This weekend I cut down a very large thistle that had grown behind a hedge. I left the roots there because a branch lopper can cut through a thistle stem but cannot uproot it. In the neighbor's yard they recently had a tree removed and then the stump as well... that tree will not be coming back.
Henry's initial attempt to live a virtuous life, if he stuck to it, would eventually result in the same thing as our attempts to lead a virtuous life: we have cut down a tree, or a large thistle, or pulled off the leaves of a dandelion, but the roots of disorder (a character's particular flaws and long ingrained habits of mind) are still there and the same thing will start sprouting from them, to be cut down again in smaller form if a person is watching for it. This is something he would have to confront. It's not impossible (all things are possible with the right help, which was apparent with the neighbor's tree) but it would be a lot more work for a lot longer than he anticipated (or if it was condensed in time frame, it would be a lot more intensely painful, as when someone "hits bottom" and then reverses direction completely and with finality). But also the reward in the end would be greater than what he had initially desired.
I don't think it's enough to "reform" out of love or attraction for someone when there is no other foundation. Henry is certainly CAPABLE of reform, but I'm not sure a marriage to Fanny is enough. He hasn't left his superficial friends nor cultivated friendships that would help him, nor has he pursued better habits or started going to church or something. And Haley you rightly point out that he even has some mixed motivations for proposing to Fanny.
As for whether she should take the proposal, Fanny could not even stop Edmund from joining the play, so I imagine she knows the limits of her own influence on other people's morality. We know she won't and I know she shouldn't. It would be more torture for her to live a life inconsistent with her moral character than to live it serving the old ladies.
OOOOOH I hadn’t thought about the fact that Fanny can’t talk Edmund out of the play and learning from that not to assume she can fix Henry. GREAT point.
Your first paragraph is sort of how I see this. I don't think we can answer the question yet b/c it takes way more than a couple months for someone to make lasting change.
When I think about Henry Crawford, it’s always with sadness, because of his lost potential and the way his story highlights the way poor moral formation in early life can “lame” a person’s soul for life. For Henry, the biggest indication that his attempts at virtuous living aren’t going to last is (to me) the way he approaches virtue as a means to an end. For him, virtue isn’t a good in and of itself, it’s a tool he can use to get the prize he wants: Fanny Price. Compare this to Mr. Darcy. When he is “properly humbled” by Elizabeth’s rejection, the insight he gains into the defects in his character motivate him to correct his faults. He pursues virtue as an end in and of itself, it is good to be good whether or not Elizabeth is a part of his life. I so admire Fanny for not taking the “Charlotte Lucas” route with a great deal more temptation (after all, Henry is very charming, and he certainly recognizes the way Fanny has been mistreated and undervalued by pretty much everyone in her life). She knows she cannot truly trust herself to a man whose pretensions to virtue are (as yet) so shallow. She knows a good woman can inspire the man she loves to greater virtue, but the man has to ultimately want to change for his own sake and prove his change of heart before a woman can safely trust herself to him. Henry fails the test because once rejected (unlike Darcy) he relapsed.
I’m so with you - this plot line made me really sad! Especially after what he did for Edmund, which really did seem like a Mr. Darcy moment.
But I think you hit on the missing ingredient: humility. You can’t endeavour to sin no more without hating your sins and, a little bit, hating your past self for committing them. I honestly think loving Fanny would have been enough to set him on the straight and narrow (after all, he was missing moral formation and she could have provided that), if he’d first felt that he’d been wrong.
Girl you’ve got a LOT going on, if the Miscellany needs to be a day late once in a while, it needs to be a day late. We are here because we love you and will take whatever content you have on offer, but as a fellow 4:30 riser (unwillingly), when you need a break, take it.
I often wonder if things turned out differently, and she didn't get to marry her true love, if she would have looked back and wished she'd taken the opportunity to get out while she could and just put up with whatever came from it. I'm certain, b/c of exactly what you said about Henry talking @ Maria while deciding to marry Fanny, that he would definitely have cheated eventually (and maybe not eventually). Choosing the path of integrity was a big risk for Fanny--she could have given up a piece of her integrity and just accepted the consequences when he inevitably strayed... but it would have changed HER. She chose to hold true and risk long-term ruin. It's quite admirable, really. And ridiculously scary, if you put yourself in her shoes.
Henry doesn't understand Fanny at all. In that same conversation with Mary he talks about spending half the year together in London. Why on earth would you think Fanny of all people would enjoy parties and mingling in high society? And he expects her and his uncle the admiral, known for his affairs and loose morals, to get along with each other?
I want to believe that *anyone* is capable of change, but as pointed iut above, Henry doesn't seem to have pursued any changes other than declaring his admiration for Fanny. He doesn't show any remorse for the actions that turned her off in the first place. If it were a rom com it would be the mediocre kind where there's no explanation for the change of heart!
Fanny is not my favorite heroine, but I admire her backbone here. The backlash she will get for turning down an offer of such security is probably worse than I could ever imagine. Dare I compare her to Jane Eyre in not wanting to compromise her integrity!? Yes, I would probably understand if she'd accepted Henry out of practicality, but I would have been sad and disappointed.
I’d like to think he COUJD change. I think anyone can. And while trying to win Fanny’s heart is not the best motivation, if the relationship were to move forward perhaps he would begging to wish to be a better person not just to win her love but to be worthy of it.
As for Fanny’s choices, I admire how she is sticking to her principles but given the circumstances I would not blame her for a different choice. I wonder if not for her feelings for Edmund, which make her feel she is not free to marry another, whether she might be tempted to try to reform Henry.
Totally - I would 100% have supported her for marrying Henry if her motives had been partly mercenary and partly wanting to save his soul. And I enjoy wondering how much of her refusal was driven by principle (or moral disgust) or just the fact that she loved Edmund and couldn’t stomach the idea of being with anyone else. Either way, I think Jane Austen makes her really sympathetic here even as we (or at least those among us who are susceptible to the charming sociopath type) mourn for Henry
I’m super late to the discussion, but I thought I’d add my two cents. Emma is such a good comparison to Henry because they are so self centered at the beginning. However, Emma really has to go through multiple stages of being confronted by sin and suffering for it. I have not seen any suffering in Henry regarding his past behaviour. Even his little pang regarding wanting to be like William was passing at best.
It’s interesting looking at all of these comments on Henry’s inability to change, and yet it feels like Edmund has a similar issue with his self-delusion about how ‘right’ his actions are, just to a lesser degree. He does it repeatedly, not just the once or twice, and while he suffers the consequences I’m having a hard time seeing the depth of his change beyond him finally seeing his bad taste in women - i.e. he finally sees through Mary Crawford - but what about the next time he starts to justify? Is his poor self-understanding just a romance thing?
I may need to read the book again to get more differentiation between the two 🔬
I think of that infamous gas station sign "unless he's wearing diapers, you can't change him" Henry can't change to get Fanny. Thank God for redemption and 'second chances' but the only way Henry Crawford is going to change is if Henry Crawford wants to change. Recovery is for not for people who need it, it's for people who want it. ... I don't think Henry wants change, I think he just wants Fanny.
To be fair, Fanny probably doesn’t have to fortitude to withstand the hard work of being married to a challenging and willfully sinful person. Some folks can do it, I know I can’t. It’s harder to bring someone up (to goodness) than to drag them down.
One of my favorite parts of this set of chapters is how Henry is drawn to Fanny's virtue. What he intended to be nothing but a vain flirtation actually opened his eyes to a different kind of character than he has had modeled for him. His decision to throw himself into this attraction, while rash and probably still surface-level, is a sweet response to seeing her virtue and not just the usual pretty young lady flirting with him. He's been surrounded by poor examples and characters and turns eagerly to Fanny like a flower to the sun.
I absolutely admire Fanny's commitment to her morals. And practically, I would doubt that her character is strong enough to be able to cultivate Henry's further reform. His surface-level change was a big deal for him but would still be easily brushed off at the first big temptation. A woman of stronger speech and character (like the other heroines we have read this year) could have challenged him and driven him to pursue virtue for his own sake eventually. But even that is still a risky basis for hoping for a happy marriage. At the same time, the sacramental grace of marriage is incredibly powerful. 🙂
Jun 14, 2023·edited Jun 14, 2023Liked by Haley Stewart
Everyone has made excellent points re Henry wanting to actually change vs putting on a show and perhaps deluding himself (and others) that he has changed. I think he's capable of change but needs something to happen to him - some core-shaking moment - to cause him to re-evaluate himself and his character.
These Mansfield Park characters generally seem very willing to just believe the most recent behavior of someone vs getting to know them more deeply before deciding whether they are good to be with. They remind me of social media influencers and consumers, flocking after the latest "It" person. Fanny seems to be the only one who is able to see through to the core of most of them. I agree that she wouldn't ultimately be happy with herself if she compromises her values and chooses to marry someone just to get away from the Bertrams. At least she knows what she has (or not) with them. She doesn't have enough time with Henry to be able to trust him.
I also agree that while people can change, Henry is not on that path here. He has not had a moment of truth where he learns something about himself that makes him want to be different. I think his change of behavior is fairly surface level, and probably wouldn’t last very long after marrying Fanny, if she did accept him. I’m so proud of Fanny for not giving in under so much pressure. Even though her position is not very comfortable, with her dependence on the Bertrams, I think Fanny would be miserable married to a husband she couldn’t respect, let alone love.
I was a little surprised by how earnest Henry seemed. I would ordinarily think it a no brainer to not take him seriously in his advances, but Austen gives some descriptions of his perspective that show a more complicated picture. Sure he could change, but Fanny rightly chose to make her decision based on what she had seen to be true and not what she could hope to happen in the future. She has firm convictions, but not strong enough to hold Henry to account.
Lizzie told off Darcy with all the reasons she couldn’t respect him. Fanny could only refuse, and barely at that, as Sir Bertram’s accusations of ingratitude shook her terribly. Even though she knew she couldn’t accept him, she was divided against herself.
I understand why Mansfield Park isn’t as popular as Austen’s other works, but I’m really enjoying the deep dive in the various characters motivations that we get here.
I don’t think accepting Henry would have had good consequences at all (see Anne Brontë’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall for disastrous results of hoping to reform an inveterate narcissist.) I believe he is capable of change but he has shown very little evidence of any true desire for virtue.
I’m super late to this; but, for posterity and my own vanity, here are my thoughts on what I’ve read so far:
I think the conversation between Henry and Fanny after his first proposition is instructive of both Fanny’s moral insight and Henry’s shallowness, and the family’s urging her to accept is instructive of their miscreated moral character, including (and most tellingly) Edmund, the paragon of the family. Henry proves that it is, indeed, the chase that he prizes, and is goaded into this by the spirit of the conquerer more in love with his self-glory than in the “prize” itself, no matter how praiseworthy: as Alexander did what he needed in order to conquer the world, Henry is putting his acting chops to work to appear virtuous for Fanny and the family. The family, Edmund included, is more than willing to be taken in by this act (and I’ll grant Henry falls for his own act as well) because it plays precisely to their own worldviews: namely, that outward shows, civility, and perceived respectability are what informs others of a person’s quality; notion’s of a man’s interior life and character can be chalked up to simply “not seeing them from the right point of view”. That he is inconstant and veering wildly from his former character fools even Edmund, because his romantic interest isn’t the only thing that blinds him: it’s that he, too, has been trained to be cued in to looking for those who are “charming” alongside looking at least potentially virtuous. Fanny doesn’t fall for this, because Fanny has only ever had her virtues to fall back on -- it has been her habit to rely on character because that’s all she really had to rely on at all, aside from Edmund’s affections.
In sum, this, and what plays out later on with Henry and Maria’s adultery, shows that when it comes down to it, the Bertram’s aren’t yet ready to confront how far short they are from being truly respectable; however, with Fanny existing there as a constant yardstick they must confront, her being their foil no doubt will reveal their lacking virtue in the end. It won’t work for Henry, nor Mary and Maria and Mrs. Norris, because they don’t even know that virtue is truly desirable. For Sir Thomas and Edmund, however, they will reform.
This weekend I cut down a very large thistle that had grown behind a hedge. I left the roots there because a branch lopper can cut through a thistle stem but cannot uproot it. In the neighbor's yard they recently had a tree removed and then the stump as well... that tree will not be coming back.
Henry's initial attempt to live a virtuous life, if he stuck to it, would eventually result in the same thing as our attempts to lead a virtuous life: we have cut down a tree, or a large thistle, or pulled off the leaves of a dandelion, but the roots of disorder (a character's particular flaws and long ingrained habits of mind) are still there and the same thing will start sprouting from them, to be cut down again in smaller form if a person is watching for it. This is something he would have to confront. It's not impossible (all things are possible with the right help, which was apparent with the neighbor's tree) but it would be a lot more work for a lot longer than he anticipated (or if it was condensed in time frame, it would be a lot more intensely painful, as when someone "hits bottom" and then reverses direction completely and with finality). But also the reward in the end would be greater than what he had initially desired.
I don't think it's enough to "reform" out of love or attraction for someone when there is no other foundation. Henry is certainly CAPABLE of reform, but I'm not sure a marriage to Fanny is enough. He hasn't left his superficial friends nor cultivated friendships that would help him, nor has he pursued better habits or started going to church or something. And Haley you rightly point out that he even has some mixed motivations for proposing to Fanny.
As for whether she should take the proposal, Fanny could not even stop Edmund from joining the play, so I imagine she knows the limits of her own influence on other people's morality. We know she won't and I know she shouldn't. It would be more torture for her to live a life inconsistent with her moral character than to live it serving the old ladies.
OOOOOH I hadn’t thought about the fact that Fanny can’t talk Edmund out of the play and learning from that not to assume she can fix Henry. GREAT point.
Your first paragraph is sort of how I see this. I don't think we can answer the question yet b/c it takes way more than a couple months for someone to make lasting change.
When I think about Henry Crawford, it’s always with sadness, because of his lost potential and the way his story highlights the way poor moral formation in early life can “lame” a person’s soul for life. For Henry, the biggest indication that his attempts at virtuous living aren’t going to last is (to me) the way he approaches virtue as a means to an end. For him, virtue isn’t a good in and of itself, it’s a tool he can use to get the prize he wants: Fanny Price. Compare this to Mr. Darcy. When he is “properly humbled” by Elizabeth’s rejection, the insight he gains into the defects in his character motivate him to correct his faults. He pursues virtue as an end in and of itself, it is good to be good whether or not Elizabeth is a part of his life. I so admire Fanny for not taking the “Charlotte Lucas” route with a great deal more temptation (after all, Henry is very charming, and he certainly recognizes the way Fanny has been mistreated and undervalued by pretty much everyone in her life). She knows she cannot truly trust herself to a man whose pretensions to virtue are (as yet) so shallow. She knows a good woman can inspire the man she loves to greater virtue, but the man has to ultimately want to change for his own sake and prove his change of heart before a woman can safely trust herself to him. Henry fails the test because once rejected (unlike Darcy) he relapsed.
I’m so with you - this plot line made me really sad! Especially after what he did for Edmund, which really did seem like a Mr. Darcy moment.
But I think you hit on the missing ingredient: humility. You can’t endeavour to sin no more without hating your sins and, a little bit, hating your past self for committing them. I honestly think loving Fanny would have been enough to set him on the straight and narrow (after all, he was missing moral formation and she could have provided that), if he’d first felt that he’d been wrong.
Girl you’ve got a LOT going on, if the Miscellany needs to be a day late once in a while, it needs to be a day late. We are here because we love you and will take whatever content you have on offer, but as a fellow 4:30 riser (unwillingly), when you need a break, take it.
Aw, thanks, Elizabeth!!
Amen to this! I never care when a substack is late.
I often wonder if things turned out differently, and she didn't get to marry her true love, if she would have looked back and wished she'd taken the opportunity to get out while she could and just put up with whatever came from it. I'm certain, b/c of exactly what you said about Henry talking @ Maria while deciding to marry Fanny, that he would definitely have cheated eventually (and maybe not eventually). Choosing the path of integrity was a big risk for Fanny--she could have given up a piece of her integrity and just accepted the consequences when he inevitably strayed... but it would have changed HER. She chose to hold true and risk long-term ruin. It's quite admirable, really. And ridiculously scary, if you put yourself in her shoes.
Henry doesn't understand Fanny at all. In that same conversation with Mary he talks about spending half the year together in London. Why on earth would you think Fanny of all people would enjoy parties and mingling in high society? And he expects her and his uncle the admiral, known for his affairs and loose morals, to get along with each other?
They won't have been happy at all.
I want to believe that *anyone* is capable of change, but as pointed iut above, Henry doesn't seem to have pursued any changes other than declaring his admiration for Fanny. He doesn't show any remorse for the actions that turned her off in the first place. If it were a rom com it would be the mediocre kind where there's no explanation for the change of heart!
Fanny is not my favorite heroine, but I admire her backbone here. The backlash she will get for turning down an offer of such security is probably worse than I could ever imagine. Dare I compare her to Jane Eyre in not wanting to compromise her integrity!? Yes, I would probably understand if she'd accepted Henry out of practicality, but I would have been sad and disappointed.
I’d like to think he COUJD change. I think anyone can. And while trying to win Fanny’s heart is not the best motivation, if the relationship were to move forward perhaps he would begging to wish to be a better person not just to win her love but to be worthy of it.
As for Fanny’s choices, I admire how she is sticking to her principles but given the circumstances I would not blame her for a different choice. I wonder if not for her feelings for Edmund, which make her feel she is not free to marry another, whether she might be tempted to try to reform Henry.
Totally - I would 100% have supported her for marrying Henry if her motives had been partly mercenary and partly wanting to save his soul. And I enjoy wondering how much of her refusal was driven by principle (or moral disgust) or just the fact that she loved Edmund and couldn’t stomach the idea of being with anyone else. Either way, I think Jane Austen makes her really sympathetic here even as we (or at least those among us who are susceptible to the charming sociopath type) mourn for Henry
I’m super late to the discussion, but I thought I’d add my two cents. Emma is such a good comparison to Henry because they are so self centered at the beginning. However, Emma really has to go through multiple stages of being confronted by sin and suffering for it. I have not seen any suffering in Henry regarding his past behaviour. Even his little pang regarding wanting to be like William was passing at best.
It’s interesting looking at all of these comments on Henry’s inability to change, and yet it feels like Edmund has a similar issue with his self-delusion about how ‘right’ his actions are, just to a lesser degree. He does it repeatedly, not just the once or twice, and while he suffers the consequences I’m having a hard time seeing the depth of his change beyond him finally seeing his bad taste in women - i.e. he finally sees through Mary Crawford - but what about the next time he starts to justify? Is his poor self-understanding just a romance thing?
I may need to read the book again to get more differentiation between the two 🔬
I think of that infamous gas station sign "unless he's wearing diapers, you can't change him" Henry can't change to get Fanny. Thank God for redemption and 'second chances' but the only way Henry Crawford is going to change is if Henry Crawford wants to change. Recovery is for not for people who need it, it's for people who want it. ... I don't think Henry wants change, I think he just wants Fanny.
To be fair, Fanny probably doesn’t have to fortitude to withstand the hard work of being married to a challenging and willfully sinful person. Some folks can do it, I know I can’t. It’s harder to bring someone up (to goodness) than to drag them down.
One of my favorite parts of this set of chapters is how Henry is drawn to Fanny's virtue. What he intended to be nothing but a vain flirtation actually opened his eyes to a different kind of character than he has had modeled for him. His decision to throw himself into this attraction, while rash and probably still surface-level, is a sweet response to seeing her virtue and not just the usual pretty young lady flirting with him. He's been surrounded by poor examples and characters and turns eagerly to Fanny like a flower to the sun.
I absolutely admire Fanny's commitment to her morals. And practically, I would doubt that her character is strong enough to be able to cultivate Henry's further reform. His surface-level change was a big deal for him but would still be easily brushed off at the first big temptation. A woman of stronger speech and character (like the other heroines we have read this year) could have challenged him and driven him to pursue virtue for his own sake eventually. But even that is still a risky basis for hoping for a happy marriage. At the same time, the sacramental grace of marriage is incredibly powerful. 🙂
Everyone has made excellent points re Henry wanting to actually change vs putting on a show and perhaps deluding himself (and others) that he has changed. I think he's capable of change but needs something to happen to him - some core-shaking moment - to cause him to re-evaluate himself and his character.
These Mansfield Park characters generally seem very willing to just believe the most recent behavior of someone vs getting to know them more deeply before deciding whether they are good to be with. They remind me of social media influencers and consumers, flocking after the latest "It" person. Fanny seems to be the only one who is able to see through to the core of most of them. I agree that she wouldn't ultimately be happy with herself if she compromises her values and chooses to marry someone just to get away from the Bertrams. At least she knows what she has (or not) with them. She doesn't have enough time with Henry to be able to trust him.
I also agree that while people can change, Henry is not on that path here. He has not had a moment of truth where he learns something about himself that makes him want to be different. I think his change of behavior is fairly surface level, and probably wouldn’t last very long after marrying Fanny, if she did accept him. I’m so proud of Fanny for not giving in under so much pressure. Even though her position is not very comfortable, with her dependence on the Bertrams, I think Fanny would be miserable married to a husband she couldn’t respect, let alone love.
I was a little surprised by how earnest Henry seemed. I would ordinarily think it a no brainer to not take him seriously in his advances, but Austen gives some descriptions of his perspective that show a more complicated picture. Sure he could change, but Fanny rightly chose to make her decision based on what she had seen to be true and not what she could hope to happen in the future. She has firm convictions, but not strong enough to hold Henry to account.
Lizzie told off Darcy with all the reasons she couldn’t respect him. Fanny could only refuse, and barely at that, as Sir Bertram’s accusations of ingratitude shook her terribly. Even though she knew she couldn’t accept him, she was divided against herself.
I understand why Mansfield Park isn’t as popular as Austen’s other works, but I’m really enjoying the deep dive in the various characters motivations that we get here.
I don’t think accepting Henry would have had good consequences at all (see Anne Brontë’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall for disastrous results of hoping to reform an inveterate narcissist.) I believe he is capable of change but he has shown very little evidence of any true desire for virtue.
I’m super late to this; but, for posterity and my own vanity, here are my thoughts on what I’ve read so far:
I think the conversation between Henry and Fanny after his first proposition is instructive of both Fanny’s moral insight and Henry’s shallowness, and the family’s urging her to accept is instructive of their miscreated moral character, including (and most tellingly) Edmund, the paragon of the family. Henry proves that it is, indeed, the chase that he prizes, and is goaded into this by the spirit of the conquerer more in love with his self-glory than in the “prize” itself, no matter how praiseworthy: as Alexander did what he needed in order to conquer the world, Henry is putting his acting chops to work to appear virtuous for Fanny and the family. The family, Edmund included, is more than willing to be taken in by this act (and I’ll grant Henry falls for his own act as well) because it plays precisely to their own worldviews: namely, that outward shows, civility, and perceived respectability are what informs others of a person’s quality; notion’s of a man’s interior life and character can be chalked up to simply “not seeing them from the right point of view”. That he is inconstant and veering wildly from his former character fools even Edmund, because his romantic interest isn’t the only thing that blinds him: it’s that he, too, has been trained to be cued in to looking for those who are “charming” alongside looking at least potentially virtuous. Fanny doesn’t fall for this, because Fanny has only ever had her virtues to fall back on -- it has been her habit to rely on character because that’s all she really had to rely on at all, aside from Edmund’s affections.
In sum, this, and what plays out later on with Henry and Maria’s adultery, shows that when it comes down to it, the Bertram’s aren’t yet ready to confront how far short they are from being truly respectable; however, with Fanny existing there as a constant yardstick they must confront, her being their foil no doubt will reveal their lacking virtue in the end. It won’t work for Henry, nor Mary and Maria and Mrs. Norris, because they don’t even know that virtue is truly desirable. For Sir Thomas and Edmund, however, they will reform.