Mansfield Park and the Archeology of Values

"England" is an entity ripe for accurate historical interpretation because so much cultural innovation took place in such a relatively condensed time and space. Here, I want to focus my lens on the transformation of public values in England as represented through its main works of architecture. My journey begins with Medieval England, when parish churches were first introduced, and it moves swiftly through towards the turn of the nineteenth century, when the house estate became the final locus of public activity, and thus of values.

In "Sensing and believing: exploring worlds of difference in pre-modern England: a contribution to the debate opened by Kate Giles," Pamela C. Graves' archeological analysis of church structures affords scholars the opportunity to imagine the interface between values and experience in public life at that time. She notes that "past understandings of the senses and their role in social construction, embodiment and body emplacement" can be the subject of prolonged scrutiny, and thus we learn how "sights, movements and sounds are imbued with meaning and carefully hierarchized [in Medeival eccliastic experience] so as to express and enforce the social and cosmic order." Given the extramission/intromission theories of sensation and perception, by which to sense phenomenologically is to make spiritual contact, the "ritualized...interactions with these material environments [expose] the nexus of piety, social identity, individual and institutional strategies such practices helped to create, as well as the limits of authority and dissidence." Without going into too much detail, the ritualization of otherwise everyday objects was supposed to a.) provide for the laiety, clergy, and nobility alike, an authentic interaction with Communion, and b.) to remind and enforce all peoples to look for the spiritual aspects of physical creation. The latter effort aimed for good Christians to reject outward curiosities and extraneous details by looking always inward towards their True Selves.

Fast forward to the turn of the 1800s, and we see quite a different value system, as evidenced by George Dyer's "A dissertation on the theory and practice of benevolence." In his first chapter, he establishes a variety of points which show the dramatic shift in social attitudes
1.) Humans of like mind are to seek refuge from the imperfections of the physical world in each other's social help: to live otherwise is to subscribe to the superstitions of 'dark ages.'
2.) If a man is superior in his independence, given that he is moral and rational, he may as well be his own god; he does not require the mediation of religion.
3.) It is the responsibility of the nation to ensure the stability of this way of private independence.
4.) No one of true virtue is to be enslaved in his family or to be enslaved by other families, unless of course, the original sins of despotism or corruption lurk by the wayside.
5.) Only through honesty and inward reflection can a person look through cracked customs and peer at the corruption/despotism beneath.
6.) No one is to discriminate based off of extraneous detail such as race or creed: the buck ends at universal human virtue.
7.) Self-righteousness reaches beyond the boundaries of proper inward reflection; to practice thus is to be like the Pharisees, and so mercy in its correct form is of highest value.

What we see from Dyer essentially is a clever transformation: what institutions existed to make G-d the center of life are now reconfigured to make the beneficiary and patron the god of his own household. Mansfield Park, then, is like a living archeological record of Dyer's theories unfolding. As the characters move through space in a ritualized fashion, we see, in sharper and sharper degrees, the extent to which Sir Thomas plays the role of the indepentent benefactor. Oftentimes, his despotism and corruption overshadow his proper role, as shown through the inward-looking Fanny.

The scene at Sotherton where Fanny is disappointed with the simplicity of the private chapel is no value judgment: it is more an objective exhibition of the state of things. Given our awareness of this state and its ability to saturate the most mundane aspects of life, readers of Austen's work are to move forward and evaluate whether or not this state is satisfactory, and why.

So we have a new reading of the following exchange, and we can essentially read outwards from this moment in order to best read the rest of the novel:

***

"Very fine indeed!" said Miss Crawford, laughing. "It must do the heads of family a great deal of good to force all the poor housemaids and footmen to leave business and pleasure, and say their prayers here twice a day while they are inventing excuses themselves for staying away"

"At any rate, it is safer to leave people to their own devices on such subjects. Every body likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion. The obligation of attendance, the formality, the restraint, the length of time--altogether it is a formidable thing, and what nobody likes: and if the good people who used to kneel and gape in that gallery could have forseen that the time would come when men and women might lie another ten minutes in bed, when they woke with a headache, without danger of reprobation, because chapel was missed, they would have jumped with joy and envy. Cannot you imagine with what unwilling feelings the former belles of the house of Rushworth did many a time repair to this chapel? The young Mrs. Eleanors and Mrs. Bridgets--starched up into seeming piety, but with heads full of something very different--especially if the poor chaplain were not worth looking at--and, in those days, I fancy parsons were very inferior even to what they are now."

***

According to Dyer, Miss Crawford's logic would be infallible. Her sentiments would reflect a humanistic liberation from the shackles of religious slavery. The order achieved by that old system is now superimposed in a secularized realm. There would be nothing wrong with her emphasis on the aesthetics of the human form (project that Mrs. Eleanors would gaze away from the priest and turn a lusty eye towards her husband); such is her choice, so long as she is rationally virtous. Moreover, we learn in Graves that the architectural features that enforced inner reflection would often inadverntly highlite, aesthetically, class distinctions and wealth. So, Fanny could not justify her qualms with Miss Crawford's logic on purely spiritual grounds; after much inner reflection, she would arrive at the conclusion that the system of beneficience is only being mishandled at Mansfield.