The Heroes’ Letters in Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park
by Rachel Lawrence
Jane Austen places near the middle of Mansfield Park an unfinished note from the hero to the heroine, that begins, and ends, “My very dear Fanny, you must do me the favour to accept –.” Austen uses this and other letters written by Edmund to Fanny to mark stages in the education of the most deluded of Austen’s heroes. The difference between Edmund’s short, unfinished note, and the long letter from Darcy to Elizabeth that Austen places at the middle of Pride and Prejudice, marks the difference between Austen’s treatment of the education of the hero in her first and second trilogies.
To: EBertram@northampton.net
From: FDarcy@pemberley.net
Date: Saturday, March 5, 2005
Subject: Our LettersBe not be alarmed, Sir, on receiving this e-mail, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those comments on the clergy which were last night so disgusting to you. I write with the intention of obtaining your assistance in preempting the efforts of a well-meaning but greatly deceived scholar to pass judgment on the productions of our pens. I see you there in the back of the room here at Fort Mason, and although I cannot always see the screen of your laptop from here, I perceive that you are on-line. I sincerely hope that you will take time to respond to this most urgent missive. As you have discerned, the speaker’s subject today is “The Heroes’ Letters in Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park.” I depend on you to assist me in cutting short this most impertinent and unjust inquiry, by standing with me to announce to the assembly that my letters are indisputably fine, that your letters are nothing in comparison, and that no further discussion is necessary. I anxiously await your reply.
In the first trilogy of novels, it is Austen’s heroines who need education or improvement in character, or at least help in distinguishing appearance from reality. Elinor Dashwood is of course “sensible,” but Catherine Morland needs to be educated out of her Gothic imaginings, Elizabeth needs to be educated out of her prejudicial theories about Darcy, and Marianne Dashwood needs to be educated out of her romantic misconstruction of Willoughby’s character. By contrast, most of the heroes in the first trilogy do not need such lessons, and Colonel Brandon and Henry Tilney are in fact the teachers of the heroine. The one hero who needs to be taught a lesson, Darcy, is equally the teacher and the student. In addition, not one of the heroes in the first trilogy is unaware of or oblivious to his attraction to the heroine.
In the second trilogy, Austen almost completely reverses these facts. Emma is, of course, prone to error, but the other two heroines, Anne Elliot and Fanny Price, do not need any correction in their character, and generally distinguish between appearance and reality without difficulty. Further, all of the heroes in the second trilogy are deluded about their relationship to the heroine, and need to be educated about the truth of that relationship. Wentworth resentfully believes that he is ready to marry any woman except Anne, Knightley is unaccountably jealous of Frank Churchill, and, as will be seen, Edmund has countless blind spots about Fanny. Austen’s different use of the heroes’ letters in Mansfield Park and Pride and Prejudice exemplifies the different approaches to the education of these different types of heroes.
To: FDarcy@pemberley.net
From: EBertram@northampton.netMy dear Darcy, excuse me that I have not written before. I know that you were wishing to hear from me, and could I have sent the few happy lines that you were expecting to hear, they should not have been wanting. But I fear that we do not think at all alike on the subject of our speaker. It is of course far from flattering to be called “deluded.” Yet I perceive a certain emphasis being given to my short, unfinished note to my dearest Fanny that bodes well for future favorable comments from this speaker. Therefore, as to your proposal to join in interrupting the presentation, I believe I see a fair objection to that plan. Please do not trouble yourself to reply, as I am sure that you desire, as much as I do, to attend closely to this interesting discussion of trilogies.
In Pride and Prejudice, Austen foreshadows the hero’s letter to the heroine by creating an early scene in which Darcy writes a letter to his sister while Caroline Bingley fawns over his penmanship and “charming long letters.” The conversation soon includes Elizabeth and Bingley, and evolves into a comparison between Darcy’s wordy, almost pompous writing style and Bingley’s careless style. Bingley tells us that Darcy “does not write with ease. He studies too much for words of four syllables.” Caroline tells us that when Bingley writes a letter, “[h]e leaves out half his words, and blots the rest.” This conversation naturally moves from styles of letters to styles of men, as the characters debate the relative merits of Darcy’s deliberate, overpowering personality and Bingley’s impulsive, persuadable one. The conversation ends when Elizabeth persuades Darcy to stop debating and finish his letter.
Austen uses this conversation to delineate character – for example, Caroline’s insincerity and Darcy’s corresponding forbearance. The conversation also foreshadows the events of the novel: the overpowering Darcy will persuade the even-tempered Bingley not to marry Jane, but ultimately Elizabeth will persuade Darcy into better conduct. But Austen also uses the scene to foreshadow the letter from the hero to the heroine that appears at the center of the novel. Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth is indeed long and formal. As predicted, it is not written “with ease” – he says it “pains” him to offend Elizabeth by writing it.
Austen uses Elizabeth’s rejection of Darcy’s first proposal to educate Darcy about his vanity and arrogance. But she uses Darcy’s letter to educate Elizabeth, and to show that Darcy has absorbed part of Elizabeth’s lesson. In his letter, Darcy teaches Elizabeth the truth about her family, and teaches her that in forming her hasty opinions of Darcy and Wickham, she had been, as Elizabeth later concludes, “blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.” The letter begins in tones of hurt pride, when Darcy says, “I write without any intention of … humbling myself …” But the letter ends in humility, signaling that Darcy has learned a lesson from Elizabeth. Once the letter is written, read, and re-read, neither hero nor heroine needs further education in character improvement. No additional letters pass between them. Their only remaining duties are to repent and reconcile.
To: Bertram
From: DarcySir, I must confess myself surprised by the tone of your previous e-mail. You seemed to be delighting in the prospect of praise from this peculiar quarter. However, as you see, events have shown my fears and your hopes to be equally unjustified. The speaker clearly approves of my logical, well-written letter to my dearest, loveliest Elizabeth. She finds it informative and courageous, and believes it tends to the improvement of character. Having heard such praise of my style of writing, surely you can no longer entertain any reasonable belief that any kind words can be said about your – what is it again? An unfinished note? Incidentally, that line in your previous message about the “one fair objection to a plan”? That’s Crawford’s line. Plagiarism is beneath your dignity.
To: Darcy
From: BertramMy dear Darcy, the best writers steal from the best. Crawford, for all his faults, was witty. By contrast, the eighteenth-century letter writers upon whom you’ve modeled yourself were complete bores. Do you not find it the least bit suspicious that your long letter, that we’re told fills both sides of several sheets of paper, and even in my Norton paperback fills five pages, has been fully introduced, discussed, and dismissed by the speaker in one short paragraph? That’s not praise; that’s perfunctory treatment. And who can blame her? Just look at it! “Be not alarmed, Madam …” That’s not exactly a self-confident beginning, is it? Promising up front not to disgust your beloved again? “Two offenses of a very different nature … you last night laid to my charge.” Is this a plea bargain or a love letter? “… when the following account of my actions and their motives has been read.” No one likes that kind of back-story, Darcy. Jane Austen hated it; she mocked these intrusive histories all the time in her stories and letters. But she figured you would be the type to insist upon writing one. What’s next? Wickham’s “vicious propensities ….” You use Puritanical language like this all the time, yet I’m the one who gets labeled “prig.” Let’s see …. “My sister Georgiana blah, blah … Ramsgate, yadda, yadda …” And still it goes on. The “silent type”? You never shut up! In short, my dear Darcy, I would not spend much time, if I were you, looking for a spot on the mantle for the Best Letter Writer trophy.
In Mansfield Park, Austen uses the same technique to foreshadow a hero’s letter that she uses in Pride and Prejudice – an early conversation about the hero’s letter-writing style. In this scene, Mary Crawford attempts to flirt with the absent Tom Bertram by telling Edmund to relay a message to Tom in his next letter to him. “Now, Mr. Bertram, if you write to your brother, I entreat you to tell him that my harp is come, he heard so much of my misery about it. And you may say, if you please, that I shall prepare my most plaintive airs against his return, in compassion to his feelings, as I know his horse will lose.” Edmund responds that if he writes to Tom, he will say whatever Mary wishes, but he “[does] not at present foresee any occasion for writing.” Mary replies by joking about the half-hearted writing styles of brothers in general, and Henry Crawford’s perfunctory letters in particular. Edmund is barely less serious than Fanny in defending William Price against Mary’s humorous charges.
This conversation about letter writing is eventually followed, as in Pride and Prejudice, by a letter from the hero to the heroine. But Edmund is no Darcy. At the middle of Mansfield Park, Edmund is as deluded as Darcy is self-aware at the middle of the earlier novel. He has no fact-filled history to impart to Fanny, and no Elizabeth Bennet has taught Edmund the truth about himself and about Mary Crawford. On the contrary, Fanny must say as little as possible to Edmund about Mary Crawford’s flaws in order to avoid betraying her jealousy and losing Edmund’s confidence. When Edmund writes his note to Fanny, therefore, he is as muddled in his thinking and as oblivious to Mary’s faults as he was at the beginning of the novel.
To: Bertram
From: DarcyI must ask you, Sir, to cease clinging to your fantasy of prevailing in this war of letters. The speaker has affirmed that your thinking is muddled, while mine is clear. Perhaps it is the difference between my Cambridge education and your Oxford one. Reason must always prevail over confusion. Have you never heard of the Enlightenment? If not, I recommend that you Google it.
To: Darcy
From: BertramMy Dear Darcy, you take these things too much to heart, or, in your case, to head. I am sure I know as much about the Enlightenment as any other man of my status, education, and Web-surfing abilities. But have you never heard of Spock and Kirk? It takes passion as well as brains to keep a spaceship going. My metaphors may be muddled, but if you will stop pressing “Send” for a few minutes, the speaker will make clear what I cannot.
By this point, Austen has set out most of the elements of Edmund’s confusion. He is attracted to Mary but is also repelled by her questionable morals. Further, Austen establishes that Edmund’s interest in Mary Crawford is linked to his feelings about Fanny.
For example, Edmund tells Fanny that Mary “never appeared more amiable” than when she comforted Fanny after Mrs. Norris publicly insulted her. But, as is always the case with the Crawfords, Mary’s actual motives were mixed. Mary had earlier alienated Edmund by trying to persuade him to act in the play. But when she comforted Fanny, with Edmund watching, we’re told that “the really good feelings by which she was almost purely governed were rapidly restoring her to all the little she had lost in Edmund’s favour.” Mary perceives that Edmund values people who are kind to Fanny, just as Henry Crawford perceives, and mercilessly exploits, the fact that Fanny values people who are kind to William Price. Edmund likes Mary, in part, because he thinks she likes Fanny.
In this way, Austen establishes that Edmund is confused because his attraction to Mary – the extent to which she “appears amiable” to him – is linked to his subconscious attraction to Fanny. Austen provides many other examples of this. We are told that he hears of Fanny and Mary’s increasing friendship “with great satisfaction,” and meets the two “with particular pleasure” when he sees them together at the parsonage. He praises Mary for character traits that Fanny has in far superior degree. For example, he says, “[Miss Crawford] has great discernment. I know nobody who distinguishes character better.” He goes on to tell Fanny, “She certainly understands you better than you are understood by the greater part of those who have known you so long [.]” It pleases Edmund that Mary appreciates Fanny. Early in the novel, Edmund argues that Henry Crawford probably prefers Julia to Maria even if he appears to be flirting more with Maria, because “it often happens that a man … will distinguish the sister or intimate friend of the woman he is really thinking of.” This is what Edmund does by pursuing Mary while attracted to Fanny – distinguishing Mary, whom Sir Thomas will later refer to as the “intimate friend” of Fanny, while subconsciously thinking of Fanny. Edmund repeatedly, unconsciously uses Fanny as a standard of excellence in judging Mary. Like Emma Woodhouse, Edmund is “clueless” about what he really wants.
Having established these traits and conflicts in Edmund, Austen has Edmund write Fanny the note that begins, and ends, “My very dear Fanny, you must do me the favour to accept –,” and which Austen prevents Edmund from finishing by having Fanny enter the room. Edmund writes the note in the East Room, while Fanny is out, to explain his gift to her of a chain for William’s cross. As the early conversation about letter writing predicted, Edmund’s note is a pragmatic one, because he writes only if he has “occasion” to write. In fact, Fanny later reflects that the note is the closest thing to a letter she had ever received from Edmund. In this passage, Fanny has returned from the parsonage to the East Room to deposit the suspicious gift of a necklace from Mary. She finds Edmund in the East Room, writing at her desk. He tells her that he is there only to explain his gift to her of the chain. They discuss whether Fanny should return Mary’s necklace, and Edmund speaks of Mary in such terms that Fanny knows for certain that Edmund loves Mary. When he leaves the room she resolves to do her duty and cease thinking of him.
She had all the heroism of principle, and was determined to do her duty; but having also many of the feelings of youth and nature, let her not be much wondered at, if, after making all these good resolutions on the side of self-government, she seized the scrap of paper on which Edmund had begun writing to her, as a treasure beyond all her hopes, and reading with the tenderest emotion these words, “My very dear Fanny, you must do me the favour to accept” locked it up with the chain, as the dearest part of the gift. It was the only thing approaching to a letter which she had ever received from him; she might never receive another; it was impossible that she ever should receive another so perfectly gratifying in the occasion and the style. Two lines more prized had never fallen from the pen of the most distinguished author – never more completely blessed the researches of the fondest biographer. The enthusiasm of a woman’s love is even beyond the biographer’s. To her, the handwriting itself, independent of anything it may convey, is a blessedness. Never were such characters cut by any other human being as Edmund’s commonest handwriting gave! This specimen, written in haste as it was, had not a fault; and there was a felicity in the flow of the first four words, in the arrangement of “My very dear Fanny,” which she could have looked at for ever.”
To: Darcy
From: BertramMy Dear Darcy, do you see what I mean about passion? My dearest Fanny was in raptures after reading my note. My letter literally meant more to her than gold. (But the jewelry didn’t hurt, I’m sure.) Now do you see the value of heart, of feeling, of romance? Your Elizabeth is quite intellectual, I grant you, but I don’t know of any other woman breathing who would view that five-page brief for the defense that you delivered to her as some sort of proof of affection. Whereas, “My very dear Fanny ….” Why, the more I hear of my words, the more I approve of them.
To: Bertram
From: DarcySir, you wrote the aforementioned note to Miss Price while you were pursuing another woman. Even a Romantic Soul such as you suddenly profess yourself to be must realize that the prerequisite of a love letter is that it be addressed to the person with whom the writer is in love.
Fanny cherishes the note as if it were a love letter because she is in love with the writer. She is not foolishly projecting love where none was intended. She correctly perceives the kindness and interest in Edmund’s note and gesture. But she knows no more than Edmund does about his subconscious feelings – until the end of the novel, she is as wrong as everyone else in the story in assuming that Edmund is not in love with her.
The circumstances, the note, and its content betray Edmund’s confusion about Mary and Fanny. A gift of jewelry from a man to a woman is a coded expression of love, and in Austen’s time was an improper gift unless the parties were engaged. Edmund is not guilty of impropriety because Fanny is his cousin. But it happens that the Crawfords’ high-pressure tactic of forcing Fanny to accept the surreptitious gift of a necklace from Henry backfires when only Edmund’s chain – the “real chain,” in Fanny’s words – fits William’s cross, symbolizing Edmund’s status as the true lover. That Edmund’s mind was moving along the same track as Henry Crawford shows Edmund’s problem.
Edmund’s statements to Fanny at the time he gives her the gift show his confusion. He says at first that he has “no pleasure so complete, so unalloyed” as the pleasure of contributing to Fanny’s pleasure, yet in almost the next breath, unaware of the Crawfords’ intrigue, expresses even more pleasure at the news that Mary has given Fanny a necklace. Of course, what actually pleases him is that Mary is being kind – or so he thinks – to Fanny. He ends the conversation by urging Fanny not to return Mary’s necklace, because he wouldn’t want a returned gift to cool the friendship of his “two dearest objects … on earth.” The note begins, “My very dear Fanny,” but by the end of the conversation Fanny is tied for “dearest” with Miss Crawford.
While Edmund is still so confused, Austen cannot let Edmund write a long letter to Fanny. He lacks Darcy’s self-awareness and cannot explain himself at length to anyone. He knows that Fanny is his “very dear Fanny,” but the unfinished note and accompanying gift can only be Edmund’s first plodding steps toward understanding himself. According to Austen’s theory of education, he is not yet ready to teach or to be taught.
In addition, by leaving the note hanging in the middle of an offer to Fanny – “you must do me the favour to accept” – Austen creates suspense for the time when Edmund makes a different type of offer to Fanny. In the first trilogy, Darcy’s long letter and Colonel Brandon’s long personal history create surprise, because of the new facts the heroes reveal about the villains and past events. In the second trilogy, the halting, Hamlet-like actions and inaction of the deluded heroes Edmund and Wentworth create not surprise, but suspense. In the case of Mansfield Park, the reader becomes anxious for the moment when the Crawfords will be exposed, Edmund enlightened, and Fanny released from her exile in Portsmouth.
Austen uses the letter device to heighten this suspense at Portsmouth. Edmund tells Fanny before she leaves Mansfield that he will write to her in Portsmouth only when he has anything worth writing about – by which he means news of his engagement to Mary. The reader waits anxiously in Portsmouth along with Fanny for the hero’s letter, which may bring, not a completion of the earlier offer, but news of his engagement to another woman. However, when the letter does arrive, it turns out to be a long letter rather than the “few happy lines” he had anticipated sending. And like Darcy’s letter, it shows that the hero has learned a few lessons. Although complete education will take a little more time for Edmund, this first long letter establishes that he is opening his eyes to the truth about Mary and himself.
The first line of the letter, which shows that it is written from Mansfield Park rather than London, establishes that Edmund is seeing Mary more clearly. Mary’s manners and the manners of her London friends have literally repelled Edmund into making a tactical retreat back to Mansfield Park. The length of the letter, its stream of consciousness style, and increasing confidences and expressions of affection, signal Edmund’s movement away from Mary and toward Fanny. For example, after arguing two sides of his Mary problem for some time, he finally says, as someone confident of the love of the hearer would say, “You have my thoughts exactly as they arise.” He rationalizes his continuing pursuit of Mary on the grounds that giving Mary up would mean separating himself from Fanny and Henry, whom he believes will be getting married. He writes, “Connected, as we already are, and, I hope, are to be, to give up Mary Crawford, would be to give up the society of some of those most dear to me, to banish myself from the very houses and friends whom, under any other distress, I should turn to for consolation. The loss of Mary I must consider as comprehending the loss of Crawford and of Fanny.” It is as if he is standing by Mary so he will not have to give up Fanny. Near the end of the letter, he tells Fanny, “I miss you more than I can express.”
Even Edmund’s statement that Mary “is the only woman in the world whom I could ever think of as a wife,” which seems to make Fanny’s cause hopeless, in fact serves to float the key problem out of Edmund’s subconscious: he has only to begin to think of someone else – Fanny – “as a wife.” Austen uses the same technique in Emma when she has Emma notice Knightley’s figure at the ball, and observe that he should be dancing rather than “classing himself with the card players and lookers-on.” This signals the paradigm shift Emma must make to view Knightley as a potential husband. At the end of Edmund’s letter, the link between the concepts of “Fanny” and “wife” is made more explicit when Edmund says that he doesn’t want to improve Thornton Lacey until it has a mistress, but, he says, “I want you at home, that I may have your opinion about [it].” It is Fanny whom Edmund wants to come “home” to help Edmund fulfill some of the “mistress” functions at Thornton Lacey.
To: Bertram
From: DarcySir, is the speaker a relative of yours? A lobbyist for the Bertram family, perhaps? I have it on good authority that that letter of yours made Miss Price miserable. How can the speaker possibly defend that remark about not being able to think of anyone else except Miss Crawford as a wife? No woman wants to think that she was only first runner-up.
Austen’s final signal in Edmund’s letter that Edmund is becoming self-aware is that at the end of the letter, Fanny’s and Mary’s roles are reversed. Edmund debates whether he should propose to Mary by letter instead of returning to London, and eventually convinces himself that he should write. Now it will no longer be Fanny waiting for a letter from Edmund, but Mary who will be doing the waiting. Edmund now has his priorities in the proper order, and Austen allows him to finish his letter.
Edmund’s subsequent short letters to Fanny affirm Fanny’s superior status by keeping her in what Mary Crawford calls “that discerning part” of the family that knows the truth about Tom’s illness, while Mary is on the outside, desperate for information on this subject that is so material to her ambitions. Edmund’s final letter to Fanny, in which he announces that he is coming to bring her home from Portsmouth, relieves both Fanny’s and the reader’s anxiety, because it is clear that Fanny has been justified and will be rewarded.
To: Darcy
From: BertramI must put down my Pride and Prejudice coffee mug and my Pride and Prejudice ink pen, and kick aside my Pride and Prejudice tote bag, so that I can have comfort and room to respond to your inquiry regarding paid advocates for the Bertram family. You have worldwide, never-ending Darcymania surrounding your every move, and a public relations machine that is second only to that of Mickey Mouse. By contrast, all I have is one bespectacled Janeite in one room in one town, tentatively advancing the position that my subconscious is slightly better than my surface would have people believe. So back off. Anyway, you’re wrong about Miss Price. The text says that, although at first she was angered by the letter, she was in the end moved by the confidential tone and the expressions of affection toward herself, and concluded that “it was a letter, in short, that she would not but have had for the world, and which could never be valued enough.” It’s passion, my dear Darcy. I’ve always loved Fanny, and my letters show it. And she’s always loved me. And we are to be married. As another great letter writer said, “I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice.”
To: Bertram
From: DarcyAs you do me the honor of quoting from a letter of my most beloved Elizabeth, I can quarrel with you no longer. I see that you are signing off and preparing to slip out, as you always do at these gatherings. I will only add, God bless you.
Edmund is a different kind of hero from Darcy. He is a second trilogy hero, a Knightley or a Wentworth who has to learn more about himself before he can tell his story. With Fanny silenced by circumstances from enlightening him, Edmund must struggle through half-knowledge and half-sentences until Austen, as she does for Wentworth, finally puts the pen in his hands.
Copyright © 2005 by Rachel Lawrence
Rachel Lawrence became interested in Jane Austen in 1999 after reading Bridget Jones’s Diary and borrowing videotapes of the BBC Pride and Prejudice from the library. She joined JASNA in 2000 and JASNA NorCal in 2001.