Church Interiors: Parish vs. Private

In Chapter 9 of Mansfield Park, Fanny is disappointed upon entering the private family chapel at Sotherton.

"I am disappointed," said she, in a low voice, to Edmund. "This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing awful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here are no aisles, no arches, no banners. No banners, cousin, to be 'blown by the night wind of heaven.' No signs that a Scottish monarch sleeps below."

"You forget, Fanny, how lately all this has been built, and for how confined a purpose, compared with the old chapels of castles and monasteries. It was only for the private use of the family. They have been buried, I suppose, in the parish church. There you must look for the banners and the achievements."

-Fanny's emotions relate space, vision, and values: the layout of the family chapel signals to Fanny, at the very least, an absence of value in the religious sphere. Now, whether Fanny is simply disappointed that the chapel is not as pretty or interesting as its Medieval counterpart is not so important. Generally, the parish church carries some special import that is missing in the Sotherton chapel.

My research will spring from C. Pamela Graves' article "Sensing and believing: exploring worlds of difference in pre-modern England: a contribution to the debate opened by Kate Giles." This article explores the relationship between church space and the phenomenological experience of the Medieval subject as he his situated in a social hierarchy. The belief was that the specific construction of the church interior allowed the laiety to touch the Lord by viewing carefully contrived images, sculptures, and structures depicting Divinity. Essentially, the masses felt that when they entered the church at Mass, they were entering a space where Divinity resides.

In contrast, the plain layout of the family church sends a quite different message about space and divinity. This space is not G-d's; it is the family's. Such a distinction in church usage is rooted deeply in history, specifically in the short rain of James II and the Glorious Revolution. As the chapel was built during this reign, it carries extra symbolic import for this discussion. Furthermore, as the chapel is part of the estate, it is viewed merely as a branch of a larger entity. The chapel loses its position as the House of the Lord, and instead the space bends to the wills of its legitimate owners.

An application of this historicization to the text of Mansfield Park should lead to interesting conclusions. What I would like to specifially address: how do the spatial and visual constructions of buildings and estates within the novel clue us in to the phenomenological experience of early 19th century Britannia? Further, how do these experiences point to values inherent in that society? Finally, what can we surmise is Jane Austen's evaluation based on these findings, or if she means to espouse no opinion on the matter, what does this mean?