Bookraft

I have been enjoying some great plays of late as I commute to and from work. The "plays" are audiobook readings of some of the great classics like Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and The Comedy of Errors. However, the latest, Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, has really caught my fancy. It is almost like reading a historical account of the life and times in the early late 18th and early 19th century.

Talk about a play within a play and a Comedy of Manners - Mansfield Park's "improver", Jane Austen, hits these stylings with impeccable certitude. Civility, manners, and "breeding" are the esteemed qualities of the day - and once again, Jane Austen has a substitute self by the name of Fanny Price, who, like Austen herself, must fence and fend at a family breeding disadvantage in this heady social world.

This audiobook mixes 3rd person narration with consummate dialog - including rogue and rake and dowager bullseyes all. Mansfield Park is a early 19th century social landscape of unerring self indulgence. At times vexatious with its tiny quarrelings and pettiness; ultimately the richness of the interactions catches your breath and attention such that even a milquetoast heroine in Fanny Price entraps your attention and fancy. True and salient perceptions of the underlying social interaction of the day are this plays insights and delights.

But perhaps the most important insights from this book are on Jane Austen herself - for her books are really an ongoing and ever-changing autobiography. And what is so striking here is the the utter disdain Fanny/Jane shows for her real Portsmouth family and their Dickensian dirty, common and always shillings-short life. Fanny not only longs for a return to the genteel Mansfield Park despite its many obvious corrupting influences but a)rescues her younger sister Susan from a similar degrading fate and b)excoriates both her parents for such an impoverished home including leaving the family and her Fanny-self open to crippling weakness and ill-health. Most revealing! After reading/hearing Mansfield park I shall approach future Jane Austen stories with a new "respect".