Chapter Two The Problem of Propriety
2.2 Problems of Being Proper
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propriety is also the embodiment of their master’s will. Fanny is required to wait for Sir Thomas’s permission so that she can go to the party. A submissive woman is the representative of propriety. However, her master alone decides whether she behaves properly or not. If Sir Thomas thinks she is compatible with his standard of propriety, then, she is a proper lady. Through these cases, we can see that feminine propriety is constructed by men, not by themselves. Women are just an embodiment of men’s ideal propriety or even a tool that can help them to keep their property and reputation in good order.
The propriety decided by men’s expectation is deeply bound to the image of their property. When Fanny leaves Mansfield Park to Portsmouth, all she thinks of Mansfield Park is how orderly and peaceful it has always been (MP 250). She significantly forgets the tears, sorrow, repression and emotional violence that she has experienced in Mansfield Park. This forgetfulness suggests that she firmly believes that Mansfield Park is a “proper” place for a woman to live in and that everything there goes on “properly.” It also indicates how effective Sir Thomas’s skill of management is. He succeeds in linking his property with propriety, making the two synonymous terms. Fanny plays an important role in validating the interconnection of property and propriety. At the same time, she subordinates her own individuality to that of a man. This self-effacement is the price that eighteenth-century women are expected to pay for the title of “proper lady.”
2.2 Problems of Being Proper
In eighteenth-century England, feminine propriety is constructed by patriarchal society, not by themselves. Their propriety reflects men’s ideals and expectations. If women want to live up to men’s expectation about propriety, they have to efface themselves. Poovey argues that in the eighteenth century if women do not follow
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men’s rules of being proper, their sexual desire would “undermine self-control” (5). If they do not behave properly, they will not gain a marriage. Without the assurance of the marriage, their “future is uncertain” (Poovey 5). Women will be lost in their way of life, and oscillate between being proper or being improper. Her life will be full of contradictions and deviate from morality. In short, a woman without propriety will be considered voracious, inconstant and irrational. Although being a proper lady can help a woman escape social criticism and win the protection of marriage, propriety also leads to self-effacement.
The price of propriety can be inferred in The Polite Lady, an eighteenth- century magazine teaching women how to be a proper lady. An anonymous female author in this periodical states: “Woman’s passions are much keener and violent than those of the other sex . . . we are less capable to check and restrain them”
(Anonymous 267). Women are taught to restrain their desire and passion because they allegedly cannot control it by themselves. To prevent getting out of control, the better way to deal with passion is to suppress them, or even to ignore them. By doing so, women cannot express their emotions freely, and the way they express their emotion is limited by men’s judgment. Men will decide what kind of emotion is proper, and what is not, so a proper lady will not express “wrong emotions” incompatible with men’s standard of propriety.
Being a proper lady also necessitates eradicating women’s true feelings because they are taught that some of their emotions are not right. In Mansfield Park, Fanny never directly expresses her feeling toward Edmund. When Edmund chooses to retract his disapproval and to participate in Lover’s Vows, Fanny cannot feel calm. She is anxious about the change of Edmund’s mind:
She was safe; but peace and safety were unconnected here. Her mind had been never farther from peace. She could not feel that she had done
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wrong herself, but she was disquieted in every other way. Her heart and her judgment were equally against Edmund's decision: she could not acquit his unsteadiness, and his happiness under it made her wretched.
She was full of jealousy and agitation. Miss Crawford came with looks of gaiety which seemed an insult, with friendly expressions towards herself which she could hardly answer calmly…She alone was sad and
insignificant…[she might] retreat from it to the solitude of the East room, without being seen or missed (MP 111).
After Edmund changes his mind to approve of the family theater, Fanny feels worried.
However, she cannot express her opinion openly. She is the only one who insists not to play a role in the play, but her opinion is rejected by others. Even though Fanny does not have to play the Cottager’s wife, thanks to Mary’s interference, she cannot feel relieved. Fanny cannot stop herself from feeling jealous for Mary, who has an opportunity to get close to Edmund.
The emotion in Fanny’s mind is contradictory. On the one hand, she is safe from being involved in the predicament of this controversial play; on the other hand, she is kept away from others, especially from Edmund, the only one who is on her side but who changes his mind due to his affection for Mary. Fanny cannot change Edmund’s mind, but she never openly expresses her feeling toward this event and Edmund. Her feeling toward Mary is distorted because, as a proper lady, she has to restrain her emotion and passion. Unlike Mary, who never conceals her emotion, Fanny gets used to being silent due to the rule of female propriety that Sir Thomas has established in Mansfield Park. Due to Fanny’s self-control and her obedience to the rule of propriety, she is the only one who is not condemned after Sir Thomas’s return.
Nevertheless, we can see the constraint of propriety for women.
Although Mary does not hesitate to express her feelings, she is still limited by
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social expectation. She has to balance herself as an activist or an observer. when Fanny is agitated because she is required to play cottager’s wife in Lover’s Vows, Mary is the one who notices the social tension and tries to ease it. She notices Fanny’s reluctance and Edmund’s anger at Mrs. Norris’s unkind words4. Mary tries to comfort Fanny and restore harmony. Her behavior wins Edmund’s approval. On this occasion, because of her kindness, Mary appears to be a proper lady. Mary is smart enough to know when she should stop expressing herself and when she should take other’s feeling into consideration. Her observation helps her to consolidate her status as a proper lady, but at the same time, she has to efface her voice and to do whatever lives up to the social expectation.
These two heroines possess different characteristics, but they have to deal with the same difficulties in the patriarchal society. They are required to act proper,
whether it is their genuine intention or not. The proper lady cannot be herself. She must always follow men’s rule of being proper for avoiding condemnation. Claudia Johnson has argued that in Mansfield Park, “masculine discourse” depends on
“feminine silence” (112). Indeed, in the eighteenth century generally and in this novel in particular, to be proper is to be silent/silenced.
Eighteenth-century women are willing to embrace this silence because propriety carries the positive connotations of virtues. Poovey argues that “all of this self-effacing behavior was included in the general category of modesty” (21). The virtue, modesty, becomes a strategy for men to ask their female companions to be proper, which means, to follow their standard of good behavior. Modesty represents men’s request for women. If a woman wants to be a proper lady, she must be modest.
4 Unhappy about Fanny’s refusal to cooperate, Mrs. Norris says that she shall think Fanny “a very obstinate, ungrateful girls, if she does not do what her aunt and cousins wish her— very ungrateful indeed, considering who and what she is” (MP 103). Fanny is humiliated publicly and again is reminded of who and what she is— an adoptive girl from a poor family.
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When propriety, men’s control over their belongings, becomes a virtue, it is easier to deceive women to believe being proper is a compliment.
“Modesty announces purity in a virgin, promises fidelity in a wife, and thus will continue to be a reflection of her husband’s power” (Poovey 21). To advocate
modesty becomes a strategy for men to execute their power over women so that they can consolidate their power and ensure that their properties are in good shape. Modest women not only represent but also showcase men’s social prestige and managerial prowess. As a result, a modest woman is a desirable marriage partner. We can see the importance of modesty in Mansfield Park when Henry Crawford changes his mind to court Fanny. The following passage is his reason why Fanny is an ideal marriage partner:
Fanny's beauty of face and figure, Fanny's graces of manner and
goodness of heart, were the exhaustless theme. The gentleness, modesty, and sweetness of her character were warmly expatiated on . . . and her manners were the mirror of her own modest and elegant mind. . . . but when he talked of her having such a steadiness and regularity of conduct, such a high notion of honour, and such an observance of decorum as might warrant any man in the fullest dependence on her faith and integrity, he expressed what was inspired by the knowledge of her being well principled and religious.
“I could so wholly and absolutely confide in her,” said he; “and that is what I want” (MP 200-01).
Henry tries to convince his sister Mary that he seriously wants Fanny to be his wife.
This passage suggests that Fanny’s appearance is not a critical requirement for Henry’s choice of a wife. Fanny’s manners are the main factor motivating Henry to decide that she is an ideal marriage partner because “[t]he modest woman was made
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for marriage” (Yeazell 33). He mentions Fanny’s endurance of other people’s annoyance and complaint, deep affection toward her brother, William, and most importantly, her “modest and elegant mind.” Henry knows that Fanny’s propriety will consolidate the order of family and secure her fidelity to her husband. He then affirms that Fanny is all he wants. Fanny’s modesty, rather than her beautiful face, thus becomes the main reason for Henry’s interest in her. Henry is fully aware of what a wife should be. Unlike Maria or Julia, who flirt with men, Fanny is a model of modesty who stands for the gist of eighteenth-century propriety.
Because of its power to attract a husband, propriety is a strategy for women to survive in the eighteenth century. However, to practice propriety also means to sacrifice their freedom and individual voices. If losing one’s genuine self is the first problem that eighteenth-century proper lady face, another related problem concerns sincerity. Fanny is undoubtedly a proper lady. Yet her proper behavior invites the disturbing question: does propriety lead to insincerity or hypocrisy? Davidson offers an idea that Fanny’s silence and obedience can be a “chameleon-like” weapon that enables her to achieve social advancement (161). Apart from that, Kaplan in her dissertation Structure of Status: Eighteenth-Century Social Experience as Form in
Courtesy Books and Jane Austen’s Novels also points out the problems of following
conduct-book lessons. She argues that “[c]ourtesy texts…in fact teach deceit or insincerity” (55). A proper lady like Fanny, in other words, may not be very far from an opportunistic hypocrite.In the novel, Fanny always conceals her emotion and chooses to be silent. After Fanny happily receives a chain from Edmund, she discusses with Edmund about the necklace Mary gives her. When she talks about returning the necklace, Edmund insists that she must not do that. Otherwise, it will mortify Mary severely (Austen 180).
Edmund also says that he does not wish to see “the shadow of a coolness arise
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between the two dearest objects I have on earth” (MP 181). He refers to Fanny and Mary here. After hearing Edmund’s confession, Fanny alone deals with her repressed emotion:
She was one of his two dearest— that must support her. But the other!—
the first! She had never heard him speak so openly before…It was a stab, in spite of every long-standing expectation; and she was obliged to repeat again and again, that she was one of his two dearest, before the words gave her any sensation. Could she believe Miss Crawford to deserve him, it would be—oh, how different would it be— how far more tolerable! But he was deceived in her: he gave her merits which she had not; her faults were what they had ever been, but he saw them no longer. Till she had shed many tears over this deception, Fanny could not subdue her agitation (MP 181).
Austen shows Fanny’s mind to readers after Edmund indirectly confesses his love to Mary. Fanny’s propriety forbids her from expressing her disapproval of Mary’s bad morality. She suppresses her emotion and can only release it when she is alone. She cannot speak freely about Mary’s defects. Even though she despises Mary, she remains friendly with her. When Edmund says Mary and Fanny are his most beloved women in the world and hopes they can get along with each other, Fanny cannot say anything but can only accept his suggestion. If Fanny vocally criticizes Mary, her rival in love, she would risk revealing her affection for Edmund and violates the rule of modesty. On the one hand, her silence confirms her adherence to feminine
propriety. On the other hand, it raises the problem of insincerity. Fanny does not want a friendship with Mary. Mary is her enemy in the love battlefield, but she chooses to be friendly with her. Even though Fanny tries to appear calm, she cannot get rid of an idea that she must dislike Mary.
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Her silence contains her sadness, jealousy, and disdain, but all these emotions are not expressed in front of people. Fanny is still a proper lady, but this impulse to be a proper lady problematizes her relationship with Mary. In particular, this impulse predisposes her to focus her attention solely on concealing her genuine feeling, rather than on identifying goodness in others. Despite her weak moral standard, Mary has a favorable impression of Fanny. She believes that Fanny is “as good a little creature as ever lived, and has a great deal of feeling” (MP 158). In fact, it is Mary who offers a helping hand when Fanny is pressed by other family members to participate in the family theater that she hates. However, Fanny fails to reciprocate such kindness.
Instead, when witnessing Edmund’s growing affection for Mary, she is overwhelmed by her own jealousy and the necessity to cover it up. Her concealment is so successful that Mary never suspects her interest in Edmund and still believes that Fanny is an intimate friend of hers.
Fanny’s silence may be considered an indicator of female propriety5, because a modest proper lady should not express her passionate love and resentment openly.
However, her silence also raises the problem of hypocrisy6. Fanny pretends to be a good friend of Mary, when in fact she seriously dislikes her. It is no doubt that Fanny’s propriety wins her the virtue of modesty, but it hinders her relationship with
5 In Kingsley Amis’s famous essay “What Became of Jane Austen”, he has different opinions about Fanny Price. He thinks Fanny is “a monster of complacency and pride who, under a cloak of cringing self-basement, dominates and gives meaning to the novel” (144). Echoing Amis, Margaret Kirkham in her “Feminist Irony and Priceless Heroine of Mansfield Park” states that “Fanny is not a true conduct-book heroine” (117). Both of them think that Fanny is deceptive and that she pretends to be a proper lady under her cover of timidity. However, although Fanny does have a problem of being hypocritical, hypocrisy is the result of the requirement of propriety. Propriety is her way to survive in Mansfield Park as an adoptive daughter. She does not pretend to be good or perform as proper lady by her free will. She is required to do so. Because of that, Amis’s and Kirkham’s statements seem too exaggerated.
6 In his Character and Conflict in Jane Austen’s Novels, Bernard J. Paris explores the issues of psychology on Jane Austen’s novels. He argues that “Fanny’s defenses are, broadly speaking, of two kinds: those designed to prevent dangerous situation from arising and those designed to secure reassurance and protection. The preventive defenses include self-minimization; self-accusation;
avoidance of attention, competition and triumph; and taboos against pride, envy, and resentment” (47).
He does not see Fanny’s silence as hypocritical.
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others. Concentrating too much on her own reputation, she cannot interact with others in a meaningful and fruitful manner. She cannot reveal her true emotions and opinion toward others. Her relationship with others lacks sincerity and honesty. Convinced that she must suppress her own genuine desire because of social expectation, a proper lady may appear socially acceptable. Yet her self-hood is necessarily circumscribed, her personal development throttled.