Some wonderful passages in Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park is, to me, Jane Austen’s best written book. In the last 2 blog posts about the book, I was writing about the characters and their relationships. They are probably meaningless to those who haven’t read the novel, and those who don’t find anything good in it. 
Here I’m going to pick out some of my favourite passages from Mansfield Park, the ones that give me a tingle in the spine: 
1/ Everyone knows the opening line of Pride and Prejudice: 

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” 

The 1st page of Mansfield Park has a line that is almost as good: 

“But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.” (Ch.1) 

2/ Fanny gets enraptured: 

“… Fanny agreed to it, and had the pleasure of seeing him continue at the window with her, in spite of the expected glee; and of having his eyes soon turned, like hers, towards the scene without, where all that was solemn, and soothing, and lovely, appeared in the brilliancy of an unclouded night, and the contrast of the deep shade of the woods. Fanny spoke her feelings. “Here's harmony!” said she; “here's repose! Here's what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what poetry only can attempt to describe! Here's what may tranquillise every care, and lift the heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.”” (Ch.11) 

Hers is a Romantic soul. How some readers may find her boring, I don’t understand. 
Later there’s another description of the sky—except that now it’s day, not night: 

“The day was uncommonly lovely. It was really March; but it was April in its mild air, brisk soft wind, and bright sun, occasionally clouded for a minute; and everything looked so beautiful under the influence of such a sky, the effects of the shadows pursuing each other on the ships at Spithead and the island beyond, with the ever-varying hues of the sea, now at high water, dancing in its glee and dashing against the ramparts with so fine a sound, produced altogether such a combination of charms for Fanny, as made her gradually almost careless of the circumstances under which she felt them.” (Ch.42) 

Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse are mostly interested in people; Fanny Price is interested in nature, and the mind, so we get such wonderful passages. 

3/ Now look at these lines, after the ball: 

“Shortly afterward, Sir Thomas was again interfering a little with her inclination, by advising her to go immediately to bed. “Advise” was his word, but it was the advice of absolute power, and she had only to rise, and, with Mr. Crawford's very cordial adieus, pass quietly away; stopping at the entrance-door, like the Lady of Branxholm Hall, “one moment and no more,” to view the happy scene, and take a last look at the five or six determined couple who were still hard at work; and then, creeping slowly up the principal staircase, pursued by the ceaseless country-dance, feverish with hopes and fears, soup and negus, sore-footed and fatigued, restless and agitated, yet feeling, in spite of everything, that a ball was indeed delightful.” (Ch.28)

That’s just… so good. “Determined”, “hard at work”—Jane Austen’s hilarious. Then she’s serious again, look at the next bit—in just a few words, she describes everything Fanny feels as she leaves her first ball. 

4/ The next day: 

“After seeing William to the last moment, Fanny walked back to the breakfast-room with a very saddened heart to grieve over the melancholy change; and there her uncle kindly left her to cry in peace, conceiving, perhaps, that the deserted chair of each young man might exercise her tender enthusiasm, and that the remaining cold pork bones and mustard in William's plate might but divide her feelings with the broken egg-shells in Mr. Crawford's. She sat and cried con amore as her uncle intended, but it was con amore fraternal and no other.” (Ch.29) 

That is brilliant. By describing the remains on the plates, Jane Austen evokes image of the 2 men, William (Fanny’s brother) and Henry Crawford, and, changing points of view, contrasts Sir Thomas’s assumption with Fanny’s true feeling. 
Tom at Wuthering Expectations wrote about this excerpt a while back. 

5/ The Portsmouth chapters are among the finest in all of Jane Austen. I have always thought that Fanny’s feeling in Portsmouth is like the feeling of an immigrant returning home to a developing country, after years in a rich developed country—she doesn’t feel belong, can’t help seeing its problems, and realises that her home is no longer there. 

“Whatever was wanted was hallooed for, and the servants hallooed out their excuses from the kitchen. The doors were in constant banging, the stairs were never at rest, nothing was done without a clatter, nobody sat still, and nobody could command attention when they spoke.” (Ch.39)  

Noise, chaos, disorder. I love the word “halloo” she uses. 

“Their general fare bore a very different character; and could he have suspected how many privations, besides that of exercise, she endured in her father's house, he would have wondered that her looks were not much more affected than he found them. She was so little equal to Rebecca's puddings and Rebecca's hashes, brought to table, as they all were, with such accompaniments of half-cleaned plates, and not half-cleaned knives and forks, that she was very often constrained to defer her heartiest meal till she could send her brothers in the evening for biscuits and buns.” (Ch.42) 

Rebecca is the servant in the Price family. 
Better: 

“The sun was yet an hour and half above the horizon. She felt that she had, indeed, been three months there; and the sun's rays falling strongly into the parlour, instead of cheering, made her still more melancholy, for sunshine appeared to her a totally different thing in a town and in the country. Here, its power was only a glare: a stifling, sickly glare, serving but to bring forward stains and dirt that might otherwise have slept. There was neither health nor gaiety in sunshine in a town. She sat in a blaze of oppressive heat, in a cloud of moving dust, and her eyes could only wander from the walls, marked by her father's head, to the table cut and notched by her brothers, where stood the tea-board never thoroughly cleaned, the cups and saucers wiped in streaks, the milk a mixture of motes floating in thin blue, and the bread and butter growing every minute more greasy than even Rebecca's hands had first produced it.” (Ch.46) 

What a painting that is.  
I don’t include the great passages about people and character, because good lines can be found on every page—Jane Austen’s style is polished, precise; she writes enough, and yet says so much in just a few words. Such passages can also be found in the other works. But one such as above, I don’t think you can find in her other novels. 
I do wonder what Nabokov would have thought about Emma, he didn’t like Pride and Prejudice. But I’m glad that Edmund Wilson told him to read Mansfield Park—it is more visual, packed with stuff, and also full of feeling. 
It is boring that people (often self-proclaimed Janeites) keep asking “Which Jane Austen heroine are you/ do you identify with?”. I don’t identify with character; I identify with the author and try to see what they’re doing. The Jane Austen I like the most is the Jane Austen of Mansfield Park—deeper, more serious, more complex, more visual, and full of feeling.