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PARTISAN REVIEW
lack of intelligence and sensibility. His principled submission to con–
vention had issued in mere worldliness--he had not seen to it that
"principle, active principle" should have its place in the rearing of
his
daughters, had not given them that "sense of duty which alone can
suffice" to govern inclination and temper. He knew of no other way
to counteract the low worldly flattery of their Aunt Norris than by
the show of that sternness which had alienated them from him. He
has allowed Mrs. Norris, the corrupter of his daughters and the
persecutor of Fanny, to establish herself in the governance of
his
home; "she seemed part of himself."
So that Mansfield is governed by an authority all too fallible.
Yet Fanny thinks of all that comes "within the view and patronage of
Mansfield Park" as "dear to her heart and thoroughly perfect in her
eyes." The judgment is not ironical. For the author as well as for the
heroine, Mansfield Park is the good place-it is The Great Good
Place. It is the house "where all's accustomed, ceremonious," of
Yeats's "Prayer For His Daughter"-
How but in custom and ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Yet Fanny's loving praise of Mansfield, which makes the novel's last
word, does glance at ironies and encompasses ironies. Of these the
chief is that Lady Bertram is part of the perfection. All of Mansfield's
life makes reference and obeisance to Sir Thomas's wife, who is
gentle and without spite, but mindless and moveless, concerned with
nothing but the indulgence of her mild, inexorable wants. Middle–
aged, stupid, maternal persons are favorite butts for Jane Austen,
but although Lady Bertram is teased, she is loved. Sir Thomas's
authority must be qualified and tutored by the principled intelli–
gence, the religious intelligence--Fanny's, in effect-but Lady Bert–
ram is permitted to live unregenerate her life of cushioned ease.
I am never quite able to resist the notion that in her attitude
to Lady Bertram Jane Austen is teasing herself, that she is turning
her irony upon her own fantasy of ideal existence as it presented
itself to her at this time. It is scarcely possible to observe how
M ans–
field Park
differs from her work that had gone before and from
her work that was to come after without supposing that the differ–
ence points to a crisis in the author's spiritual life. In that crisis
fatigue plays a great part-we are drawn to believe that for the
