Alistair Duckworth noted that a recurring theme in Austen's novels is the way the condition of the estates mirrors that of their owners.[45] The very private landscape (and house) of Mansfield Park is only gradually revealed, unlike transparent Sotherton where the reader is given an introduction to its environs by Maria, a tourist's introduction to the house by Mrs Rushworth, and finally a tour of the estate guided by the serpentine wanderings of the young people.
Rural morality
The theme of country in conflict with city recurs throughout the novel. Symbolically, life-renewing nature is under attack from the artificial and corrupting effects of city society. Canadian scholar David Monaghan draws attention to the rural way of life which, with its careful respect for the order and rhythm of times and seasons, reinforces and reflects the values of "elegance, propriety, regularity, harmony". Sotherton with its carefully maintained avenue of trees is Austen's reminder of the organic principles which form the basis of society.[46] Austen portrays Mr Rushworth and Sir Thomas as landed gentry who are unable to appreciate the principles that lie beneath received standards, consequently leaving "landed society ... ripe for corruption".[47] Henry Crawford, as an absentee landlord, is portrayed as having no moral appreciation at all.
On a visit to London in 1796, Austen wrote jokingly to her sister, "Here I am once more in this Scene of Dissipation & vice, and I begin already to find my Morals corrupted."[48] Through the Crawfords the reader is given glimpses of London society. They represent London's money-grubbing, vulgar middle class, the opposite of Austen's rural ideal. They come from a world where everything is to be got with money, and where impersonal crowds have replaced peace and tranquillity as the social benchmarks.[49] Austen gives further glimpses of London society when Maria is married and gains what Mary Crawford describes as "her pennyworth", a fashionable London residence for the season. For Monaghan, it is Fanny alone who senses the moral values that lie beneath the old unfashionable manners. It falls to her to defend the best values of English society, despite in many ways being unequipped for the task.[50]
Humphry Repton and improvements
Landscape improvements – Humphry Repton's visiting card showing a typical design with himself surveying the property.At Sotherton, Mr. Rushworth considers employing the popular landscape improver Humphry Repton, his rates being five guineas a day. Repton had coined the term "landscape gardener"[51] and also popularised the title Park as the description of an estate. Austen is thought to have based her fictional Sotherton partly on Stoneleigh Abbey, which her uncle, Rev Thomas Leigh, inherited in 1806. On his first visit to claim the estate, he took Austen, her mother, and her sister with him. Leigh, who had already employed Repton at Adlestrop, now commissioned him to make improvements at Stoneleigh where he redirected the River Avon, flooded a section of the land to create a mirror lake, and added a bowling green lawn and cricket pitch.[52]
Over family dinner, Mr Rushworth declares that he will do away with the great oak avenue that ascends half a mile from the west front. Mr Rushworth misunderstands Repton. In his book, Repton writes cautiously of 'the fashion ... to destroy avenues', and he parodies fashion that is merely doctrinaire. Rushworth's conversation follows closely that of Repton's parody.[53][54] Fanny is disappointed and quotes Cowper, valuing what has emerged naturally over the centuries.[55] David Monaghan (1980) contrasts Fanny's perspective with that of the others: materialistic Mary Crawford thinks only of the future, willing to accept any improvements money can buy as long as she does not have to experience present inconvenience, and Henry lives for the present moment, solely interested in playing the role of improver. Introverted and reflective Fanny, alone, can hold in her mind the bigger picture of past, present and future.[56]
Henry Crawford is full of his own ideas for improvements when exploring Sotherton's landscape.[57] He is described as the first to go forward to examine the 'capabilities' of the walled garden near the wilderness, hinting at ironic comparison with Repton's celebrated predecessor, Lancelot "Capability" Brown.
Edmund Burke, political theorist, philosopher and member of parliament, widely considered to be the father of modern Conservatism.Political symbolism
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) are part of the novel's hidden background. Calvo, quoting Roger Sales, says Mansfield Park can be read as a Condition-of-England novel that 'debates topical issues such as the conduct of the war and the Regency crisis'.[58] Duckworth (1994) believes that Austen took the landscaping symbol from Edmund Burke's influential book, Reflections of the Revolution in France (1790).[59] Burke affirmed the beneficial "improvements" which are part of conservation, but decried malign "innovations" and "alterations" to society which led to the destruction of heritage.[60] Duckworth argues that Mansfield Park is pivotal to an understanding of Austen's views. Estates, like society, might be in need of improvements, but the changes allegedly advocated by Repton were unacceptable innovations, alterations to the estate that, symbolically, would destroy the entire moral and social heritage. Austen, aware of the fragility of a society uninformed by responsible individual behaviour, is committed to the inherited values of a Christian humanist culture.[61]
The French Revolution was in Austen's view an entirely destructive force that sought to wipe out the past.[62] Her sister-in-law, Eliza, was a French aristocrat whose first husband, the Comte de Feullide, had been guillotined in Paris. She fled to Britain where, in 1797, she married Henry Austen.[63] Eliza's account of the Comte's execution left Austen with an intense horror of the French Revolution that lasted for the rest of her life.[63]
Warren Roberts (1979) interprets Austen's writings as affirming traditional English values and religion over against the atheist values of the French Revolution.[64] The character of Mary Crawford whose 'French' irreverence has alienated her from church is contrasted unfavourably with that of Fanny Price whose 'English' sobriety and faith leads her to assert that "there is something in a chapel and chaplain so much in character with a great house, with one's idea of what such a household should be".[65][66] Edmund is depicted as presenting the church as a force for stability that holds together family, customs and English traditions. This is contrasted with Mary Crawford's attitude whose criticism of religious practice makes her an alien and disruptive force in the English countryside.[65]
Sotherton and moral symbolism
Juliet McMaster argued that Austen often used understatement, and that her characters disguise hidden powerful emotions behind apparently banal behaviour and dialogue.[67] This is evident during the visit to Sotherton where Mary Crawford, Edmund Bertram and Fanny Price debate the merits of an ecclesiastical career.[68] Though the exchanges are light-hearted, the issues are serious. Edmund is asking Mary to love him for who he is, while Mary indicates she will only marry him if he pursues a more lucrative career in the law.[69]
To subtly press her point, Austen has set the scene in the wilderness where their serpentine walk provides echoes of Spencer's The Faerie Queene and the "serpentining" pathways of the Wandering Wood.[70] Spencer's "Redcrosse Knight" (the novice knight who symbolises both England and Christian faith) is lost within the dangerous and confusing Wandering Wood. The knight nearly abandons Una, his true love, for Duessa, the seductive witch. So too, Edmund (the would-be Church of England minister) is lost within the moral maze of Sotherton's wilderness.
Others have seen in this episode echoes of Shakespeare's As You Like It. Byrne sees a more direct link with regency stage comedy with which Austen was very familiar, in particular George Colman and David Garrick's highly successful play, The Clandestine Marriage (inspired by Hogarth's series of satirical paintings, Marriage A-la-Mode), which had a similar theme and a heroine called Fanny Sterling. (Sir Thomas later praises Fanny's sterling qualities.)[71]
Henry Crawford visits Thornton Lacey, Edmund Bertram's future estate.Byrne suggests that the "serpentine path" leading to the ha-ha with its locked gate at Sotherton Court has shades of Satan's tempting of Eve in the Garden of Eden.[12] The ha-ha with its deep ditch represents a boundary which some, disobeying authority, will cross. It is a symbolic forerunner of the future moral transgressions of Maria Bertram and Henry Crawford. Colleen Sheehan compares the scenario to the Eden of Milton's Paradise Lost, where the locked iron gates open onto a deep gulf separating Hell and Heaven.[10]
'Wilderness' was a gardening term used to describe a wooded area, often set between the formal area around the house and the pastures beyond the ha-ha. At Sotherton, it is described as "a planted wood of about two acres ...[and] was darkness and shade, and natural beauty, compared with the bowling-green and the terrace." The alternative meaning of wilderness as a wild inhospitable place would have been very familiar to Austen's readers from several uses in the King James Version of the Bible, such as the account of the testing of the Israelites through the wilderness - John Chapter 3 links this story ("as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness ...") with redemption through Jesus.
The characters themselves exploit Sotherton's allegorical potential.[72] When Henry, looking across the ha-ha, says, "You have a very smiling scene before you", Maria responds, "Do you mean literally or figuratively?"[73] Maria quotes from Sterne's novel A Sentimental Journey about a starling that alludes to the Bastille. She complains of being trapped behind the gate that gives her "a feeling of restraint and hardship". The dialogue is full of double meanings. Even Fanny's warnings about spikes, a torn garment and a fall subtly suggest moral violence. Henry insinuates to Maria that if she "really wished to be more at large" and could allow herself "to think it not prohibited", then freedom was possible.[72] Shortly after, Edmund and Mary are also "tempted" to leave the wilderness.
Later in the novel, when Henry Crawford suggests destroying the grounds of Thornton Lacy to create something new, his plans are rejected by Edmund, who insists that although the estate needs some improvements, he wishes to preserve what has been created over the centuries.[74] In Austen's world, a man truly worth marrying enhances his estate while respecting its tradition: Edmund's reformist conservatism marks him out as a hero.[75]
