Mary Crawford is a major character in Jane Austen's 1814 novel, Mansfield Park. Mary is depicted as attractive, caring and charismatic. The reader is gradually shown, often through the eyes of Fanny Price, a hidden, darker side to Mary's personality. Her wit disguises her superficiality and her charisma disguises her self-centredness. Edmund Bertram, an earnest young man and destined for the clergy falls deeply in love with her. Only at the end of the novel does reality overcome his romantic fantasies and he leaves her with deep regret.
First Appearance Mary Crawford, often characterised as the anti-heroine, first appears in the novel in July of the year when Fanny Price, the shy and apparently insignificant heroine, is eighteen. Mary, accompanied by her brother, Henry, comes to the country with sophisticated London airs, tastes, and manners and with a decided interest in courtship. The Crawfords have been living in London with their uncle, the Admiral, but when he brings his mistress into the house, Mary decides it is time to leave. She fails to persuade her brother to move to his Norfolk estate and take her with him. Mary then accepts a warm invitation from her older half-sister, Mrs. Grant, to live with her at the parsonage where Dr. Grant, her husband and fifteen years her senior, has recently purchased the living. Mary is concerned that she will find the country and the people in it to be dull, but she comes to appreciate it.
Character
Colleen Sheehan says that Austen subtly creates the conditions that allow the reader to reach a morally ambiguous view of the Crawfords. She consciously makes Henry and Mary Crawford vibrant, intelligent, witty, and alluring while, at the same time, they engage in actions that are morally repugnant. She does this not to manipulate her readers, but to put them in a position in which they have to exercise their own powers of observation and judgement.
Austen family tradition held that Austen based Mary's character on her vivacious cousin, Eliza de Feullide.Ross, Josephine. Jane Austen: A Companion, 2013, Thistle Publishing. Kindle Edition. Like Eliza, Mary plays the harp, is elegant and fashionable, adores London, laces her vocabulary with French phrases, is witty, loves amateur dramatics and enchants every man she meets. And she has a disdain for clergymen.Byrne, Paula (2013) The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things. ch. 7, HarperCollins, Kindle Edition Others have noted that Mary has much in common with the narrator and that parallels can also be found in Austen's own correspondence. Mary thoroughly charms the wealthy Bertram family and is predictably interested in Tom Bertram, the elder son and heir of Sir Thomas Bertram, master of Mansfield Park. Being a young woman with a fortune of £20,000, she considers Tom to be a suitable match. However, her feelings obey neither her financial goals nor her cultural norms and she finds herself preferring instead the younger brother, Edmund.
Edmund and his cousin, Fanny Price, discuss Mary's merits. They both enthuse about her appearance and manner, but have one reservation. They find her indiscreet about the Admiral and his ways, see this as an impropriety that violates privacy, and they blame her upbringing. As Mary develops an interest in Edmund, Edmund reciprocates. This displeases Fanny who believes Mary's speech and actions are too much influenced by the morality of London society that prizes only frivolity, money and status. Fanny fears that Mary's charms are blinding Edmund to these increasingly evident moral flaws. Fanny is also secretly in love with Edmund.
Mary tests Edmund Byrne argues that it is the friction between Mary, the sexually confident coquette and Edmund, the grave, prudish, religious figure that gives their relationship its dynamic. Mary's persistent attempts to dissuade Edmund from his decision to be ordained develop into "a struggle for the control of Edmund’s spirit", something Mary clearly finds thrilling. Byrne further maintains that although some critics are perplexed by Mary's admiration for the rather stolid Edmund, this is to misunderstand the workings of the coquette/clergyman relationship. Mary's rival is the church. Her conflict with Edmund's religious vocation is no less than a fight for his soul, and this is why Fanny is so opposed to Mary.Byrne, Paula (2017)The Genius of Jane Austen: Her Love of Theatre and Why She Is a Hit in Hollywood. ch.8, Kindle loc. 3099-3134 HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition. Austen never uses the word "vocation" in the novel. In defending his intended profession Edmund makes no reference to any inner spiritual experience, preferring instead the stolid language of logic and duty. In this, he is closer to High Church piety than to that of the reforming Evangelicals with whom he is sometimes confused.
Outing to Sotherton During the family visit to Sotherton Court, the young people enter the chapel and Mary, overhearing some family banter, learns of Edmund's intention to become a clergyman. Astonished and disappointed, she attempts to dissuade Edmund from his ministry. Her strategy ranges from gentle persuasion – 'You really are fit for something better. Come, do change your mind. It is not too late. Go into the law' – to cruel attempts to emasculate him: 'Men love to distinguish themselves, and in either of the other lines [army or law], distinction may be gained, but not in the church. A clergyman is nothing'.
The Crawfords have often been portrayed by critics as those who threaten the ways and values of the countryside and, by extension, of England itself.Roberts, Warren Jane Austen and the French Revolution, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979 p. 34 However, Byrne argues that the "Crawfords are merely the agents of change: the real corruption rests at the door of the flawed custodians of the house, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram and Mrs Norris".Byrne (2013) ch. 12, Kindle ed. loc. Although Mary's trenchant views are expressed as a resistance to spiritual discipline, they are well constructed, witty and reflect sentiments found in other contemporary streams of philosophy and spirituality. Mary reveals an extensive knowledge of church practice when she suggests that a wise clergyman would do better to read aloud from Hugh Blair's books of sermons than to preach his own.Austen, Jane Mansfield Park, ch. 9 (Kindle Locations 1256-1257).Ross, Josephine. Jane Austen: A Companion, ch. 4 Thistle Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Illicit misconduct and sexual temptation are suggested by Austen from the moment the young people reach a door, 'temptingly open on a flight of steps which led immediately to... all the sweets of pleasure-grounds, [and] as by one impulse, one wish for air and liberty, all walked out'.Byrne (2017) ch. 9, Kindle ed. loc. 3518 Mary's tempting of Edmund is serpent-like, putting his resolve to an almost Biblical test.Ross, ch. 8, Kindle ed. loc. 3824 Her aim is that his desire for her will overcome his desire for the ministry. Austen, unlike many of her contemporary writers, almost never quotes from the Bible;Ross, ch. 4, Kindle ed. loc. 1669 yet biblical themes are not difficult to find. The 'wilderness' experience at Sotherton contains hints of the Garden of Eden in Genesis and the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites in Exodus. Her ongoing challenge to his vocation has echoes of the wilderness temptation of Jesus in the Gospels. Both Crawfords fulfil the subtle serpentine role as they offer moral shortcuts to a happy life.
Boring services Mary applauds the late Mr Rushworth's decision to abandon the twice daily prayers in the family chapel, eloquently describing such practice as an imposition for both family and servants. She derides the heads of households for their hypocrisy in making excuses to absent themselves from chapel. She pities the young ladies of the house, 'starched up into seeming piety, but with heads full of something very different—specially if the poor chaplain were not worth looking at'.Mansfield Park, pp. 86-87 Edmund acknowledges from his own experience that long services can be boring but maintains that without self-discipline a private spirituality will be insufficient for moral development.
Hypocritical clergy Austen often exposed clergy corruption through parody. Mary having declared that the occupation of a clergyman is neither prestigious nor profitable, now argues that the profession is unworthy, filled only by lazy and gluttonous men like her brother-in-law, Dr Grant. She arrives at the jaundiced conclusion that a 'clergyman has nothing to do, but be slovenly and selfish, read the newspaper, watch the weather and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine'.Mansfield Park, p.110 Mary's view of Regency clergy is widely confirmed by historians; Edmund's commitment to integrity and morality represents a minority vision.Hague, William (2008) William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner (Text Only) . HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Ed. ch. 1, loc. 226 ff.
Patronage a corrupt practice? Mary also challenges the widespread practice of patronage; she attacks Edmund's expectation of a living for being based on privilege rather than on merit. Although Sir Thomas had sold the more desirable Mansfield living to pay off Tom's debts, he is still offering Edmund a guaranteed living at Thornton Lacey where he can lead the life of a country gentleman. Edmund's defence, backed up by Fanny, has logic but lacks a robust spirituality.
Puns Mary is also highly critical of the navy. She tells Edmund, "Of various admirals, I could tell you a great deal; of them and their flags, and the gradation of their pay, and their bickerings and jealousies. But, in general, I can assure you that they are all passed over, and all very ill used." At her uncle's home she met many admirals. "Of Rears, and Vices, I saw enough. Now, do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat." Edmund ignores the crude pun and its implied impropriety, replying: "It is a noble profession". There is no further discussion of what Mary may, or may not, have seen.Byrne, Paula (2013) ch. 14, Kindle ed. loc. 4453 Austen, in creating this dialogue, is signalling that just as Edmund needs to look out for hidden meanings, so too should the reader.
Byrne, like many contemporary critics, interprets the pun as a reference to sodomy. Ross argues for an alternative interpretation, namely that "Mary’s naughty innuendo clearly concerns flagellation: utterly unfit for a lady’s conversation, but legal; widely popular, not only with old roués and young bucks, but even among such eminent figures as the future Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne". The practice is represented in the satirical cartoons of Gillray and Rowlandson, where birches and buttocks make frequent appearances.Ross, ch 5, Kindle ed. loc. 2386
Theatricals During the rehearsals for Elizabeth Inchbald's play, Lovers Vows, Mary watches her brother rehearse with Maria (already engaged to Mr Rushworth). Mary is amused rather than concerned. She quips, 'those indefatigable rehearsers, Agatha and Frederick, should excel at their parts, for they are so often embracing. If they are not perfect, I shall be surprised.'