Parking Mansfield Here, & See Who Salutes (-:
Posted by Ken on November 03, 1997 at 09:48:26:
It has been suggested that 'Parkers should/can discuss MP here (& stop cluttering up the rest of the site! (-: ). In that spirit, I submit to all that the central question to which MP constitutes the answer is: What is to be the place of Miss Fanny Price?
Now: true, this question is asked similarly of every other character in the novel. But they all seem to start out with recognized places, and so their questions are more along the lines of, will character X retain/change his/her place? Nor are they the central character, by virtue of the novel's construction, so answers to their questions can only be supporting, as it were.
Let me immediately elaborate this by adding that one can also ask, are the Crawfords to have a place at Mansfield, ie, can they be made to fit the Mansfield world or no? These questions are more than idle curiosity; those who have no place in world Mansfield generally come to unsympathetic ends. As a teaser, I would assert that Mary Crawford's fate is foreshadowed early on when she becomes amazed that she cannot hire a cart during the harvest to have her piano moved to the parsonage. She remarks then that she will in time come to understand Mansfield ways, but her own tragedy is that she never does, and w/i the worldview of the novel, this failure damns her completely.
That is quite enough bait for one day, I am convinced (-:
YHOS,
Snarkhunter
Posting followups to old messages is disabled; instead go to the main index and post a new message which mentions this one.
