Fanny Price<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Few readers love Fanny Price. Some hate her as deeply as Mark Twain professed to hate her creator. CS Lewis had Screwtape call her \u201cnot only a\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/07\/fanny-price\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fanny Price\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Few readers love Fanny Price. Some hate her as deeply as Mark Twain professed to hate her creator. 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{"id":18951,"date":"2017-07-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=674"},"modified":"2017-07-14T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-07-14T00:00:00","slug":"fanny-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/07\/fanny-price\/","title":{"rendered":"Fanny Price"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

F<\/span>ew readers love Fanny Price. Some hate her as deeply as Mark Twain professed to hate her creator.\u00a0CS Lewis had Screwtape call her\u00a0\u201cnot only a Christian, but such a Christian\u2014a vile, sneaking, simpering, demure, monosyllabic, mouselike, watery, insignificant, virginal, bread-and-butter miss . . . \u00a0A two-faced little cheat (I know the sort) who looks as if she\u2019d faint at the sight of blood, and then dies with a smile . . . Filthy, insipid little prude!\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s a commendation to get this kind of evaluation from a demon. But Screwtape is expressing a common, non-demonic view of Austen\u2019s heroine. It\u2019s common enough that Tara Isabella Burton feels the need to spring to her defense<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Burton\u2019s takes this tack: The novel isn\u2019t Fanny Price<\/em>; it\u2019s Mansfield Park<\/em>. It\u2019s not about Fanny and her timidity, but about her awkward social situation. Her appalling aunt,\u00a0Mrs Norris, never misses a chance to remind Fanny\u2019s cousins that she\u2019s a poor, dependent relation, and dim-witted to boot. Fanny never has the free space to be an Elizabeth Bennet, much less an Emma Woodhouse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her betters have the social buffers to take risks and transgress taboos; even an extramarital affair earns no more than a comfortable exile on the Continent. By contrast, \u201cFanny has no such protection. She\u2019s reminded at every turn that her presence in the house is contingent upon the good will of her social betters.\u201d Throughout, Fanny\u2019s words and actions highlight\u00a0\u201cher middle-class inability to engage in the same carefree pseudo-risks of her aristocratic peers.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s convincing as far as it goes, but Burton\u2019s piece suggests that Austen may be up to one of her subtle tricks. Put it this way: How many readers have essentially adopted Mrs Norris\u2019s view of Fanny (just as nearly everyone adopts Emma\u2019s view of Miss Bates)?\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the Milton technique unraveled in\u00a0Stanley\u00a0Fish\u2019s classic, Surprised by Sin<\/em><\/a>:\u00a0Milton\u00a0wants<\/em> us to fall for the devil, so that Eve\u2019s temptation becomes ours. Perhaps Austen wants to bring us up short and realize that, in despising Fanny, we are, as it were, siding with Screwtape.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"