Jane Austen proposal scenes, part 3: Mansfield Park
Frances O'Connor (Fanny Price) in Mansfield Park (1999)
Mansfield Park
Background to the proposal scene: Fanny Price came to live with her rich relatives the Bertrams when she was 10 years old. Her cousin Edmund, six years her senior, showed her attention and kindness. Eight years later, Mary Crawford moves into the neighborhood, and Edmund becomes infatuated with her; of Fanny's steadfast love he is completely oblivious.
The film adaptation: screenplay and direction by Patricia Rozema (1999)
Mansfield Park has suffered the most distortions in its adaptations, perhaps because none of the adaptors to date (except perhaps Kenneth Taylor in the 6-episode BBC TV series (1983), which I haven't yet seen) have fully trusted in their source material. In particular, adaptors seem unable to prevent themselves from altering the character of its heroine, Fanny Price.
In the 2007 ITV series written by Maggie Wadey and directed by Iain MacDonald, the shy, apprehensive Fanny was portrayed by Billie Piper as witty, assertive, active, and far too superficially attractive: Fanny Price as Mary Crawford. Of course, this makes it impossible for us to believe that Edmund Bertram would remain so oblivious to her all-too-obvious charms.
In the 1999 film, Fanny (Frances O'Connor) is a budding writer who addresses the camera and the viewer directly, and leaves balled-up drafts (written on very expensive paper) scattered all over her desk and floor. Writer/director Patricia Rozema's conception is more Becoming Jane than Mansfield Park. You'll notice that Fanny's direct appeals to the viewer continue in this proposal scene, during the final moments of which she is looking at the camera, rather than her lover Edmund Bertram (Jonny Lee Miller).
https://youtu.be/Bm3QywZFBuA?t=963 [scene ends at 18:07]
The novel:
Scarcely had [Edmund] done regretting Mary Crawford, and observing to Fanny how impossible it was that he should ever meet with such another woman, before it began to strike him whether a very different kind of woman might not do just as well, or a great deal better: whether Fanny herself were not growing as dear, as important to him in all her smiles and all her ways, as Mary Crawford had ever been; and whether it might not be a possible, a hopeful undertaking to persuade her that her warm and sisterly regard for him would be foundation enough for wedded love.
I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people. I only entreat everybody to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could desire.
Rozema uses the last paragraph—how could she not?—in which Austen's narrator cleverly reassures each of her disparate readers that Edmund is not being over-hasty. In the film it is Fanny who says "at the time when it was quite natural to be so," continuing the film's conceit of Fanny as the young Jane, writing the very story we've been witnessing. But, of course, this gives Fanny a wry, ironic view of her own happiness, an attitude that does not seem true to Fanny's character in the novel.
"Sitting under trees with Fanny." Illustration by Hugh Thomson for Mansfield Park (Macmillan, 1897). Image source: Wikimedia Commons
. . .Even in the midst of his late infatuation, he had acknowledged Fanny’s mental superiority. What must be his sense of it now, therefore? She was of course only too good for him; but as nobody minds having what is too good for them, he was very steadily earnest in the pursuit of the blessing, and it was not possible that encouragement from her should be long wanting. Timid, anxious, doubting as she was, it was still impossible that such tenderness as hers should not, at times, hold out the strongest hope of success, though it remained for a later period to tell him the whole delightful and astonishing truth.
In Austen's novel the "delightful and astonishing truth" of her long-held feelings will be told by Fanny to Edmund, and not the other way around, as in Rozema's film.
His happiness in knowing himself to have been so long the beloved of such a heart, must have been great enough to warrant any strength of language in which he could clothe it to her or to himself; it must have been a delightful happiness. But there was happiness elsewhere which no description can reach. Let no one presume to give the feelings of a young woman on receiving the assurance of that affection of which she has scarcely allowed herself to entertain a hope.
. . .With so much true merit and true love, and no want of fortune and friends, the happiness of the married cousins must appear as secure as earthly happiness can be. (Ch. XLVIII)
There is so much wrong with the film's proposal scene, especially in comparison to Austen's novel, that I'm not sure where to begin. Edmund's speech to Fanny is filled with banalities; it's she who has loved him her whole life (since, at least, she was 10) and not the other way around—Edmund has only just allowed himself to discover how lovable she is; Fanny's dress seems too revealing for Regency day wear, and siren-red is probably the wrong color; when they kiss we don't need to see him try to slip her some tongue. . .sigh. I've enjoyed some of Rozema's other films, and this one is not without its moments. And I want to be clear that I think both Frances O'Connor and Jonny Lee Miller are good actors; the deficits of this film are not their fault. But in my view we're still awaiting a worthy adaptation of Mansfield Park.
For more on the novel: please see "Mansfield Park and slavery" parts 1 ("Fanny Price and Dido Elizabeth Belle"), 2 ("Lord Mansfield, the Somerset case and the Zong massacre"), and 3 ("An estate built on the ruin and labour of others").
Next time: Emma
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