Mary Crawford's hip language

Alert Janeite Lorraine sent us a link to the Sorrow at Sills Bend weblog, which contains a fascinating post about the author’s work as a research assistant to the editor of the new Cambridge edition of Mansfield Park. We especially enjoyed the explanation of how Mary Crawford’s literary allusions are all hip and contemporary (for her time, of course), especially in comparison with Fanny Price’s literary allusions.

Not incidentally, recognising that pattern was the kind of thing that happened over and over while working on the edition. For me those moments helped me understand better the limitless genius of Jane Austen’s novels. She wastes nothing. Anything you notice, means something, it isn’t just there to add to the word count or plug a gap in the story; and what it means is usually something important. (Fully recognising this early on in the research part of the process proved helpful later when struggling through the infinitely painful work of making sure the spelling and punctuation from Austen’s 1816 edition was accurately transferred to J’s new one.) What this pattern was confirming was that Mary Crawford’s clever and sparkly conversation is actually highly superficial. She gives the impression of having read a lot and having naturalised her reading so that she can always come up with something cultured and apt; but in fact her reading is much closer to the bitsy, fake education that Maria and Julia Crawford have received. Fanny is the other person in MP who quotes a lot, and when you put her reading choices together in the same way, they add up as almost totally antithetical to Mary’s.

What a terrific piece of literary detective work to track down that allusion–and even to recognize it as such in the first place! We have been a bit sniffy about the Cambridge editions (being quite attached to our Oxford editions, not to mention our favorite Oxford man) but the post inspires us to look forward to the new editions.

Lorraine also made a point of saying that the comments to the post are as enjoyable as the post itself.