Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Into the open with Catherine Morland
- 2 Elinor Dashwood and concealment
- 3 Elizabeth's memory and Mr Darcy's smile
- 4 The religion of Aunt Norris
- 5 The story of Fanny Price
- 6 Emma's overhearing
- 7 Anne Elliot and the ambient world
- Bibliography
- Notes
- Index
4 - The religion of Aunt Norris
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Into the open with Catherine Morland
- 2 Elinor Dashwood and concealment
- 3 Elizabeth's memory and Mr Darcy's smile
- 4 The religion of Aunt Norris
- 5 The story of Fanny Price
- 6 Emma's overhearing
- 7 Anne Elliot and the ambient world
- Bibliography
- Notes
- Index
Summary
In the middle of those chapters in Mansfield Park that relate Fanny Price's misery in the family home at Portsmouth, there occurs an interesting and odd moment. Her slatternly mother, with Betsy the spoilt youngest child on her lap, remarks idly that Betsy's godmother, her Aunt Norris, hasn't sent the child any gift, but that must be because she lives too far off to think of her. The narrator comments:
Fanny had indeed nothing to convey from aunt Norris, but a message to say she hoped her god-daughter was a good girl, and learnt her book. There had been at one moment a slight murmur in the drawing-room at Mansfield Park, about sending her a Prayer-book; but no second sound had been heard of such a purpose. Mrs Norris, however, had gone home and taken down two old Prayer-books of her husband, with that idea, but upon examination, the ardour of generosity went off. One was found to have too small a print for a child's eyes, and the other too cumbersome for her to carry about.
(iii: 7, 447)The narrator swerves away from Portsmouth for a moment, as if unable to resist adding one more twist to the comic variations on Mrs Norris' inveterate meanness. Though some of Mansfield Park's earliest readers told the author how much they were ‘delighted’ by Mrs Norris, or, like Mrs Austen, ‘enjoyed’ her, modern readers more often find her too nasty to be amusing, and certainly there is more to this incident than comedy. For one thing, the reasons Mrs Norris gives herself for not sending the gift are so transparently inadequate. They might lead a re-reader to suspect that something more than parsimony is behind her reluctance here. These books will cost her nothing to send, so what is it that makes it impossible for her to act generously? What form of inner resistance hinders her from sending this present of an odd old volume?
- Type
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- Information
- The Hidden Jane Austen , pp. 72 - 91Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014