Marriage and the Marketplace in Jane Austen’s Emma and Mansfield Park (Part I)
This chapter explores the adverse effects that the marketplace mentality has on social relationships in Jane Austen’s Emma and Mansfield Park.[1] With the ideology of the marketplace introduced into society, relationships are perceived only as commoditized goods to be transacted, resulting in harmful consequences for those characters who adopt this perspective. The dynamics of family, marriage, and the community are significantly altered where cooperation and care are replaced by self-interest and competition. This chapter therefore shows not only the problems that the marketplace mentality brings to Austen’s characters and their worlds but also how the heroines of Emma and Mansfield Park are able to navigate this marketplace to find happiness in their own lives.[2]
What is remarkable is not that both heroines arrive at the same conclusion of matrimony at the end of the novels, but that each protagonist adopts a different strategy to achieve their ends. Fanny Price is often perceived as passive, principled, and insipid, while Emma Woodhouse is regularly observed as active, ironic, and imaginative. Should one accept the religious convictions and seemingly Christ-like suffering of Fanny to resist the marketplace offers of marriage by the likes of Henry Crawford? Or should one approve of Emma’s inventive speculations, ironic observations, and meddlesome match-making to find a marriage apart from the marketplace? Given that both heroines at the end of their respective novels achieve happiness in marriage, it is difficult to assess what Austen may be telling us, if anything, about these questions.
Contrary to the common interpretations of the two heroines, I contend that both Fanny and Emma fundamentally share the same character and values that enables them to resist the marketplace mentality: the reduction of relationships to commensurable goods in order for them to be transacted like commodities. Although they exist in different social and economic circumstances, both understand relationships consist of multifaceted, incommensurate goods: family, friendships, and marriage should not be reduced to a type of commercial transaction but rather should include non-commoditized values, like imagination, irony, and empathy. All relationships, but especially marriage, should include both corporeal and incorporeal goods that remain distinct from each other. The problem that Fanny and Emma confront is a world where relationships have been reduced either to corporeal or incorporeal goods. When this situation transpires, both types of goods become susceptible to commodification.
The result is a reality where appearances are the only things of importance because the marketplace allows one to buy, sell, or trade these types of goods. If marriage does not possess anything beyond the material, a woman only can evaluate a prospective partner by his appearances, such as physical beauty or financial wealth. Likewise, if marriage consists exclusively of the immaterial, a woman is forced to assess a suitor only by his reputation in the hope that it corresponds to his character. In both cases, the reduction of the marital relationship to either corporeality or incorporeality creates a situation where appearances become the currency of the marketplace, regardless of whether the exteriors of appearances actually match the interiors of character.[3]
Thus, Austen’s novels are attempts to discover a marriage based on multifaceted, incommensurate goods in the world of the marketplace. Both Fanny and Emma must find a way to push past appearances to discover genuine human relationships for their families, friendships, and marriages. It may be even the case that women are especially suited for this task. Although in Austen’s novels women are often portrayed in lower positions of authority when compared to men, they possess unique qualities that enable them to better resist the marketplace mentality. In some sense, Fanny and Emma do not even need matrimony to provide them a meaningful existence in their lives, in spite of their differences in status, power, and esteem. Marriage is a preoccupation for them but it does not provide ultimate meaning.
Yet Fanny and Emma do marry at the end of their stories, with their lives being enriched because marriage can be a source of politics and education that differ from the marketplace.[4] By uniting disparate families into a single community and by wedding both corporeal and incorporeal goods together, matrimony becomes a type of politics. It is also a type of education for its participants, leading them to move from self-interest and competition to cooperation and care through imagination, irony, and empathy. Marriage forces Austen’s characters – and hopefully the reader – to recognize that all relationships, but particularly marriage, require incommensurate goods for them to succeed. With these new types of relationships, heroines like Fanny and Emma are able to find happiness in their new marital and communal lives.
The Marketplace of Mansfield Park
Fanny Price is often portrayed as socially passive, religious principled, and utterly unironic, leading critics to characterize Mansfield Park as either supporting or parodying conservative nineteenth-century England.[5] But what is absent in these interpretations is an examination of the commodification of relationships, the marketplace mentality, and its adverse effects on people. On the one hand, there is a set of characters that perceive relationships solely in corporeal terms – Mrs. Norris, Maria Bertram, the Crawfords – and consequently pursue their self-interest in order to satisfy their desires. On the other hand, there are those who see relationship only incorporeally, like Edmund, and, as a result, are skewed in their discernment of what actually transpires. It is only the heroine, Fanny, who is able to recognize the value of relationships based on both the corporeal and incorporeal goods and therefore able to act effectively to achieve a meaningful and lasting happiness for herself and the loved ones around her.
Mrs. Norris is the enforcer of Sir Thomas’ command to maintain Maria’s and Julia’s superiority in rank, fortune, and rights over Fanny. As Wallace observes, Mrs. Norris’ unpleasant behavior towards Fanny becomes comprehensible once it is recognized that she is the older sister of Lady Bertram.[6] After waiting for a fortunate match, she had to “obliged herself to be attached to the Rev. Mr. Norris,” thereby becoming dependent on her younger sister and continually reminded of her lower status (3).[7] It is her lowly status that motives Mrs. Norris to bring Fanny into Mansfield Park so someone else can be “lowest and last” in the family (173).
By claiming credit for bringing Fanny into Mansfield Park as an act of charity but offloading the expenses to Sir Thomas, Mrs. Norris is able to assert a type of parity with Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram in the decisions of Mansfield Park without incurring any of the costs.[8] When Sir Thomas is away, Mrs. Norris fills his role of authority by approving affairs at Mansfield Park, such as allowing Lovers’ Vows to be performed, in the attempt to claim a type of equality with her sister and husband. This attempt at parity is also manifested in Mrs. Norris’s role in the education of the Bertram sisters and Fanny. But unlike Maria and Julia, Fanny is reduced to an object of exploitation by Mrs. Norris, who treats her almost as a servant, employing her to “carrying messages, and fetching what she wanted” (16). This abusive treatment of Fanny is another attempt to disguise Mrs. Norris lowly status in order to maintain the appearance of equality with Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram.
Underlying Mrs. Norris’ behavior is her reduction of relationships to a type of materiality where everything can be quantified. Not only are money and the price of items most associated with Mrs. Norris throughout the novel – shifting the monetary burden of raising Fanny to Sir Thomas, moving her residence to Mansfield during Lovers’ Vow to save on living expenses, scrutinizing servants so they do not take too much – but this quantification of relationships enables Mrs. Norris to manipulate and transact relationships in order to achieve a type of parity with her sister and Sir Thomas in the authority at Mansfield Park: Fanny is treated as an inferior to raise the status of Mrs. Norris, who, in turn, looks after the education of the Bertram sisters, a role that should belong to Lady Bertram and Sir Thomas.
Mrs. Norris’ relentless and ruthless pursuit of self-interest ultimately fails, as her character is finally revealed to be an “hourly evil” (365). She is forced to leave Mansfield Park to be with Maria in another county where they grate on each other’s nerves. It should come to no surprise that Maria, the favorite of Mrs. Norris, suffers a similar fate as her aunt’s because of the same flaw. With the arrival of the Crawfords, both Maria and her younger sister, Julia, become engage in an intense sexual competition for Henry’s affections.[9] The satisfaction of Maria’s eventual triumph over Julia is not only the winning of Henry Crawford’s favor but also seeing her sister suffer: “Maria’s countenance was to decide it; if she were vexed and alarmed – but Maria looked all serenity and satisfaction, and Julia well knew that on this ground Maria could not be happy but at her expense” (107).
By reducing the marital relationship as a type of materiality of sexual desire and financial independence, Maria, like Mrs. Norris, initially is successful at achieving her goals of winning Henry Crawford’s affections and marrying Mrs. Rushworth. With the former, she satisfies her sexual desire; with the latter, she attains financial security and independence. But perhaps even more impressive, Maria is able to achieve both of these objectives simultaneously. Compartmentalizing her desires and thus the relationships that satisfy each one enables Maria to have an affair with Henry Crawford while still being engaged to Mr. Rushworth. These types of transactions are possible only if the marital relationship is not seen as an integrated whole but is split into separate components that satisfy different desires.
However, like Mrs. Norris, Maria at the end of the novel fails to find happiness by eloping with Henry Crawford who only later refuses to marry her. This failure can be partially explained by the societal restrictions on female propriety, the patriarchal oppression of her home, and her poor calculation in managing relationships.[10] But, as Sutherland notes, it is Maria’s education, focusing on accomplishments rather than self-knowledge, that is responsible for her unhappy fate.[11] This type of education reinforces the perception that relationships are monist rather than multifaceted in character. Given her education, Maria could not conceive the possibility that relationships consist of incommensurate goods.
The lack of education to include these types of goods also characterizes Mary Crawford’s upbringing, who, as an orphan, was raised by a debauched admiral and his embittered wife in the corrupt environment of London. As Auerbach argues, Mary could have been “truly admirable had she been given a moral education to counter the inescapable corruption around her.”[12] But, as influenced by their surroundings, Mary and her brother embody the metropolitan values of London: commerce, autonomy, and the marketplace.[13] When Mary and Henry visit Mansfield Park, they introduce these values openly. Whereas the values of the marketplace were hidden under the appearance of propriety with Mrs. Norris and Maria, they are fully uncloaked in the words and actions of Mary Crawford, whose “true London maxim” is “that every thing is to be got with money” (47).
Although Mary is attracted to Edmund, her materialistic values make it incompatible for her to marry him, as he will become a clergyman. For Mary, “A large income is the best recipé for happiness I ever heard of.” (167). Unable to divert him into another profession, Mary admits Edmund’s attentions “without any idea beyond immediate amusement” (179). But Mary’s attitude later changes with Tom’s illness. When there is a strong possibility that Edmund will inherit Mansfield Park, Mary thinks that “Edmund would be forgiven for being a clergyman; it seemed, under certain conditions of wealth” (343). The recovery of Tom negates this possibility; and, at their last meeting, Mary terminates her relationship with Edmund by mocking his vocation. She remains the same at the end of the novel as she was at the beginning: “Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope for a cure” (54).
By flattening relationships into monetary currency, Mary perceives people simply as means to satisfy her desire for wealth. Not only is her change in attitude towards Edmund representative of her character and values but her blaming of Fanny for Henry’s role in Maria’s extramarital affair is indicative of her monist perspective of relationships. According to Mary, Fanny’s refusal of Henry’s proposal of marriage equates into Henry’s affair with Maria, after Maria had married Mr. Rushworth (358). Of course, this is specious reasoning: the relationship between Fanny and Henry is fundamentally different from one between Henry and Maria in terms of affection, character, and social status. Nevertheless, Mary is able to craft such a connection because of her perception that all relationships are monetary in nature and, like money, can be bought, sold, and transferred. This homogenized conception of relationships evades any moral understanding or responsibility except for self-interest.
The introduction of the marketplace mentality creates a condition where relationships are reduced to a type of materiality and therefore can be traded like commodities. The value of the commodities can differ – whether social status, sexual desire, financial independence, or wealth – but they are all one-dimensional and commensurable with one another. The initial success of Mrs. Norris, Maria, and Mary in navigating the marketplace is due to this reductive perspective. Unfortunately for them, this success is not lasting, as these characters end up unhappy.[14] The strategies of inviting and exploiting inferiors to raise one’s own status, the compartmentalization of desires and relationships, and the pursuit of money at the expense of morality all ultimately run aground for these three.
Notes
[1] Benedict examines the commodification of objects but not of characters in Austen’s novels, while Miles surveys the economic background of Austen’s period and how it affects her characters. Solinger’s study is similar to Miles’ but with a focus on the novel, Persuasion. Michie’s account of commerce in Austen’s novels is closest to my own. She explores how commerce corrodes Austen’s female characters’ psyches and therefore they require Smith’s theory of moral sentiments to correct them. On this point I concur with Michie but enlarges her argument it by pointing out that the psychology of the marketplace is adopted by all characters except the heroines Fanny and Emma and that this psychology reduces all relationships to either material or immaterial matters to be commoditized. I disagree with Michie that Emma requires Smith’s account of sympathy to be morally restored and advocate that imagination and irony instead of Smith’s theory of sympathy as the cure to the marketplace mentality. Finally, I contend that the women in Austen’s novels, especially the heroines, provide an alternative set of values to the marketplace, as opposed to being objects of satire, as Michie claims. For more about the role of economics in Austen’s works, refer to the thirty-sixth endnote for the citations.
Elsie B. Michie, “Austen’s Powers: Engaging with Adam Smith in Debates about Wealth and Virtue,” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 34.1 (Autumn 2000): 5-27; Robert Miles, “’A Fall in Bread’: Speculation and the Real in ‘Emma,’” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 37.1/2 (Fall 2003-Spring 2004): 66-85; Jason Solinger, “Jane Austen and the Gentrification of Commence,” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 38.2/3 (Spring-Summer 2005): 272-90; Barbara M. Benedict, “The Trouble with Things: Objects and the Commodification of Sociability,” in A Companion to Jane Austen, ed. Claudia Johnson and Clara Tuite (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 343-54.
[2] Besides the scholars mentioned in the first endnote, Brown contends that marriage acts as a type of social change in Austen’s novels; Newman investigates feminist scholars’ problem with Austen’s novels concluding in matrimony; Evan and Cohen explore the relationships among men, women, property, and the state; Walker investigates Austen’s understanding of marriage in the context of the Romantic movement; and Burgess and Jones examine Austen’s ideas of romance and marriage in the social, economic, and cultural context of eighteen-century Britain.
Julia Prewitt Brown, Jane Austen’s Novels: Social Change and Literary Form (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979); Karen Newman, “Can This Marriage Be Saved: Jane Austen Makes Sense of an Ending,” ELH 50.4 (Winter 1983): 693-71; Mary Evans, Jane Austen & The State (London: Tavistock Publications, 1987); Monica F. Cohen, “Persuading the Navy Home: Austen and Married Women’s Professional Property,” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 29.3 (Spring 1996): 346-66; Miranda Burgess, British Fiction and the Production of Social Order, 1749-1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Hazel Jones, Jane Austen and Marriage (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2009); Eric Walker, Marriage, Writing, and Romanticism: Wordsworth and Austen After the War (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009).
[3] The problem of appearances or initial misimpressions is a common theme in Austen’s work. For example, refer to Daniel Cotton. “The Novels of Jane Austen: Attachments and Supplements,” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 14.2 (Winter 1981): 152-67.
[4] Conservatives, feminists, and other schools of thought argue for a certain type of politics in Austen’s novels, all of which will be cited later. For two works that explicitly address this issue, refer to David Monaghan, ed., Jane Austen in a Social Context (Totowa: Barnes & Nobles, 1981) and Edward Neill, The Politics of Jane Austen (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).
[5] Trilling and Tanner sees Fanny as an unattractive heroine because of her lack of wit and irony. By contrast, Tarpley, Scheuermann, Ruderman and Duckworth praise Fanny’s morality as “representative of Jane Austen’s own fundamental commitment to an inherited culture” (Duckworth, 73). Amis, Mudrick, and Mansell point to Mansfield Park’s rejection of wit as a betrayal of Austen’s own instincts, while Johnson and Wallace interpret the novel as a parody or demystification of conservative England. Finally, Wing-chi Ki offers a dialectical paradigm where the conservative Austen alternates with a radical version that yields an ongoing critique of misrecognition.
Marvin Mudrick, Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952); Amis Kingsley, “What Became of Jane Austen? Mansfield Park,” Spectator 199 (1957): 339-40; Lionel Trilling, “Jane Austen and Mansfield Park,” in The Pelican Guide to English Literature, Vol. 5, From Blake to Bryon, ed. Boris Ford (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957), 112-29; Tony Tanner, “Introduction to Mansfield Park,” in Mansfield Park (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics Edition, 1966), 7-36; Alistair M. Duckworth, The Improvement of the Estate: A Study of Jane Austen’s Novels (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1971), 73; Darrell Mansell, The Novels of Jane Austen: An Interpretation; Claudia Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Anne Crippen Ruderman, The Pleasures of Virtue: Political Thought in the Novels of Jane Austen (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995); Tara Ghoshal Wallace, Jane Austen and Narrative Authority (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1995); Madeline Wing-chi Ki, Jane Austen and her Family (New York: Lang, 2005); Mona Scheuermann, Reading Jane Austen (New York: Palgrave, 2009); Joyce Kerr Tarpley, Constancy & The Ethics of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press, 2010).
[6] Wallace, Jane Austen and Narrative Authority, 60-61.
[7] Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, ed. James Kinsley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). All subsequent, in-text citations are from this book.
[8] Meyer Spacks, Desire and Truth: Functions of Plot in Eighteenth-Century English Novels (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 222.
[9] The hostilities between the sisters is so great that they even make each other their enemies and risk public scandal: “The sister with whom she was used to be on easy terms was now become her greatest enemy . . . Maria felt her triumph, and pursued her purpose carless of Julia; and Julia could never see Maria distinguished by Henry Crawford, without trusting that it would create jealously, and bring a public disturbance at last” (127-28).
[10] My interpretation is compatible with both feminist and rational choice criticisms of Austen. Although the women are constrained in their choices by the social context of patriarchal society, they are free to perceive relationships as multifaceted, incommensurate goods or as commodities to be transacted. Likewise, my interpretation is compatible with rational choice theory to the extent that some characters do perceive relationships as commensurate goods. However, as I argue, this understanding of relationship is a form of the marketplace mentality that ultimately is unsatisfactory for Austen’s heroines.
Margaret Kirkham, Jane Austen: Feminism and Fiction (Totowa: Barnes & Noble,1983); Johnson’s Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel; Alison Sulloway, Jane Austen and the Province of Womanhood (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989); Michael Suk-Young Chwe, Jane Austen, Game Theorist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).
[11] Kathryn Sutherland, A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), xxi.
[12] Emily Auerbach, Searching for Jane Austen (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 182.
[13] Sutherland, A Memoir of Jane, xxxiii; Tanner, “Introduction to Mansfield Park,” 442, 446-48.
[14] Although Mrs. Norris and Maria are unhappy at the end of the novel, Mary’s fate is unclear: Mary was “long in finding among the dashing representatives, or idle heir apparents, who were at the command of her beauty, and her 20,000l any one who could satisfy the better taste she had acquired at Mansfield” (369).