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Elise Boratenski's avatar

I love what everyone is saying about how we all, like Sir Thomas, have our moral blindspots and areas of hypocrisy. Always good to be reminded that we are perhaps, more like the less pleasant Jane Austen characters than we might like to think. Sir Thomas returns the veneer of respectability and good order to Mansfield Park, but he is unable to make his children and their friends understand why their actions were intemperate. He can control them but cannot truly help them to become the people they could or ought to be. One thing I do appreciate about him as a character is that he begins to become better. He has his eyes opened to the true goodness of Fanny, who he has always underrated, and tries to at least fix that failure in his character/responsibilities even if it’s too late to help his other children change course. He also begins to realize how problematic Mrs. Norris is, though I always wish he would try harder to get her cruelty and silliness under control.

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Kathleen Basi's avatar

I totally missed the slavery question the first several times I read Mansfield Park--it was the movie that sensitized me to it, and though I know Jane Austen dealt with intimate questions, not global ones, I've always wished she were a *little* more forthcoming. Reading again this time, I thought Sir Thomas came across more or less as a decent human being. Flawed as a father--but who isn't? And his idea, of countering Mrs. Norris' excesses by being severe, is a pretty common mistake to make, I would guess. He was carrying all the moral weight on his own, with a useless wife, so I am inclined to be generous for his mistakes. Also, I've always thought Edmund had a moral compass-that it was just clouded by infatuation.

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