Austen City Limits: Mansfield Park

Calls 'em like she sees 'em: See Jane Write. Write, Jane, Write.I just finished reading Mansfield Park to my mother: if you're new to the blog, mom was diagnosed with Stage Four cancer a couple of weeks ago, and is recovering slowly from post-operative weakness.

By modern standards it's a judgmental book: most of hers are, and very ill-attuned to modern sensibililties.

Austen paints her characters with a frighteningly good eye, so good an eye that even at a distance of 200 years I'm always a little nervous that she's going to call me by name.

But she judges character.

It's what she does so well, and what enables her to paint their actions and the consequences of those actions so accurately.  She is faithful to them all: Crawford, Fanny Price, Edmund Bertram, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris... she loves them enough to attend to their smallest actions, and there isn't the slightest chance that their mannerisms aren't drawn from real life. 

But they are worth painting because Austen has observed not only how they behave but what comes of their behavior.  And she tells us that certain behaviors do judge themselves by bringing down a calamity.  It's offensive.

It's also dead right, and if she had less of a sense of humor, it'd be appallingly poor reading.

As it is, it's just kind of frightening.

I think that the aggressive spate of Austen films lately has been sort of interesting: it's difficult to say whether we're interested in Austen's judgments about people or not.  I hope so.  A clear eye is useful in any age.