Ex Libris: Interrupting all the early modernism

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Interrupting all the early modernism

I don't know if I ever thought I'd get to the place in life where Jane Austen is modern literature to me, but here I am. My JA class is currently reading Mansfield Park, which I have always hated. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned my impatience for the inane love triangle here at some point in the mists of ancient blog history. Anyway, whilst reading it today, I came across this lovely moment, and I almost liked Fanny and Edmund. There's a double pastoralism undergirding the scene: Edmund and Fanny have just defended the ministerial life to Mary Crawford, and the setting is a starry summer evening in the country. I don't think I'll ever be able to overlook Fanny's high-maintenance (on display yet again here), but the circumstances made me able to simply laugh at it.

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.”

“I like to hear your enthusiasm, Fanny. It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a great deal.”