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Posted by Bruce on August 12, 19100 at 08:11:08:
In Reply to: What does Mansfield Park say about family? posted by Toad on August 10, 19100 at 15:48:20:
: How are family values represented in the MP, particularly when Fanny goes to Portsmouth?
: Does it seem to anyone else that family values are subordinate to cl and gender conventions.
: How did the family values impact on lives of the women, including Mrs Price and Susan?
Families all over the world are exogomous. That is, every culture we know of makes people marry OUTSIDE the immediate family. (Only exception, The Royalty of Ancient Egypt). Mansfield Park reverses this. Fanny marries her cousin, who, in fact, is basically her adopted brother.
Why? MP is Fanny's search for a home. Abandonned as a child, shy, reclusive, Fanny is the opposite of the standard heroine, who goes out into the Wide World to Seek Her fortune. Instead, Fanny stays at home (her new home, MP) to find her fortune.
Thus Fanny defies the oldest laws of man (exogamy) and the laws of fiction, as well (the hero goes out to seek adventure in the standard tale). Austen gets a kick, I think, out of a seemingly mousy, shy, conventional heroine who defies these conventions.