-498
PARTISAN
REVIEW
novel's intention. "The divine," said T. E. Hulme in
Speculations,
"is not life at its intensest. It contains in a wayan almost anti-vital
element." Perhaps it cannot quite be said that "the divine" is the
object of Fanny's soul, yet she is a Christian heroine. Hulme expresses
with an air of discovery what was once taken for granted in Christian
feeling. Fanny is one of the poor in spirit. It is not a condition of
the soul to which we are nowadays sympathetic. Weare likely to
suppose that it masks hostility-many modern readers respond to
Fanny by suspecting her. This is perhaps not unjustified, but as we
try to understand what Jane Austen meant by the creation of such
a heroine, we must have in mind the tradition which affirmed the
peculiar sanctity of the sick, the weak, and the dying. The tradition
perhaps came to .an end for literature with the death of Milly Theale,
the heroine of Henry James's
The Wings of the Dove,
but Dickens
exemplifies its continuing appeal in the nineteenth century, and it
was especially strong in the eighteenth century. dIarissa's sickness
and death confirm her Christian virtue, and in Fielding's
Amelia,
the
novel which may be said to bear the same relation to
Tom Jones
that
Mansfield Park
bears to
Pride and Prejudice,
the sign of the heroine's
Christian authority is her loss of health and beauty.
Fanny is a Christian heroine: it is therefore not inappropriate
that the issue between her and Mary Crawford should be concen–
trated in the debate over whether or not Edmund Bertram shall be–
come a clergyman. We are not, however, from our reading of the
novel, inclined to say more than that the debate is "not inappro–
priate"-it startles us to discover that ordination was what Jane
Austen said her novel was to be "about." In the letter in which she
tells of having received the first copies of
Pride and Prejudice,
and
while she is still in high spirits over her achievement, she says, "Now
I will try and write something else, and it shall be a complete change
of subject-ordination." A novelist, of course, presents .a new sub–
ject to himself, or to his friends, in all sorts of ways that are inade–
quate to his real intention as it eventually will disclose itself-the
most unsympathetic reader of
Mansfield Park
would scarcely describe
it as being about ordination. Yet the question of ordination
is
of
essential importance to the novel.
It is not really a religious question, but, rather, a cultural ques–
tion, having to do with the meaning and effect of a
profession.
Two
