MANSFIELD PARK
493
cumstance. This, as everyone knows from childhood on, is indeed an
anomaly. Her next and consequent irony, has reference to the fact
that only by reason of this anomaly does spirit have virtue and
meaning.
In irony, even in the large derived sense of the word, there
is a kind of malice. The ironist has the intention of practicing upon
the misplaced confidence of the literal mind, of disappointing com–
fortable expectation. Jane Austen's malice of irony is directed not
only upon certain of the characters of her novels but also upon the
reader himself. We are quick, too quick, to understand that
N orth–
anger Abbey
invites us into a snug conspiracy to disabuse the little
heroine of the errors of her corrupted fancy-Catherine Morland,
having become addicted to novels of terror, has accepted their inad–
missible premise, she believes that life is violent and unpredictable.
And that is exactly what life is shown to be by the events of the
story:
it
is we who must be disabused of our belief that life is sane
and orderly. The shock of our surprise at the disappointment of our
settled views is of course the more startling because we believe that
we have settled our views in conformity with the author's own. Just
when we have concluded in
Sense and Sensibility
that we ought to
prefer Elinor Dashwood's sense to Marianne Dashwood's sensibility,
Elinor herself yearns toward the anarchic passionateness of sensibility.
In
Emma
the heroine is made to stand at bay to our adverse judg–
ment through virtually the whole novel, but we are never permitted
to close in for the kill-some unnamed quality in the girl, some
trait of vivacity or will, erects itself into a moral principle, or at
least a vital principle, and frustrates our moral blood-lust.
This interference with our moral and intellectual comfort, con–
stitutes, as I say, a malice on the part of the author. And when we
respond to Jane Austen with pleasure, we are likely to do so in part
because we recognize in her work an analogue with the malice of the
experienced universe, with the irony of circumstance, which is always
disclosing more than we bargained for.
But there is one novel of Jane Austen's,
Mansfield ParkJ
in
which the characteristic irony seems not to be at work. Indeed, one
might say of this novel that it undertakes to discredit irony and to
affirm literalness, that it demonstrates that there are no two ways
about anything. And
Mansfield Park
is for this reason held by many
