Jane Austen Essays - British Films, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Jane Austen EL2 Essay 2 Angela Bathgate Tutor Julie Marney 6. How does Mansfield Park interrogate the relationship of power and gender? Mansfield Park by Jane Austen is a classic realist text, which is almost exclusively focused on a small strip of society, namely the upper-middle class of rural England; the class to which she herself belonged. Throughout her novel, Austen portrays the disadvantaged position of woman, presenting the issues of gender stereotyping and marriage choice as the main problems they have to confront. Gender came to be seen as a construct of society, designed to facilitate the smooth-running of society to the advantage of men1, proving that men gained power throughout the socially constructed subordination of woman. Taking a post-structuralist approach to Mansfield Park, we can see that there is a pretence that bourgeois culture is naturalto limit meaning in the interests of control, repression and privilege2. Austens writing embodies middle-class values, and portrays an ideology that emphasises patriarchal rule, along with social and economic power, with little reference to the hardships of the working class. This text is therefore a form of oppressive ideology, in which women are kept in their socially and sexually subordinate place. When Sir Thomas Bertram discovers that Fanny will reject Henry Crawfords proposal, the cruelty of male power is evident, enforcing the gender role. He does not understand her refusal of a secure marriage, and attempts to change her answer by redefining what she says. Sir Thomas is an authoritative male, 1 _______________________________ 1 Literary Theory: An Introduction, Terry Eagleton (Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1996), p114 2 Literature in the Modern World, Dennis Walder (Oxford University Press, 1990), p306 EL2 Essay 2 Angela Bathgate Tutor Julie Marney and represents the male-dominated system that tries to take control of, and organise a womans life for her. Although Fanny represents female resistance by opposing Sir Thomass judgement, Austen conveys the over-powering pressure that she feels as She could say no more; her breath was almost gone1. Fannys weak position is shown through the punctuation and structure of her sentences, as she often begins to protest, but then breaks off at a dash, unable to continue. This contrasts with the clarity of Sir Thomass speech, in which he conveys a tone of certainty and finality, whilst speaking with ease. He is confident, and sure of his thoughts; so sure in fact, that he tries to impose them on Fanny, and will use any kind of pressure or cruelty to force her to comply with his decision that she should marry. Sir Thomas trying to persuade Fanny to marry emphasises the fact that Austens novels operate around the framework of love, marriage and money. Many of the characters believe that there is no future development open to women of their class but marriage and the upbringing of children, making Fanny seem extremely unusual when she turns down Henrys offer. This relates to the Marxist view that dominant visible forms taken by modes of physical and social reproduction through history have been family and kinship structures2, which utilises the gender positions of male power and female subservience. Austen uses words such as career, to reminds us that marriage was a womans livelihood, her career in the sense that it was her lifes work, and that she would grab any marriage that had good financial prospects. 2 _______________________________ 1 Mansfield Park, Jane Austen (Penguin, 1994), p260 2 Criticism and Ideology, Terry Eagleton (Oxford University Press, 1976), p79 EL2 Essay 2 Angela Bathgate Tutor Julie Marney In the society and culture that Austen depicts, the male is regarded as the norm, as the central position from which the female is defined. This reflects structuralisms theory that society and thinking are constructed on models of binary pairs, such as the pairing of man and woman. However, this pairing allows the man to take precedence over the woman, who is seen as inferior to his superiority. Women are defined by men, just as in Mansfield Park when there is pressure on Fanny to meet Sir Thomass expectations of what a woman is, Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous beingShe is defined and differentiated with reference to men and