in many of Inchbald's critical essays2 and in
her 1809 response to Hannah More's anti-theatrical rhetoric. Austen alludes to
Inchbald's writing (especially, perhaps, to her response to More) by choosing
Lovers ' Vows as the play for the actors to perform.

Studies in the Novel, Volume 38, number 3 (Fall 2006). Copyright ? 2006 by the
University of North Texas. All rights to reproduction in any form reserved.

This content downloaded from 77.219.185.20 on Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:06:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 276 / LOTT

More, a former playwright, once hoped-as playwright-that her tragedies

would have a positive effect on domestic conduct, forming the basis of a
stabilizing rather than rebellious standard of domestic behavior. "From my
youthful course of reading," More explains, "I had been led to entertain that
common, but, as I now must think, delusive and groundless hope, that the stage,
under certain regulations, might be converted into a school of virtue" (Preface
502). More's later evangelism led to her decision to denounce the theater as
socially pernicious, especially for young, easily-influenced women. For More,
the stage was a "weapon.. .against which it is, at the present moment, the most
important to warn the more inconsiderate of my countrywomen" (Strictures
320). She was afraid that the elevation of potentially dangerous passions
through dramatization-or any other form of embodiment or physicality-would
have a damaging effect on women's place within the existing social and moral
order. The theater became for More and others a reflection and a cause of the
seemingly rampant immorality seen in families of all ranks. She feared that
the public theater and its attendant immorality would invade young people's
private lives: "By frequent repetition, especially if there be a taste for romance
and poetry in the innocent young mind, the feelings are easily transplanted
from the theatre to the closet; they are made to become a standard of action,
and are brought home as the regulators of life and manners" (Preface 507).
More's anxiety that public representations of "romance and poetry" would
be "brought home" reveals her fear that the theater was an inevitable part of
domestic life. But when More encouraged young women to read plays at home
(although never to see them acted on the stage), she actually promoted the
theater's encroachment on the home by connecting, as Catherine Burroughs
has argued, "theater and drama with domestic and private settings" (96). After
her renunciation of the theater, More imagined that a theatrical "school of
virtue" like the one she had envisioned could still be powerfully realized, and
at the same time controlled, within a domestic setting.
Under Edmund's influence, Fanny becomes a quiet, resisting force against
disorder, and her silent opposition the theatricals seems akin to the domestic
authority that More and other conduct-book writers granted women (see
Fowler). Because Fanny is an outsider in the Bertram household, her authority
stems entirely from her dramatization of proper conduct. She is a "quiet auditor
of the whole" (123), setting a silent example for the rest of the party. Edmund
retrospectively praises Fanny's consistent moral opposition to the play: "Fanny
is the only one who has judged rightly throughout. Her feelings have been
steadily against it from first to last. She never ceased to think of what was
due to you. You will find Fanny everything you could wish" (168). Edmund's
speech marks the beginning of Fanny's role in the family as a morally superior
member. She is no longer simply an "auditor of the whole"; she is the most
important participant, more important even than the "Miss Bertrams."

This content downloaded from 77.219.185.20 on Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:06:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANE AUSTEN / 277

But in Mansfield Park, Fanny's physical presence, her silent opposition,

appears to be a power complementary to that of the drama itself, a phenomenon
only complicated by Fanny's ultimate decision to perform. Just as Richardson,
according to Nancy Armstrong, "empowers [his] subject of aristocratic power
[Pamela] with speech" (112), Austen empowers Fanny, her own subject
of aristocratic power, first with silence, then with the "drama" that attends
breaking it. As Litvak notes, Fanny's "'No indeed I cannot act'...is already
to perform, whether one wants to or not" (5). Or, as Marshall puts it, "at the
moment she insists, T really cannot act,' it is already too late: she is 'shocked to
find herself at that moment the only speaker in the room, and to feel that almost
every eye was upon her'" (91).3
Austen describes more than once, and seems to fear, the social upheaval
that ensues when feminine influence is exerted fully and publicly-as happens
when Mary Crawford convinces the usually staid Edmund to participate in the
play (see Nachumi 233). When the Bertrams perform Lovers ' Vows, they enact
a passion between a morally unequal man and woman, and their own liaisons
imitate the one in the play (see Zelicovici 537, E.M. Butler, and Byrne): love
"brought home" to Mansfield (passion if not incited at least encouraged by
acting in the play) results in the inappropriate alliances between Julia and Yates,
Maria and Crawford, and Edmund and Mary. The improper acting continues
only somewhat clandestinely after Sir Thomas stops the play, until Maria and
Julia are irrevocably caught in improper matches, and Edmund is on the verge
of echoing his sisters' imprudence by marrying the shallow Mary Crawford.4
When Edmund realizes that Mary Crawford does not regard the affair
between Maria and Crawford as seriously as he expects, he founds his decision
to resist her "saucy playful smile" (419) in the example Fanny sets when she
first resists acting in the play and later when she refuses Henry Crawford's
proposal. But Fanny's love for Edmund is in many respects as anarchic as
Mary's passion. The novel opens with a clearly stated prohibition against an
incestuous marriage between the cousins. Mrs. Norris unequivocally denounces
Sir Thomas's fear of such a union: "that is the least likely to happen; brought
up, as they would be, always together like brothers and sisters? It is morally
impossible" (4). Mrs. Norris's pronouncement is somewhat misguided, as
Glenda Hudson has correctly argued (10-11). The gentry certainly accepted
and even encouraged marriages between cousins, but Mrs. Norris's fear of such
a union (a response to Sir Thomas's own anxiety) stems from a more codified
and to some extent legally enforced taboo-marriages that crossed lines of class
and financial distinctions. When the upwardly mobile Sir Thomas thinks "of
his own four children, of his two sons, of cousins in love, etc." (4), he imagines
that such a union might damage his family's financial and social prospects.5
The tension between Fanny's desire to stabilize the Bertram family system and
her competing impulse perhaps to overthrow the system by marrying Edmund
emphasizes the conflicting nature (both restorative and anarchic) of her role as

This content downloaded from 77.219.185.20 on Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:06:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 278 / LOTT

teacher. Even Fanny-who represents in many respects an ideal conduct-book

woman-has self-serving and rebellious tendencies (see Waldron 111).
For instance, after first refusing to act in the play, Fanny wonders about the
purity of her motive: "Was it not ill-nature-selfishness-and a fear of exposing
herself?" (137). Her dependent position in the family allows her to disappear
easily, protecting herself from scrutiny. Her ability to remain unnoticed,
however, brings "jealousy and agitation," indicating a fundamental struggle
between Fanny's need to represent herself as subject and her instinct to succumb
to the familial and social constraints dictating her disappearance (see Perry 65,
287). When Fanny recognizes that she and Julia are "two solitary sufferers, or
connected only by Fanny's consciousness"(146), she recognizes that they both
suffer not only because of unrequited love but also because of an inappropriate,
rebellious passion (see Waldron 97-98).
Fanny's rebellious impulse is evident when Mary convinces her to rehearse
the play. Though at first reluctant, as Marshall has noticed, Fanny is dismayed
when Edmund arrives to read his own part, relegating her once again to the
role of spectator: in spite of her protests, she really does want to participate in
the play (94-95). But another significance of this scene lies in its occurrence
in Fanny's East Room, which has been a schoolroom for all of the Bertram
children. Maria compares the schoolroom to a stage:

We must have two chairs at hand for you to bring forward to the front of the
stage. There-very good school-room chairs, not made for a theater, I dare
say; much more fitted for little girls to sit and kick their feet against when they
are learning a lesson. What would your governess and your uncle say to see
them used for such a purpose? (151-152)

The schoolroom incident foregrounds Fanny's familial role as both teacher

and actor. Fanny's governess and uncle would in all likelihood disapprove of
the schoolroom's new use, but Fanny's new position as prompter and auditor
is closely aligned with her familial duty as moral prompter. The thespian
guidance that Edmund and Mary seek parodies the moral guidance that Fanny
offers.
If Fanny's pedagogical authority depends entirely on being allowed, even
forced, to act, then the East Room incident demonstrates its many limitations.
Despite her moral example, her influence is based on and confined to the rules
of conduct that the family itself prescribes. She must perform when others
insist that she do so, but her "script" directs her to fade in the presence of
more flamboyant, aristocratic members of the family.6 Every other person in
the house is more able to insist on being noticed than Fanny is, and her quiet
but persistent resistance to the theatricals is ineffective until Sir Thomas's
more forceful resistance seconds it. The fact that Fanny's presence is so
easily overshadowed by almost anyone-male or female-of the gentry seems

This content downloaded from 77.219.185.20 on Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:06:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANE AUSTEN / 279

a deliberate criticism of didactic literature's insistence on the middle-class

woman's moral authority. Fanny is able to educate this entire family only
through a series of circumstances that lead them to recognize the appropriateness
of her judgments. Paradoxically, she can guide Sir Thomas and Edmund only
when they have already recognized the depravity of their current situation (see
Douglas 9-10).
Although Fanny denounces the actual play Lover 's Vows, the familial role
she hopes to play is similar to that of Amelia, who in Lovers ' Vows teaches the
clergyman Anhalt (who has been her own schoolteacher) to return her love.
Fanny and Mary embody two opposite perceptions of theatricality and female
domestic power, and the tension between the women enacts the novel's tension
between the simultaneously disruptive and restorative nature of theatricality.
Mary's influence is anarchic; she hopes to dissuade Edmund from pursuing his
chosen occupation as clergyman, thereby overturning existing familial moral
and social codes. Fanny's influence seems stabilizing; she reminds Edmund
of the danger of participating in the theatricals that represent and in large
measure cause an almost irreversible domestic chaos. And yet, her motives are
sometimes as rebellious as those held by the most irresponsible, unthinking
participants in the play.

Although More confined any sort of female power to private conduct,

Elizabeth Inchbald, throughout her career, viewed the public theater as a
powerful didactic tool precisely because of the anarchic tendencies that so
frightened More. Inchbald defended the theater against More's attack in an
essay published anonymously in Hoare's The Artist.1 She referred to More
as "a successful female dramatist (and more successful still in decrying her
former occupation)" (151). Inchbald regarded as hypocritical More's decision
to condemn the theater in the preface to her own tragedies, and she argued that
the strong influences More associated with the theater could be turned to public
good. But Inchbald and More seem oddly united in their understanding of the
power that the theater and theatricality could afford women in the home. Like
More, Inchbald hoped that women, like her Miss Milner in A Simple Story,
could influence their domestic situation through their own exemplary conduct.
While Inchbald's Miss Milner teaches Dorriforth/Elmwood to value and even
to imitate her own lawless passion, the lesson More would have her exemplary
woman teach is an entirely different one, dependent upon propriety instead of
sentiment, regulation instead of anarchy.
Inchbald clearly agreed with More's perception that the theater could be
"brought home," but she took offense at More's insistence that love, particularly
as a prelude to marriage, was in any way pernicious or dangerous. To support
her argument, Inchbald cites a sermon by J. H. Plumptre, who thought there
was "too little, not too much" romantic attachment between betrothed couples,
that "union[s] formed entirely on ideas of interest or convenience" resulted in

This content downloaded from 77.219.185.20 on Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:06:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 280 / LOTT

marital infidelity (qtd. in Inchbald 151). The disagreement between Inchbald

and More seems less about the nature and effect of the theater and theatricality
than about whether the passions that inevitably result from watching or
participating in a play are beneficial or destructive. More viewed a female
domestic role as antithetical to an actor's more public role; in the home, women
enacted a kind of conduct that contained or controlled the anarchic passions
represented on and incited by the stage. But Inchbald's essay, part of a larger
body of sympathetic work, suggests that she believed quite differently about the
passion More associated with the stage. For Inchbald, the disruption inherent
in the theater and theatricality was desirable because the passion of the stage
represented a strong possibility for female empowerment. On learning that
Lovers' Vows has been chosen for the play, Edmund immediately asks, "but
what do you do for women?" (125). The question implies that acting is more
appropriate for some women than it is for others: professional actresses such
as Inchbald are categorized differently than young, unmarried women, such as
Maria and Julia Bertram, whose reputations and future prospects are particularly
fragile. Henry Crawford's insistence that Maria play the coveted part of Agatha
concerns Edmund because of Maria's engagement to Rush worth, which should
remove any chance for the public flirtation that inevitably occurs during the
play. Maria knows that the return of her father, facilitating her marriage to the
wealthy but tedious Rushworth, is a "gloomy prospect," and she can only hope
that a "bad passage" will postpone the inevitable. Acting in the play interrupts
momentarily the inexorable containment that her marriage will bring, her relief
revealed in the "smile of triumph" that she cannot suppress when she is given
the part.
Austen's choice of Lovers ' Vows as the play for the actors to perform would
have brought to mind Inchbald's review of the play in her popular collection
The British Theatre. Inchbald defended Lovers ' Vows from detractors who had
argued that its moral was flawed because a fallen woman is forgiven and united
with her seducer. Inchbald argued that

the grand moral of this play is-to set forth the miserable consequences
which arise from the neglect, and to enforce the watchful care, of illegitimate
offspring; and surely, as the pulpit has not had eloquence to eradicate the
crime of seduction, the stage may be allowed an humble endeavour to prevent
its most fatal effects. (Remarks 7)

Inchbald's insistence that the stage can prevent the "most fatal effects" of
seduction contradicts an interpretation of Mansfield Park that considers
Lovers' Vows responsible for Maria's affair with Crawford. Her reference to
the inadequacies of the pulpit and her insistence that this particular play has
a "grand moral" are keys to her understanding of a female domestic authority
that is directly related to theatrical authority (see Carlson 219).

This content downloaded from 77.219.185.20 on Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:06:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANE AUSTEN / 281

Lovers' Vows would also have reminded readers of a dispute between

Inchbald and George Colman the Younger over the purpose of women in the
theater. Colman, complaining that his work had been "somewhat singed,
in passing the fiery ordeal of feminine ?ngcrs"(Heir, Preface ii), had taken
offense at prefaces to his and his father's plays that Inchbald had included in
The British Theatre. Throughout her collection, Inchbald suggests that a female
prerogative inside and outside of the home can be taught through theatrical
representation in a didactic play. Plays representing strong, independent
women could, according to Inchbald, have a strong positive social effect.
Inchbald's agenda was, at least in part, the reason for Colman 's anger. She
published Colman's letter and her rebuttal as a preface to his play The Heir
at Law (vol. 21), and Austen calls attention to their dispute by having Tom,
immediately before discovering that Lovers ' Vows seems an obviously better
choice, argue vehemently for performing The Heir at Law (see Giotta 466).
The actors' choice to perform Lovers ' Vows, the play that Inchbald had adapted
and reviewed favorably in The British Theatre, indicates their decision to value
a female domestic authority and a female theatrical voice, even if the result is
ultimately anarchic.
Fanny exercises this disruptive authority when she refuses Crawford, acting
based on an individual impulse instead of on unselfish concerns for family
and community. Sir Thomas, as Claudia Johnson has argued, elicits Fanny's
remorse for her self-serving conduct, "by virtue not as a parent, but rather as a
benefactor: 'You do not owe me the duty of a child. But, Fanny, if your heart
can acquit you of ingratitude-" (107). By constructing himself as munificent
provider, Sir Thomas consolidates his despotic power, gaining an authority
over Fanny that almost neutralizes the self-regard she asserts when she refuses
Crawford. Sir Thomas's rhetorical strategy echoes Colman's accusations in his
letter to Inchbald, who, he claims, is ungrateful to the memory of his father, the
former manager of Drury Lane who encouraged her and helped her to produce
her first play:

Oh, madam !-is this grateful?-is it graceful, from an ingenious lady, who
was originally encouraged, and brought forward, as an authoress, by the very
man, on whose tomb she idly plants this poisonous weed of remark, to choke
the laurels which justly grace his memory? {Heir, Preface ii-iii)

Fanny Price and Elizabeth Inchbald both disappoint surrogate fathers who
expect unquestioning obedience and loyalty in return for their generosity. Fanny,
by refusing to marry Crawford, "deceive[s] [Sir Thomas's] expectations" (289)
of her socially advantageous marriage, thereby gaining a marriage to Edmund
that violates already-established plans for Edmund's marriage to Mary;
Inchbald, by criticizing her former mentor's plays, thwarts a supposition of
unthinking gratitude and obedience that continues even when Colman the elder
is no longer alive.

This content downloaded from 77.219.185.20 on Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:06:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 282 / LOTT

Inchbald responded to the younger Colman 's accusations by acknowledging

her keenly-felt gratitude to his father while simultaneously diminishing the
scope of her obligations to him:

You did me justice, when you imagined that the mere supposition of my
ingratitude to him would give me pain....But, in thus acknowledging my
obligations to Mr. Colman, the elder, let it be understood, that they amounted
to no more than those usual attentions which every manager of a theatre is
supposed to confer, when he first selects a novice in dramatic writing, as
worthy of being introduced, on his stage, to the public. (Heir, Preface viii).

As Ellen Donkin has noticed, Inchbald's debts to Colman the elder were
not as great as either he or his son imagined. Although the elder Colman
was influential in the production of her first play, The Mogul Tale, Inchbald
was subsequently able to use her position as actress to develop and maintain
her writing career with minimal help from him: "In summary, Colman 's
tentative efforts to position Mrs. Inchbald as a literary daughter failed. She
rapidly positioned herself, after a rocky start, as a literary colleague" (115).
Fanny Price's perceived obligations to her adopted family are analogous to
Inchbald's perceived obligations to the Colman family. Like Inchbald, Fanny
is horrified that anyone, particularly her benefactor, Sir Thomas, would think
her ungrateful. Like Colman, Sir Thomas is aware of Fanny's sensitivity to the
accusation, and he tries to parlay her sensitivity to his advantage. Supported by
a combination of tenacity and luck, however, Fanny manages to create a more
stable place for herself in the family.
Like Hannah More, Austen confines Fanny's power to a silent, physical
example, but like Inchbald, Austen also seems to realize the danger of such
a confinement. Fanny is, at her happiest moments, merely a replacement for
an actual family member. She acts the part of daughter/sister/lover-scripts
given to her by the family itself-but in doing so, she is confined to maintaining
the strict domestic guidelines that Edmund has taught her. Fanny is in many
respects created out of the Bertram family's need to protect itself. Edmund
teaches Fanny to understand the importance of the containment of unruly
passions: "his attentions were...of the highest importance in assisting the
improvement of her mind, and extending its pleasures" (57).
Austen ends her novel with the strong suggestion that the consequences of
the family's fractious passion, ambition, and greed have finally been resolved
through their achieving a new understanding of an appropriate social and
moral code. Fanny brings her sister Susan to the Bertram house in a cyclical
repetition of her own earlier journey to Mansfield Park; to protect its own
existence, the aristocracy-even the new leisured class that the Bertram family
represents-needs a middle class to acknowledge its superiority (see Cohen).
But Fanny has, at least temporarily, reformed this family to conform to middle
class ideas of what should constitute eminence.

This content downloaded from 77.219.185.20 on Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:06:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANE AUSTEN / 283

Edmund's attempts to contain or control the danger of the theatricals

by refusing to allow outsiders to participate demonstrate the family's fear
of the widespread danger of acting and the difficulty that all of the Bertram
family, including Fanny, has avoiding or controlling the theatricals and their
effects. Edmund tells Fanny that his participation in the theatricals is the
only means available to confine the theatrical representation within the small
circle of Mansfield Park: "If I can be the means of restraining the publicity of
the business, of limiting the exhibition, of concentrating our folly, I shall be
well repaid" (139). Edmund's hope that he can contain the theatrical follies
adumbrates Sir Thomas's decision at the end o? Mansfield Park to send Maria
and Mrs. Norris-the most irredeemable of the participants-to an establishment
in another country, "remote and private" (424), where their indiscretions can
be confined within a small space and at the same time forgotten by the more
stable members of the Bertram family.
Even Austen seems anxious to control events within the novel as evidenced
by her unusual narrative intrusion. After the disastrous and seemingly
irrevocable liaisons that result from the Mansfield theatricals, the "house"
is peremptorily put to rights, not by any of its members, but by a narrative
deus ex machina: "Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such
odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore every body, not greatly
in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest"
(420). Austen's resort to such a mechanism to accomplish the restoration is a
reflection of Sir Thomas's similar but inadequate attempts to enforce his will
(see also Marshall 103-04 and Douglas 9).
Acting in Mansfield Park is both an instrument of disruption and a means
to restore order; it is simultaneously anarchic and confining. In an often-quoted
passage, Henry Crawford speaks longingly to Fanny of his remembrance of the
theatricals:

It is as a dream, a pleasant dream!.. .1 shall always look back on our theatricals

with exquisite pleasure. There was such an interest, such an animation,
such a spirit diffused! Every body felt it. We were all alive. There was
employment, hope, solicitude, bustle, for every hour of the day. Always some
little objection, some little doubt, some little anxiety to be got over. I never
was happier. (236)

That Crawford regards the Mansfield confusion as harmless is for Fanny his
greatest moral flaw, but the harm created by the theatricals is not necessarily
only a moral ill. The greater harm is that the theatricals perpetuate a social ill
that punishes each female participant for being unwilling or unable to contain
an illicit passion. Fanny is predictably insulted by Crawford's reminiscence,
but his view of the theatricals is not entirely wrong. For Henry, acting is
seductive because it destabilizes a reactionary social structure: the atmosphere
of "employment, hope, solicitude, bustle" enables a kind of autonomy or self

This content downloaded from 77.219.185.20 on Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:06:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 284 / LOTT

determination that is enticing to Henry and crucial to women, such as Maria and
Julia Bertram, who will be constrained inevitably by marriage-in the case of
Maria, to a man with little animation or spirit, diffused or otherwise. Marshall
has compared the role-playing in Mansfield Park to the impersonations in
Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well. Crawford's remark that the play was
"as a dream" also brings to mind A Midsummer Night's Dream, a play that
was widely distrusted in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (in spite
of achieving a certain amount of popularity) because it was thought to have
no real moral purpose. D-G, the reviewer of John Cumberland's The British
Theater, remarks in his preface to the play that the events of A Midsummer
Night's Dream are "lacking in fable" because of the unrealistic nature of the
play's characters and events:

The characters represented are spirits, exercising their magic influence over
the material agents, and producing the delusion of a wild fantastic dream. To
look for strong passion and force of character, where the scene passes nature's
bounds, and the actors are ethereal essences flitting in the moonbeams, is to
expect them where they can never be consistently found-in the regions of
enchantment. (5)

During the Mansfield play, the actors are paired with inappropriate mates,
and seem deluded (as are the characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream) into
mistaking who their mates should be; the moral impact of the play, in spite of
Inchbald's insistence to the contrary, seems dubious at best.
The restorative power of Austen's narrative voice is reminiscent of Puck's
pronouncement in A Midsummer Night's Dream that "Jack shall have Jill; /
Nought shall go ill" (3.2.1). But the startling "restorations" of Mansfield
Park-created by Sir Thomas (the familial authority) and Austen (who claims a
similar authority)-substitute for Fanny's more subtle and less effective claim to
authority. Fanny resists familial disorder, but it takes more powerful and more
consistently dedicated forces than she has to protect the Mansfield theatricals
from becoming like Henry Crawford's remembrance of a lawless, magically
confused moment. Yet the male authorities (Sir Thomas and Edmund) imagine
that Fanny herself has an earthly restorative power, and within the confines of
the patriarchal system she does in fact have a limited kind of authority. Because
they credit her with the restoration of tranquility to the house, she gains her
greatest wish: marriage to Edmund. Fanny's female authority (dependent on
ratification from the male gentry) is contradictory and, like the theater itself,
simultaneously guards and upsets existing social principles. But the novel
is complicated enough to allow for an understanding that the disturbances in
Mansfield Park are perhaps no more pernicious than the forces that contain
them and that social upheaval is both necessary and inevitable.

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH ALABAMA

This content downloaded from 77.219.185.20 on Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:06:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANE AUSTEN / 285

NOTES

I am grateful to several readers of this essay, including Aileen Douglas, David Haws, and Julie
Shaffer.
1 To "delineate the landscape of dis-ease in which Mansfield Park takes place," Litvak
focuses on More and Thomas Gisborne who "accuse the theater-or at least the theater in its
present form-of encouraging immorality" (11) and on William Hazlitt who defends the stage
as an agent of morality. Austen's exploitation in Mansfield Park of the theatricality inherent in
conservative, seemingly anti-theatrical rhetoric (such as Hannah More and Thomas Gisborne)
has been explored by Litvak. He argues that More's use of theatrical metaphors in her later
conduct-book writing was somehow accidental-she tried to denounce the theater but found
it was so pervasive she could not. For a discussion of More's struggle with the '"complicated
temptations' of the theater" see Demers.
2 Many of Inchbald's reviews deal with aspects of this issue, but see especially her reviews
of Kotzebue's The Stranger, Centlivre's A Bold Stroke for a Wife, and Rowe's Jane Shore.
3 Marshall and Litvak place themselves in opposition to critics such as Ruth Bernard
Yeazel, Walton Litz, and Jonas Barish, who argue that Fanny is unable to act because of her
natural and complete sincerity. Also see Gay, who examines the theatricality inherent in Fanny's
position as a "young, marriageable woman: she cannot escape the role that her class and gender
dictate." Gay notes that "even Fanny is implicated, as 'victim' or melodramatic heroine, in the
novel's wide-ranging use of the discourse of theatre" (108).
4 Armstrong is persuasive when she argues that when conduct book writers essentialized or
fixed the nature of women, they gave women an identity independent of social rank. Armstrong
is also correct to note that conduct book writers gave all women the same basic characteristics:
for conduct-book writers and domestic novelists. For the eighteenth-century woman, "neither
birth nor the accouterments of title and status accurately represented the individual; only the
more subtle nuances of behavior indicated what one was really worth" (4). But writers were
unwilling to disavow rank entirely. Specifically, the limitations of Fanny's domestic authority
complicate Armstrong's argument. The dilemma is also framed by Poovey 214, 223.
5 Critics have been divided over whether Austen's stance toward the theatricals in Mansfield
Park is conservative or ironic. For the former reading, see Trilling (75-77), Marilyn Butler (245),
and Tanner (173). For the latter, see Kirkham.
6 Hardwicke's Marriage Act (1753) was an attempt to stop socially unequal marriages by
legally controlling how and where marriages took place.
7 The essay has been attributed to Inchbald by Patricia Sigl.

WORKS CITED
Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. New York:
Oxford UP, 1987.
Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. 1814. Ed. James Kinsley. Intro. Marilyn Butler. Notes John
Lucas. New York: Oxford UP, 1990.
Barish, Jonas. The Antitheatrical Prejudice. Berkeley: U of California P, 1981.
Burroughs, Catherine B. Closet States: Joanna Baillie and the Theater Theory of British Ro?
mantic Women Writers. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997.
Butler, E. M. "Mansfield Park and Kotzebue's Lovers' Vows." MLR 28 (1933): 326-27.
Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1975.
Byrne, Paula. "A Simple Story: From Inchbald to Austen." Romanticism 5.2 (1999): 161-72.
Carlson, Marvin. "Inchbald: A Woman Critic in her Theatrical Culture." Closet Studies: Joanna
Baillie and the Theater Theory of British Romantic Women Writers. Ed. Catherine B. Bur?
roughs. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997. 207-22.
Cleere, Eileen. "Reinvesting Nieces: Mansfield Park and the Economics of Endogamy." Novel:
A Forum on Fiction 28.2 (1995): 1-18.
Cohen, Paula Marantz. "Stabilizing the Family System at Mansfield Park." ELH 54.3 (1987):
669-93.

This content downloaded from 77.219.185.20 on Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:06:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 286 / LOTT

Daniel, George (D-G). Review of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Cumberland's

British Theatre. Vol. 20. London: Ludgate Hall, 1828. 30 vols. 5-10.
Demers, Patricia. The World of Hannah More. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1996.
Donkin, Ellen. Getting into the Act: Women Playwrights in London, 1776-1819. New York:
Routledge, 1995.
Douglas, Aileen. "Austen's Enclave: Virtue and Modernity." Romanticism 5.2 (1999): 147
62.
Fowler, Marian E. "The Courtesy Book Heroine of Mansfield Park." University of Toronto
Quarterly 44 (1974): 31-46.
Gay, Penny. Jane Austen and the Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.
Giotta, Peter C. "Characterization in Mansfield Park: Tom Bertram and Colman's The Heir
at Law." Review of English Studies: A Quarterly Journal of English Literature and the
English Language 49.196 (1998): 466-71.
Hudson, Glenda A. Sibling Love and Incest in Jane Austen's Fiction. New York: St. Martin's
P, 1992.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. The British Theatre. 25 vols. London: Longman, 1808.
-. Pocket Diary for 1808. Folger Library MS M.a. 155.
?. Preface. A Bold Stroke for a Wife. By Susanna Centlivre. The British Theatre. Vol. 11.
London, Longman, 1808. 3-5.
?. Preface. Heir at Law. By George Colman. The British Theatre. Vol 21. London: Longman,
1808. I-ix.
?. Preface. Jane Shore. By Nicholas Rowe. The British Theatre. Vol. 10. London, Longman,
1808. 3-5.
?. Preface. The Stranger. By August von Kotzebue. The British Theatre. Vol. 22. London,
Longman, 1808. 3-5.
?. Remarks. Lovers' Vows. By Elizabeth Inchbald. The British Theatre. Vol 23. London:
Longman, 1808. 7-9.
?. A Simple Story. 1791. Ed. J. M. S. Tompkins. Intro. Jane Spencer. New York: Oxford
UP, 1988.
?. "To the Artist." The Artist: A Collection of Essays Relative to Painting, Poetry, Sculpture,
Architecture, the Drama, Discoveries of Science, and Various Other Subjects. Ed. Prince
Hoare. London, 1810, 2 vols. Vol. 2, No. 9. 15 May 1809, 138-53.
Johnson, Claudia L. Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel. Chicago: U of Chicago P,
1988.
Kirkham, Margaret. Jane Austen, Feminism and Fiction. New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books
and Sussex: The Harvester Books, 1983.
Litvak. Joseph. Caught in the Act: Theatricality in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel.
Berkeley: U of California P, 1992.
Litz, Walton. Jane Austen: A Study of Her Artistic Development. New York: Oxford UP,
1965.
May, Leila Silvana. "The Strong-Arming of Desire: A Reconsideration of Nancy Armstrong."
ELH 68.1 (2001): 267-85.
Marshall, David. "True Acting and the Language of Real Feeling: Mansfield Park." The Yale
Journal of Criticism: Interpretation in the Humanities 3.1 (1989): 87-106.
More, Hannah. The Complete Works of Hannah More. 2 vols. New York: Harper & Brothers,
1854.
?. The Inflexible Captive: A Tragedy. Bristol: S. Farley, 1774.
?. "Preface to the Tragedies." 1801. The Complete Works of Hannah Moore. Vol. 1. New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1854. 311-410.
?. Strictures on the Modern System of Education. 1799. The Complete Works of Hannah
Moore. Vol. 1. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1854. 502-10.
Nachumi, Nora. "Seeing Double: Theatrical Spectatorship in Mansfield Park." Philological
Quarterly 80.3 (2001): 233-52.
Pedley, Colin. '"Terrific and Unprinciple'd Consequences': The Reception of Lovers'Vows and
Mansfield Park. Philological Quarterly 143 (1995): 297-316.
Perry, Ruth. Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture:
1748-1818. Cambridge: Cambrige UP, 2004.

This content downloaded from 77.219.185.20 on Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:06:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANE AUSTEN / 287

Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary
Wollstonecrafi, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1988.
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. 3rd
edition. Ed. David Bevington. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1980.
Sigl, Patricia. "Prince Hoare's Artist and Anti-Theatrical Polemics in the early 1800s: Mrs.
Inchbald's Contribution." Theater Notebook XLIV.2 (1990): 62-73.
Trilling, Lionel. Sincerity and Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1972.
Tanner, Tony. Jane Austen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1986.
Waldron, Mary. Jane Austen and the Fiction of Her Time. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.
Zelicovic, Dvora. "The Inefficacy of Lovers' Vows." ELH 50.3 (1983): 531-40.

This content downloaded from 77.219.185.20 on Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:06:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms