Thank you, Tamar. I agree titles matter: MP is about all that happens in the house, characters, culture, ethics. Yes the sisters are carefully contested as class, money, and lifestyle.
I disagree: it¡¯s made plain Mrs. price is discontented.
everything in MP includes war, colonialism, political patronage. The male characters¡¯ lives are part of the book¡¯s worlds and themes.
Ellen
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On Nov 21, 2024, at 7:04?PM, Tamar Lindsay via groups.io <dicconf@...> wrote:
?IMansfield Pafk is not titled after a main character (like Emma) nor a character trait (P+P, S+S). It is named after a place (like Northanger Abbey). It would be possible to consider MP as a study of the t hree estates: metaphorically man's field but in civilization, a park, not a forest. Even the forest seen is artificial. It's a story of three sisters whose marriages reflect three levels of society - the one who ran off and married down for love (the seaman), and seems content, the one who married up (we don't know for certain that it was for money and property but that seems likely), and the one who married Propriety (the churchman). The nominal heroine and her two cousins are another set of three - one runs off to marry for love, one marries for money and then tries for love, and Fanny who is all propriety and marries the churchman.
Ellen Moody