Jane Austen's sister Cassandra attempted to persuade her to change the dénouement of Mansfield Park. According to Cassandra, Austen's failure to allow Henry Crawford to marry Fanny, and Fanny's cousin Edmund to marry Mary Crawford, constituted a major flaw in the work.¹Mansfield Park concludes with the heroine happily securing a place as a member of the family at Mansfield and with the removal of the immoral, unprincipled Crawfords. However, Cassandra Austen's assessment, like that of many critics, overlooks or fails to appreciate the significance of the incestuous marriage of cousins Fanny and Edmund.

The issue of incest may also be considered as relevant in the case of Emma and Mr. Knightley. No literal tie of kinship forms a barrier between them, although it has sometimes proved otherwise between a man's brother and his wife's sister in Christian societies.² But it is significant that they act more like siblings rather than lovers, at least until the end of the novel. The sibling-like nature of their marriage betokens an exclusive, inward movement into the family; Mr. Knightley is Emma's brother-in-law and a close neighbour and friend of the Woodhouses. And like an elder brother or guardian, Mr. Knightley has helped to educate Emma. Their later love relationship may be seen as incestuous in that it grew out of a fraternal bond; they themselves emphasize that they are like siblings. That is to say, although they ultimately become involved romantically, their relationship begins as a domestic attachment, originating in and fostered by the intimacy of the home and the family.

In Sense and Sensibility, Elinor and Edward, like Mr. Knightley and Emma, are sister-in-law and brother-in-law. Although there are no blood ties between them, Edward ‘looks upon [Elinor] and the other Miss Dashwoods quite as his own sisters’ (SS [Sense and Sensibility], p. 130); indeed, there are frequent references to their fraternal regard for one another throughout the novel. As in the case of Emma and Mr. Knightley, they are close affines, whose love may be characterized as domestic in that it is stimulated by the familial matrix. In the same work, the relationship between Colonel Brandon and Eliza, although it is unconsummated, is doubly incestuous, as well as adulterous. They have been brought up together like siblings; moreover, their intended marriage is forbidden since Eliza is married to Colonel Brandon's elder brother.

Despite the evidence, commentators in the main have ignored the importance of the incestuous marriages in Austen's fiction. Only a few have discussed the subject. R. F. Brissenden points out the incestuous significance of the relationship of Fanny and Edmund in Mansfield Park and comments that this is what gives the union its underlying power. ‘The [moral] values represented by Fanny and Edmund are under attack. … The mood of Mansfield Park is nostalgic and elegiac,’ argues Brissenden.³ Julia Prewitt Brown remarks that in Mansfield Park and Emma ‘time and history are arrested. The sense of stasis … is partially explained by the incestuous marriages with which they end. … This is the darker side of the theme of cooperation in Jane Austen. In Mansfield Park, cooperation is a kind of inertia.’⁴ Claudia L. Johnson declares that ‘the concluding assertion of familiality [in Mansfield Park] … is really only a retrenchment, not an alternative’.⁵ And Johanna H. Smith attempts to demonstrate the ‘crippling effects’ of the relationship of Fanny and Edmund in Mansfield Park.⁶ The tendency on the part of otherwise astute critics to view these incestuous marriages as static and debilitating is rather curious.

Brissenden and Brown claim that Mansfield Park is an ‘elegiac’ and ‘enervating’ work, which ‘exacerbates and finally exhausts us’. Johnson feels that the close of the novel is ‘unsettling’ and does not offer the satisfaction usually provided by a happy ending. Smith's argument is that the marriage of Fanny and Edmund symbolizes ‘a paralyzed retreat within the family’ and anticipates ‘the nineteenth-century inescapable family’.⁷ But Austen's works reveal nothing of the sort. Indeed, there is no evidence that she intended the end of Mansfield Park to be ‘enervating’, ‘unsettling’, or ‘paralyzed’ any more than she intended the conclusion of Emma to be dark or static. On the contrary, for Austen, the incestuous marriages of Fanny and Edmund, Emma and Mr. Knightley, and Elinor and Edward Ferrars are therapeutic and restorative; the endogamous unions safeguard the family circle and its values. Far from being ‘elegiac’, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility conclude optimistically with the expulsion or removal of menacing intruders and with the preservation and revivification of the home and family. Incest in Austen's novels creates a loving and enclosed family circle; by drawing in the bonds of the family tighter and tighter, the household is strengthened and reconsecrated.

MANSFIELD PARK

Not only are Fanny and Edmund first cousins in Mansfield Park, attached by matrilineal, consanguineal ties which Mary Crawford emphasizes in her reference to their similarity in appearance, but, more important, they have been raised as brother and sister under the same roof. Despite contemporary criticism of marriage between close consanguineal relations (even though it was legal) and the prohibition of marriage between close affines, Austen approves of the marriage of cousins Fanny and Edmund. Indeed, there is every reason to believe at the end of the novel that the two cousins will live happily and prosperously together. The endogamous union preserves the inviolability of Mansfield and excludes the risks attendant on marriage outside the family—to the Crawfords, for example. The marriage is more than just a conventional happy ending; it is symbolic of Austen's sceptical attitude towards a new age, moral transvaluations, and radical change.⁸

Sir Thomas's joyful consent to the marriage of cousins Fanny and Edmund forms a remarkable contrast to his earlier thoughts on the subject at the beginning of the novel. As he considers adopting Fanny, the very thought of cousins in love creates uneasiness within him, which is dispelled by Mrs. Norris:

‘You are thinking of your sons—but do you not know that of all things upon earth that is the least likely to happen; brought up, as they would be, always together like brothers and sisters. It is morally impossible. … It is in fact the only sure way of providing against the connection … breed her up with them from this time, and suppose her to have the beauty of an angel, and she will never be more to either than a sister.’

(MP [Mansfield Park], pp. 6-7, italics added)

Thus the incestuous character of the relationship of Fanny and Edmund is foreshadowed in the opening chapter. Later on in the novel, the baronet apprehensively observes Fanny and Edmund dancing together at the ball at Mansfield; however, his fears are allayed by ‘their sober tranquillity … [which] might satisfy any looker-on that Sir Thomas had been bringing up no wife for his younger son’ (MP, p. 279). And when Sir Thomas anxiously questions Fanny about Edmund's matrimonial plans, Fanny removes his alarm, and her uncle ‘was easy on the score of the cousins’ (MP, p. 317).

Moral objections are raised by Sir Thomas and Mrs. Norris to the possible connection between the cousins. But Austen distinctly regards the incestuous relationship of Fanny and Edmund as natural and highly beneficial and not, in any way, ‘morally impossible’. Like Mary Crawford, Mrs. Norris proves an inadequate judge in this matter. And so too does Sir Thomas—until he becomes enlightened about the strengths of such a marriage. Rather than trapping and constricting the cousins within a narcissistic sibling relationship, as one critic suggests, Austen authorizes and blesses the union of Fanny and Edmund.⁹ Any potential objections on the part of other characters in the novel to the union are surmounted by the domestic happiness of the married cousins and the invigoration of the Mansfield family and estate. Austen challenges the handling of the incest theme in contemporary works with her implied criticism of the judgement of negligent or ill-advised parental figures. Other eighteenth-century sentimental and didactic works moralize about the significance of filial obedience. For this reason, authors sometimes make disobedience, in the form of a clandestine or forbidden marriage on the part of young lovers, produce an incestuous union between siblings or half-siblings. For example, the heroine of the anonymous Helena (1788) becomes engaged to her guardian's son without seeking the advice of her elders. She later discovers that her betrothed is her brother. But, in Austen's Mansfield Park, Fanny defies her surrogate parents by allowing herself to fall in love with her brotherly cousin and by adamantly refusing to marry Henry Crawford. Indeed, Austen underscores her objection to parental despots in the ironic finale of Northanger Abbey: ‘I leave it to be settled by whomever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny or reward filial disobedience’ (NA [Northanger Abbey], p. 252). In Austen's works, as in Trollope's later on, worthy members of the younger generation, with a renewed sense of tradition and familial duty, eventually prevail over the tyranny or remissness of the older order.

Fanny's heart is divided between her real brother William and her cousin Edmund, with whom she also has a sibling relationship. Fanny and Edmund are of the same stock and are similar in appearance; they instinctively understand one another and share the same views and assumptions because of their common mythology and upbringing. They are close, both as children and as adolescents. To some extent, Fanny and Edmund's love seems narcissistic in that they love each other because they resemble each other. Yet, narcissism in the classic sense develops from a superficial attraction. That is to say, the narcissist appreciates and is moved by physical beauty. But the love between Austen's protagonists is based on inner beauty: moral character and good sense. As always, Austen's concept of love is grounded more significantly in domestic rather than sexual instincts.

From the beginning of Mansfield Park, Edmund acknowledges Fanny's good sense, sweet temper, and grateful heart. ‘I do not know any better qualifications for a friend and companion’ (MP, p. 26), he comments. Moreover, he is uncomfortable without his cousin's approbation of his actions. This need for approval works both ways, as tends to be the case in most ideal brother/sister relationships. As Fanny's champion and comforter, the narrator tells us, Edmund ‘had supported her cause, or explained her meaning, he had told her not to cry, or had given her some proof of affection which made her tears delightful’ (MP, p. 152). In return, Fanny's feelings about Edmund ‘were compounded of all that was respectful, grateful, confiding, and tender’ (MP, p. 37). Their mutual love and affection suggest an abiding, deeply sympathetic relationship between siblings.

Fanny falls in love with and later marries Edmund as a surrogate for her beloved brother William toward whom she feels an intense attachment. Throughout their long period of separation, Fanny and William relish their schemes to live their lives together in a comfortable little cottage. One critic has even gone so far as to say that William would make an ideal husband for Fanny.¹⁰ When Fanny and William are reunited as young adults after ten years, the narrator pays tribute to the ‘unchecked, equal, fearless intercourse’ (p. 234) of the siblings. Indeed, Austen takes great pains in her description of their ‘exquisite feeling’ and ‘agitating happiness’; when Fanny, for example, first sees her beloved brother in his naval uniform, she gazes at him for a moment in ‘speechless admiration, and then threw her arms round his neck to sob out her various emotions of pain and pleasure’ (MP, p. 384). Henry Crawford is aroused by their tender intimacy; Fanny's attractions for him double when he notices ‘the glow of [her] cheek, the brightness of her eye, the deep interest, the absorbed attention, while her brother was describing any of the imminent hazards, or terrific scenes, which such a period, at sea, must supply’ (MP, p. 235). Delighting in Fanny's fraternal affection, Henry exclaims to Mary, ‘To see her with her brother! What could more delightfully prove that the warmth of her heart was equal to its gentleness?’ (MP, p. 294). Fanny's adoration of William clearly encourages men who have her in mind as a sexual partner. Henry would like Fanny to kiss him as rapturously as she kisses her brother. But Fanny, as is appropriate for her, chooses not a stranger but a family member on whom to bestow her affection. Fanny's love for Edmund is a convenient displacement of her love for William. While Anderson argues that this displacement of love for a brother to love for a cousin was an established pattern of marriage in the nineteenth century, what is distinctive about Fanny and Edmund's relationship is that Fanny is removed at an early age from the household of the brother to that of the cousin who actually becomes her brother.¹¹

To be sure, Fanny and Edmund's love is stimulated by their shared childhood experience and associations. And yet, it would be wrong to discount the effect of their more mature roles and duties as brother and sister. When Fanny and Edmund are both engaged in sending a letter to William, Fanny becomes an ‘interesting object’ (MP, p. 16) in her cousin's eyes. Furthermore, Edmund helps to educate Fanny, encouraging her taste and correcting her judgement. Such relations require an emotional investment. It is hardly surprising then that these fraternal obligations should encourage, in some cases, an affection that goes well beyond what is merely expected of brothers and sisters. And so, in the course of Mansfield Park, Fanny's love becomes more passionate than sororal. She grows jealous of the unworthy Mary Crawford and is enraptured by Edmund's compliments on her own face and figure and his regard for her. Her love deepens throughout the novel. After reading the letter in which Edmund expresses doubts about his relationship with Mary, Fanny cries distractedly, ‘Oh! Write, write. Finish it at once. Let there be an end of this suspense. Fix, commit, condemn yourself’ (MP, p. 424).

For his part, Edmund attempts to differentiate between his fraternal love for Fanny and his conjugal love for Mary. These two, he claims, are ‘the … dearest objects I have on this earth’ (MP, p. 264). He seems to regard Fanny as his ‘sister’, his ‘friend and companion’ (MP, p. 26), whereas Mary is his lover and intended wife. But, even early on in the novel, Austen provides hints that his unconscious feelings for his cousin rival and even exceed those for his intended spouse. In his letter to Fanny, he proclaims that he cannot give up Mary because ‘she is the only woman in the world whom I could ever think of as a wife’. But shortly afterwards he tells Fanny that ‘I miss you more than I can express’ (MP, pp. 421-3). It is perhaps his social conscience, governed by the unconscious taboo of incest, that makes his thoughts inexpressible. To articulate them would raise them to the preconscious or conscious level. Nevertheless, we learn that Edmund believes Fanny was born to be ‘the perfect model of a woman’ (MP, p. 347), and Mary reminds Henry that ‘[Fanny's] cousin Edmund never forgets her’ (MP, p. 297). Before the Mansfield ball, Edmund shows his ‘grateful affection’ (MP, p. 270) for his cousin with his gift of a gold chain for William's cross, ‘a token of the love of one of your oldest friends’ (MP, p. 261).¹² During a conversation with Fanny at the ball, Edmund presses his cousin's hand to his lips ‘with almost as much warmth as if it had been Miss Crawford's’ (MP, p. 269).

That Austen stresses Edmund's brotherly affection until the end of the novel is of special import. When Fanny decks herself out in her finery to go to dinner at the Grants, Edmund looks at her ‘with the kind smile of an affectionate brother’ (MP, p. 222). As Fanny leaves for Portsmouth, her cousin gives her ‘the affectionate farewell of a brother’ (MP, p. 374). Apparently unaware of Fanny's love for him, Edmund tries to be of service to his cousin by his encouragement of Henry Crawford's suit, despite Fanny's vehement protest: ‘Oh! never, never, never; he will never succeed with me’ (MP, p. 347). After attempting to persuade Fanny to marry Henry, Edmund adds insult to injury by ushering his cousin ‘with the kind authority of a privileged guardian into the house’ (MP, p. 355). Following the scandal involving Maria Rushworth and Henry Crawford in London, Edmund arrives in Portsmouth to claim his cousin; pressing her to his heart, he barely articulates, ‘My Fanny—my only sister—my only comfort now’ (MP, p. 444). And after the disappointment and suffering in Edmund's relationship with Mary, ‘Fanny's friendship was all that he had to cling to’ (MP, p. 460).

Edmund's love for Fanny seems to be of a different quality from hers for him. She is in love with him throughout most of the novel in the way of a sister and a lover, whereas Edmund's conjugal love for her is not apparent until the end of Mansfield Park. He has to see first that an ‘outsider’ is not for him after all. In Persuasion, Anne Elliot claims that woman's love is different from man's:

‘We certainly do not forget you, as soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced upon exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impression. … Your feelings may be the strongest … ours are the most tender … All the privilege I claim for my own sex … is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.’

(P [Persuasion], pp. 232-5)

In much the same way, Fanny has been deeply attached to her cousin since she was a child. Her tender feelings toward Edmund intensify as she matures; her love has always been more than sisterly or cousinly regard. But Edmund's brotherly affection changes to conjugal love only when his relationship with Mary fails; it dawns on him that his beloved ‘sister’ would make an excellent wife, and that going outside the home has its dangers—the dangers that attend to those who are too much unknown and easily misunderstood.

Not until the end of the novel is the fraternal affection of Fanny and Edmund fully transformed into conjugal love. But they find that their relationship has been strengthened by their early associations and instinctive understanding, Edmund's guiding and protection of Fanny, and their mutual love and esteem for one another's goodness and virtues. The author's emphasis, as always, is not on the sexual, but on the fraternal, spiritual quality of their relationship. In this respect, the union of the cousins is consecrated, freed from sin, and serves to verify and reinforce Austen's view of the sacredness of the home, which remains untainted in this ‘world of changes’ (MP, p. 374).

In its attitude towards the radical changes of the time and the sacredness of the home, Mansfield Park is often regarded as the most ‘Victorian’ of Austen's novels. At the end of the book, Fanny reenters the world of the family at Mansfield for the satisfaction she finds impossible outside. Mansfield Park stresses the bonds of family love, the sanctity of the ideal home and family life, and the need for moral and religious reform in order to maintain stability. Austen uses the incest motif to investigate the evolving social and moral climate of her time. Her own ideology is affirmed and supported by the narrative structure of Mansfield Park; the centripetal progression in the novel is undergirded by the incest motif. The inward movement of the novel accelerates after Sir Thomas returns from abroad. Like a Victorian father, Sir Thomas emphasizes the necessity and desirability of domestic peace and tranquillity which ‘shuts out noisy pleasures’ (MP, p. 186). After his long absence and dangerous transatlantic journey, the baronet finds Mansfield in an uproar and Mr. Yates ‘hallooing’ in his private rooms. Not only is Yates wearisome because of his behaviour, but, as the friend of Tom and suitor of Julia, he becomes an offensive intruder. Sir Thomas' first decision is to dissolve the disruptive levity of the theatricals, which threaten to undermine the principles of the household, to overturn the control of ‘outsiders’, and to see off Yates, ‘the worst object connected with the scheme’ (MP, p. 194). It is telling that Fanny concurs with her uncle in his views of the play and of the sanctity of the home. In Portsmouth, when Fanny is sent away from her uncle's house, Mansfield becomes an absent ideal, and she thinks of the ‘elegance, propriety, regularity, harmony—and perhaps, above all, the peace and tranquillity of Mansfield’ (MP, p. 391).

Mansfield becomes a symbol of serenity and security during her exile, even though this was certainly not the case when she was there. For Fanny, ‘To be in the centre of such a circle, loved by so many, to feel affection without fear or restraint, to feel herself the equal of those who surrounded her, to be at peace from all mention of the Crawfords, safe from every look which could be fancied a reproach on their account’ (MP, p. 370) is a blissful prospect. Such a vision of Mansfield seems pure fantasy, especially at this stage in the novel; but, by the end of Mansfield Park, Fanny steps into and graces this dreamlike landscape, in which the married cousins form the main focal point.

By way of suggesting the threat posed by a changing familial and social order, the author makes certain that evidence of the debasement of traditional ways is plentiful in Mansfield Park. Austen portrays a world in moral confusion. Secular values have replaced religion, symbolized by the distance of the church from the house and the chapel's disuse at Sotherton, the irresponsibility of absentee clergymen, and the indolence and self-indulgence of Dr. Grant. Moreover, marriage is often regarded as a commercial venture, a means of self-aggrandizement, as in the case of Maria Bertram's alliance to the affluent but foolish Mr. Rushworth. A fear of subversion pervades Mansfield Park; time-honored ethical principles of stability, endurance, reason, and noblesse oblige are abandoned and replaced by new, entrepreneurial ideas. Mr. Rushworth disclaims the old responsibility of the landowner toward the poor; he neglects the disgraceful and ‘ugly’ (MP, p. 82) cottages of the village and, instead, idly seeks to ‘improve’ the Sotherton estate. Likewise, Henry Crawford is a negligent landlord and spends little time at Everingham; the poor suffer while Henry selfishly indulges himself, visiting Mansfield, and, more particularly, London, an exciting centre of fashion and society, the influence of which is ‘very much at war with all respectable attachments’ (MP, p. 433).

It is significant that Fanny marries Edmund, a staunch paternalist (like his father), who will reside at his parish in Thornton Lacey, and who refuses Henry's solicitous proposals for the ‘improvement’ of it. Austen reveals her distaste and concern for the centrifugal or outward tendency of the community—the wider class divisions and exploitation of the poor, the selfish individualism of many of the characters in Mansfield Park—in her references to Henry and Mr. Rushworth's neglect of their duties as landowners as well as in Maria's indifference to her role as the mistress of Sotherton.¹³ The marriage of Fanny and Edmund exemplifies Austen's defence of the traditional system. The union creates a centripetal or inward movement, a tightening of familial ties; their residence at Thornton Lacey and later at Mansfield will protect them and their parish from corruptive external influences. For Austen, as for the Victorians, the exemplary home is a haven from outside anxieties and commercialism threatening to adulterate society; it is a bulwark against the upheavals of a new age.

Henry and Mary Crawford are outsiders, modern, urban representatives of that age, who threaten to contaminate the sanctuary of Mansfield Park. The opening decades of the nineteenth century were characterized by the license and levity of the dandy and the epicure, self-indulgence and disregard for domesticity. A significant number of landowners were eager to profit by revolutionary schemes in both industry and agriculture; as a result, they paid less attention to the plight of the lower classes, and the division between rich and poor increased. In London, the court and the landed aristocracy pursued a life of pleasure. The profligacy of the court of the Prince Regent, who was notorious for his disruption of and disregard for domestic ties, was bruited throughout Europe.¹⁴ In Mansfield Park, Mary and Henry emulate the manners and mores of the aristocracy. Recently, one critic has argued that the Crawfords ‘are by no means a serious threat to the Mansfield Park order’, that they merely manifest ‘playful indulgence, a spiritual luxury of privileged people’.¹⁵ But, on the contrary, Austen demonstrates that their self-indulgence is hazardous, that privileged people should be responsible and humanitarian rather than dissolute, indolent, and venal.

Rich, witty, and talented, but egocentric, insincere, and irreverent, the interlopers from London lack principles and, in this way, typify the hollow men and women of the age. Even more important, Henry is critical of tradition, and selfishly disrupts the family peace at Mansfield by flirting with both of the Bertram sisters and, ultimately, eloping with Maria. He is a capital improver, but his ideas presage harm. On the subject of alterations at Thornton Lacey, Crawford claims that ‘the farm-yard must be cleared away entirely, and planted up to shut out the blacksmith's shop. The house must be turned to face the east instead of the north. … Then the stream—something must be done with the stream’ (MP, p. 242). In his desire to make the parsonage fit for a gentleman, Henry resolves to ‘shut out’ the village and clear away the past. As Alistair M. Duckworth has pointed out, Austen distrusted ‘improvements’ of the kind favoured by Henry, for she believed they only widened the gulf between upper and lower classes and challenged cultural heritage by their radical nature.¹⁶ Henry extends his desire for ‘improvements’ to the house at Mansfield by turning it into a theatre. In his reading of drama there is ‘variety of excellence’; such is his love of reading aloud that he desires to preach, but only to a fashionable, educated London audience, and only ‘now and then … but not for a constancy’ (MP, p. 341). Henry's capriciousness and lack of principles imperil the propriety of Mansfield and compromise the respectability of Maria and Julia.

Austen's uneasiness about the new age and its moral transvaluations is revealed by the playacting episode. The German source and revolutionary sentiments of Lovers' Vows (1798) mark it as suspicious and objectionable material, especially in light of Austen's critical attitude toward the Prince Regent and the immoral court of the Saxe-Cobourgs, and the general fear of France following the Revolution and the devastating Napoleonic wars. The foreign drama threatens to cause chaos at Mansfield.¹⁷ Arguments break out between the siblings, and, as Edmund suggests, ‘Family squabling [sic] is the greatest evil of all’ (MP, p. 128). One objection to the play is that it is so close to the actual condition of the personages then at Mansfield that no one in it is really ‘acting’. Maria plays the part of a woman about to be illicitly seduced. Rushworth is an asinine admirer. Mary is cast as the forward, immodest Amelia; Yates as a supporter of elopement; and Edmund as a clergyman in love with Amelia. All of the characters are playing exaggerated versions of themselves.¹⁸ In addition, Fanny is shocked by the choice of the play because it deals with illegitimacy, seduction, and adultery, and therefore is ‘totally improper for home representation’ and ‘unfit to be expressed by any woman of modesty’ (MP, p. 137).

Ironically, Lovers' Vows reflects Austen's novels to some extent in that the organizing principle is the quest to recover lost family ties, particularly the fraternal ties of Amelia and Frederick, who are finally reunited at the end of the novel. Moreover, family ties are also the organizing principle of another notorious play by Kotzebue, Adelaide Von Wulfingen (1801). In this play, which Austen may well have seen since it was performed on the London stage during her time, the heroine marries her brother and bears him children; they live happily until a malevolent priest reveals the truth about their relationship. It is my contention that Austen drew on the themes of familial bonding in Lovers' Vows and incest in Adelaide Von Wulfingen and modified them for her own purposes in Mansfield Park.¹⁹

Not only are the circumstances of the theatricals untoward, owing to Sir Thomas' absence, Maria's betrothal, and the play's general inappropriateness and subversive content, but, in addition, the inviolability of the household is threatened by the proposed intrusion of an outsider from the town, engaged to perform the spare part, who is scarcely known to any of them. Such is Edmund's horror at the idea of the engagement of an outsider that he agrees to act—in order, he claims, to avoid ‘the mischief that may … the unpleasantness that must, arise from a young man's being received in this manner—domesticated among us—authorized to come at all hours—and placed suddenly on a footing which must do away with all restraints. To think only of the licence which every rehearsal must tend to create. It is all very bad’ (MP, p. 154). But his siblings find it difficult to conceal their smiles when the besotted Edmund descends from his moral elevation in order to act opposite Mary. Still, Fanny is alarmed: Mary's pernicious influence over Edmund robs him of his moral scruples and judgement concerning the acting scheme. The drama promotes license, and Fanny, chagrined by Edmund's inconsistency, cares no longer if she herself is finally obliged to participate in the play by the selfish inclinations of her cousins: for Fanny, ‘no matter—it was all misery now’ (MP, p. 160).

The outsiders Henry and Mary attempt, in effect, to corrupt Edmund and Fanny. Edmund errs, captivated by the inviting smiles and beauty of the temptress. Mary Crawford possesses wit and grace; her vivacity and talents at playing the harp and riding bedazzle Edmund. It is only at the end of the novel that the charm is broken, and Edmund acknowledges her ‘faults of principle … blunted delicacy and … corrupted, vitiated mind’ (MP, p. 456)—when Mary criticizes the detection and not the offence of her brother's elopement with Maria. Fanny fears Henry's lack of moral scruples but admits the apparent improvement in his character, his increasing kindness and consideration as he woos her. She seems about to relent in her refusal of him; however, her suspicions are confirmed when he elopes with Mrs. Rushworth. As Austen suggests, marriage to an outsider, such as Henry or Mary Crawford, would be dangerous for Fanny or Edmund. Elsewhere in the novel, the consequences are disastrous when a Bertram goes outside the family, as in the case of Maria's marriage to Mr. Rushworth, and Julia's elopement with the obnoxious and impecunious Mr. Yates.

The Crawfords' license menaces the established order of the home and family at Mansfield Park, and the novel concludes with the banishing of their sexual impurity and moral subversion. As siblings the Crawfords are close friends and confidantes, but Mary also takes a prurient interest in her promiscuous brother's sex life. Her partiality for Henry makes her blind to his sordid and dishonorable conduct with women. While Mary faults the Admiral for his rakishness, she condones exactly the same sort of behaviour in her brother, viewing him rather as the glorious ‘hero of an old romance’ (MP, p. 360). Mary is like a voyeur; she provokes and is titillated by Henry's multiple conquests of women in London, and she particularly relishes the sexual rivalry and jealousy he kindles at Mansfield between Maria and Julia. Moreover, Mary fans the flames of his passion for Fanny, even acting as her brother's accomplice in tricking Fanny into accepting a necklace which Henry gave her as a gift. As part of her devious strategy to arouse Fanny's ardour for Henry, Mary speculates about the ‘sensation’ their union might occasion in London. She even goes so far as to describe to Fanny ‘the envyings and heartburnings of dozens and dozens’ (MP, p. 360). The ultimate temptation for Fanny, in Mary's opinion, will be ‘the glory of fixing one who has been shot at by so many; of having it in one's power to pay off the debts of one's sex!’ (MP, p. 363).

Sensation, scandal, and sexual manipulation are Mary's major interests in life. While she herself does not indulge in sexual affairs, Mary experiences sex vicariously through her brother's exploits. Moreover, her love for Henry is narcissistic. As superficial, coldhearted, and decadent as her brother, Mary takes pleasure in Henry's appearance and notoriety, since she herself often profits by them. She luxuriates in being courted for her brother's sake and basks in his reflected sexual glory. In this way, Austen counterpoints the sibling relationships of Mary and Henry and Fanny and Edmund. Fanny's sexual feelings for Edmund (which rise to the surface when Edmund falls in love with Mary) are natural and acceptable because they are compounded with fraternal feelings which transmute mere sexual attraction. But in the case of the Crawfords, Mary's love for her brother is contaminated by her own concupiscence and perverted desire for sexual thrills and misconduct. Such a sibling love is unacceptable; it is dangerous both to the family and to society since it has the potential to wreak domestic havoc rather than to create domestic order.

The depravity of the Crawfords is compared to a disease which threatens to infect Mansfield. The heroine's reaction to the elopement of Henry and Mrs. Rushworth is one of nausea and revulsion: ‘Fanny seemed to herself never to have been shocked before. There was no possibility of rest. The evening passed, without a pause of misery, the night was totally sleepless. She passed only from feelings of sickness to shudderings of horror; and from hot fits of fever to cold’ (MP, p. 441). Avrom Fleishman points out that Fanny sounds as though she thinks there is something incestuous about Henry and Mrs. Rushworth's act, ‘both families connected as they were by tie upon tie, all friends, all intimate together!’ (MP, p. 441). But he does not investigate the implications of incest in this passage.²⁰ Paula Marantz Cohen stresses the resemblance between Maria and Fanny, asserting that Fanny's language suggests Maria has engaged in incest, an act which she herself engages in with Austen's approval.²¹ However, Maria's act disrupts the family—unlike Fanny's, which consolidates it. The incestuous relationship between Henry and Mrs. Rushworth is based only on sexual appetite; moreover, it creates scandal. Therefore, it cannot gain Austen's approval. But the constructive relationship of cousins Fanny and Edmund, which blends spiritual, mental, and physical affinities, is not intended to shock or repel; on the contrary, the union enriches and improves the family at Mansfield and, in Austen's opinion, it should gain the reader's approbation.

At the end of the novel, chagrined by the corruption of the new order, ‘Sick of ambitious and mercenary connections, prizing more and more the sterling good of principle and temper, and chiefly anxious to bind by the strongest securities all that remained to him of domestic felicity’ (MP, p. 471), Sir Thomas blesses the marriage of his son and niece and retreats into the security of home in order to defend his principles and interests. Sir Thomas's protective attitude against the outside world typifies the tendency toward insularity in Mansfield Park. His retreat from the calculating and acquisitive outside world, like the alliance of Fanny and Edmund, is a stabilizing movement. Indeed, the incestuous marriage of the cousins, brought up in the same household as brother and sister, completes the baronet's withdrawal into the protection and confinement of the home. One critic has remarked that ‘the incestuous tendency in fiction is conceived less as an infantile fantasy than as a fear of change or death’,²² that incest betokens an inward, self-protective movement, but that, nonetheless, it is essentially self-repetitive and regressive. In Austen's view, however, the incestuous marriages are neither regressive nor negative (except in the case of a purely sexual relationship, such as that of Henry and Maria); instead, incest between like-minded members of the approved clan contributes to the moral good of the family and the home. In Mansfield Park, the incestuous alliance of the cousins may be regarded as symbolic of the author's endorsement of traditional moral values. As she abhors the infiltration and the undermining of unscrupulous, false types such as the Crawfords, Austen sees to it that Fanny and Edmund stay within the family and are sheltered from the danger and risk of external influences.

For Austen, the conjugal tie was on the whole less appealing than the fraternal tie. She, herself, had six brothers and a sister and never married. Since she disliked to write of matters of which she had little knowledge, Austen omits romantic scenes, particularly at the end of novels, and instead concentrates on scenes involving family members. Mansfield Park is no exception to this rule. At the conclusion of the novel, Austen's cavalier treatment of the change in Edmund and Fanny's relationship is noteworthy:

Scarcely had he 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, an hopeful undertaking that her warm and sisterly regard for him would be foundation enough for wedded love.

(MP, p. 470)

Austen's narrator abruptly sums up and understates the transformation from fraternal to conjugal love: ‘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’ (MP, p. 470). In several ways, this passage serves as an ironic commentary on the way such romantic ‘discovery’ scenes are usually written. The succinctness and unceremonious summary of Austen's scenes are in direct contrast to the overblown, protracted style of ‘discovery’ scenes in gothic fiction as well as in the novels of sensibility of contemporary writers. Instead of the romantic attachment between the two cousins, Austen stresses their fraternal regard and their having grown to maturity together: ‘With such a regard for her, indeed, as his had long been, a regard founded on the most endearing claims of innocence and helplessness, and completed by every recommendation of growing worth, what could be more natural than the change?’ (MP, p. 470). The critic who claims that the finale is ‘a perfunctorily opted anticlimax the narrator washes her hands of, rather than a properly wished-for and well-deserved union towards which the parties have been moving all along’ misses the point of the novel; on the contrary, the reader has been well-prepared for the union of the cousins throughout the work.²³ The love of Fanny and Edmund needs no further elaboration.

In the end, Mansfield remains immaculate and inviolable, undefiled by the morally incorrigible Crawfords, who come to regret bitterly their losses at the end of the novel. Despite the spirit and charm of the Crawfords, Austen condemns their irresponsibility, their lack of principles, and, most of all, their violation of the tranquillity of the family circle. In literature, verve and wit are sometimes the devil's tools, whereas dullness and virtue often go hand in hand. The choice between good and evil is after all supposed to be difficult. But Austen's perspective on the moral turpitude of Henry and Mary does not vacillate.²⁴ At the end of the novel, Austen disdainfully doles out poetic justice: Mary cannot put Edmund out of her mind and bitterly regrets the ‘domestic happiness’ (MP, p. 469) she might have had at Mansfield. As for Henry, Austen points out that he is vexed, regretful, and sometimes full of self-reproach and wretchedness ‘in having so requited hospitality, so injured family peace, so forfeited his best, most estimable and endeared acquaintance, and so lost the woman whom he had rationally, as well as passionately, loved’ (MP, p. 469, italics added). In the end, Austen makes it seem that Henry has committed a crime for which he must be punished.

Austen's awareness of the tension between conservatism and change resonates throughout the novel. Her own inclinations are manifest when, in the end, all of the approved characters seem to agree that Mansfield has been saved by the alliance of the cousins from the encroachment of the new order and negative values. Some critics have claimed that the overall mood of Mansfield Park is pessimistic, and that the stasis achieved is regressive. But such a reading becomes difficult to sustain at the conclusion of the novel, where the mood is obviously one of optimism and satisfaction; far from being regressive, the incestuous marriage not only proves to be restorative but also carries with it distinct moral and social benefits. Indeed, the marriage of Edmund and Fanny is the crux of Austen's moral vision in Mansfield Park. Mansfield is safe, and there is no doubt about its moral stature; and the union of Edmund and Fanny is a perfect marriage because of their spiritual affinities and their similarities of taste and temper: ‘the happiness of the married cousins must appear as secure as earthly happiness can be.—Equally formed for domestic life, and attached to country pleasures, their home was the home of affection and comfort’ (MP, p. 473). For Austen, such a union is the only domestic establishment worth having, and in this case it is only available inside the family.

Other novels by Austen end with descriptions of the happiness of the hero and heroine, but Mansfield Park is the only novel in which Austen alludes to parenthood in the conclusion and promises a new generation: ‘to complete the picture of good, the acquisition of Mansfield living by the death of Dr. Grant occurred just after they had been married long enough to begin to want an increase of income, and feel their distance from the paternal abode an inconvenience’ (MP, p. 473). By referring to the impending birth of a child, Austen projects Fanny and Edmund into parental roles and endorses the domestic happiness of the married cousins who have loved, cherished, esteemed, and respected one another since they were children. The marriage is blessed—cousins can keep a family going. The union is fruitful, and the blissful pair look to the future with hope.

EMMA

At the beginning of Emma, Mr. Knightley is introduced as ‘a very old and intimate friend of the family’. More important, he is connected with the heroine as the elder brother of Isabella's husband and is ‘one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them’ (E [Emma], p. 11). For the major part of the novel, Mr. Knightley, Emma's brother-in-law and neighbor, acts as an elder brother or father figure to his young sister-in-law; he lectures her, criticizes her behaviour, protects, nurtures, and cherishes her. This relationship between the two creates a certain tension of desire and propriety. Yet, as they come to understand that their sensibilities are in harmony, their desires are cojoined with their sense of what is appropriate. In this regard, the novel—like all of Austen's novels—is satisfying as a fantasy or fairy tale because in the end the heroine marries her brotherly ‘knight’. Indeed, Emma may be seen not only as a dramatization of the fantasy of incest but also as a dramatic presentation of the power of the unconscious.

As in the relationship between Edmund and Fanny, Austen stresses Mr. Knightley's fraternal regard for Emma and the advantages of in-family marriage. Mr. Knightley says of his brother near the end of the novel: ‘[John] is no complimenter, and though I do know him to have, likewise, a most brotherly affection for you, he is so far from making flourishes, that any other young woman might think him rather cool in her praise’ (E, p. 464). Like John, Mr. Knightley has ‘a most brotherly affection’ for Emma; for he makes no ‘flourishes’, offers criticisms of her conduct, and proves his readiness to find Emma blameworthy when necessary. That is to say, measured against the exaggerated standards of popular fiction, his behaviour would seem neither romantic nor chivalrous, even in spite of the associations attached to his name.

And yet, Mr. Knightley takes a great interest in Emma; his concern is brotherly, but there are also clues along the way to his passionate feelings for her. He tells Mrs. Weston: ‘I confess that I have seldom seen a face or figure more pleasing to me than her's. But I am a partial old friend. … I love to look at her’ (E, p. 39, italics added). A little later, Mr. Knightley muses on the future of his ‘sister’:

‘I have a very sincere interest in Emma. Isabella does not seem more my sister; has never excited a greater interest, perhaps hardly so great. There is an anxiety, a curiosity in what one feels for Emma. I wonder what will become of her. … She always declares that she will never marry, which, of course, means just nothing at all. But I have no idea that she has ever yet seen a man she cared for. It would not be a bad thing for her to be very much in love, with a proper object. I should like to see Emma in love, and in some doubt of a return; it would do her good. But there is nobody hereabouts to attract her; and she goes so seldom from home.’

(E, pp. 40-41, italics added)

His comments are revealing; he gives himself away when he notices Emma's face and figure, and when he remarks that ‘I love to look at her’, and that ‘I should like to see Emma in love and in some doubt of a return’. He, himself, unconsciously hopes to be the object of his sister-in-law's affections: ‘there is an anxiety, a curiosity in what one feels for Emma’. In short, Emma is both a woman whom Mr. Knightley describes as his ‘sister’, and a woman whom he also admires and desires. Although they are members of the same clan, so to speak, and Mr. Knightley has been used to thinking of Emma as his younger sister, his desire for her is in no way repressed as, at first, Edmund's feelings for Fanny are in Mansfield Park. That is to say, unlike Edmund's, in Mr. Knightley's case there seems to be no initial boundary or lingering taboo imposed between sibling love and the love that leads to marriage. In fact, Mr. Knightley appears to understand more immediately that these two types of love closely resemble each other in that they are relationships forged through trust, deep affection, and the common beliefs of members of the same family.

The major structural device of Emma is the endeavour of the heroine and Mr. Knightley, consciously or unconsciously, to retain and strengthen sibling ties. Sibling-like sparrings, disagreements, and peacemaking sessions constitute the dramatic structure of the novel. Moreover, Mr. Knightley, in the way of an elder brother, acts as Emma's teacher. As Juliet McMaster remarks, there are courses ranging from initiation rites to lectures in moral guidance and from examinations to graduation at the end of the novel.²⁵ In one scene, Mr. Knightley criticizes Emma's likeness of Harriet; and, although Emma realizes he is correct, she will not own to it. The ‘brother’ and ‘sister’, likewise, quarrel heatedly over Emma's matchmaking and her meddling in the affair of Robert Martin and Harriet. Later on, they patch up their differences at Hartfield. However, this potentially romantic scene between them becomes, significantly, a domestic scene created by a family connection; the two of them handle and admire their baby niece with ‘all the unceremoniousness of perfect amity’ (E, p. 98).

Still, the distinction between fraternal and passionate love is more blurred in Emma than in Mansfield Park. Austen writes about Emma and Mr. Knightley as if they are potential lovers, even though she stresses that they are closely related. Mr. Knightley becomes jealous of ‘trifling, silly’ (E, p. 206) Frank Churchill; Emma is astonished because Mr. Knightley, for once, does not show his usual ‘liberality of mind’ (E, p. 151). Unlike Emma, who does not understand her feelings of jealousy concerning Mr. Knightley until much later, Mr. Knightley discovers earlier in the novel the reasons for his instinctive dislike of Frank. He suspects Frank of some double dealing in his pursuit of Emma and fears the consequences for his sister-in-law: ‘How the delicacy, the discretion of his favourite could have so lain asleep! … He could not see her in a situation of such danger, without trying to preserve her. It was his duty’ (E, pp. 348-9). When Emma tells Mr. Knightley that she can answer for Frank Churchill's indifference to Jane Fairfax, Mr. Knightley becomes instantly jealous and takes a hasty leave of Hartfield in order to compose his feverish feelings of irritation. In short, Mr. Knightley acts dutifully as Emma's champion and protector, as Edmund acts for Fanny in Mansfield Park. But, unlike Edmund, who urges on Henry Crawford in his wooing of Fanny, Mr. Knightley does not encourage Frank Churchill's suit. On the contrary, Mr. Knightley's incestuous love for Emma makes him hostile to the possibility of her choosing a romantic attachment outside the family. He becomes passionately jealous of his beloved sister-in-law's fondness of Frank, much as Fanny envies Edmund's love for Mary Crawford.

Emma, on the other hand, fails to detect the real causes of her feelings, violent dislikes, and jealousies until near the end of the novel; but then she always fails to see the truth. However, there are moments when her unconscious love makes a temporary breakthrough into half-awareness and manifests itself. There is, for instance, the scene in which she contemplates her image of the ideal man: ‘General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.—She could fancy such a man’ (E, p. 320). Mr. Knightley, we are aware, fits this description as though he were the prototype. Emma notices his ‘tall, firm, upright figure’ (E, p. 326) at the Crown ball and his frequent observations of her. And she is overjoyed when Mr. Knightley takes a turn dancing with the slighted Harriet: ‘Never had she been more surprised, seldom more delighted, than at that instant. She was all pleasure and gratitude’ (E, p. 328). At this point, Emma reveals no sexual jealousy of the humble Harriet, no fear of her captivating Mr. Knightley. Yet she cannot, at this point, allow these latent feelings to manifest themselves consciously. It seems plausible, from a Freudian perspective, that Emma's slow progress to awareness of her feelings for Mr. Knightley involves some repression. Her relation to him is symbolically oedipal: because of their ages, he is something of a father-figure to her as well as an elder brother.

Emma alludes to the incestuous implications of her relationship with Mr. Knightley when she asks him to dance with her at the ball: ‘You have shown that you can dance, and you know we are not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper’ (italics added). To which Mr. Knightley emphatically replies ‘Brother and sister! no, indeed’ (E, p. 331). He has loved Emma fraternally and passionately since she was thirteen. But because of the age difference of sixteen or seventeen years between them, Mr. Knightley has always assumed that Emma would marry someone her own age—someone like Frank Churchill. So he treats Emma as an elder brother might treat her for fear of rejection, since he is so much older than she.

Unlike Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility, in which the hero's love for the heroine is not revealed as conjugal love until the end of the novel, in Emma the roles are reversed—Emma's fraternal affection for Mr. Knightley is not transformed until the conclusion of the novel. Emma is a mirror-image of the other works in that it retells the story of an incestuous love from another perspective; in this novel, the woman rather than the man discovers her true feelings at the end. Emma also reverses the pattern of Austen's other works in that the brother-hero acts as the redeemer of the sister-heroine rather than vice versa. Austen was steeped in the typical formulae of much Romantic poetry and also of numerous eighteenth-century novels, where the sister rescues her brother and operates as his spiritual guardian and conscience (as, for example, in Burney's Evelina). In Mansfield Park, Austen adopts a similar formula: Fanny serves as Edmund's deliverer from a dangerous liaison with Mary. And, in Sense and Sensibility, Elinor's marriage to Edward redeems him from the folly of his previous attachment to the unworthy Lucy. But in Emma, Austen transposes the usual pattern and shows Mr. Knightley acting as Emma's conscience and as her saviour.

The emotional climax of Emma, and the culmination of the latent love between Emma and Mr. Knightley, is the incident with Miss Bates.²⁶ Like an older brother, Mr. Knightley remonstrates with Emma for her cruel treatment of Miss Bates at Box Hill. Emma is dismayed, not so much because she has upset Miss Bates but because Mr. Knightley has shown serious disapproval of her: ‘Never had [Emma] felt so agitated, mortified, grieved, at any circumstance in her life. … She felt it at her heart’ (E, p. 376). Full of contrition, she soon visits Miss Bates to make up for her conduct. When he hears of Emma's penitence, Mr. Knightley is delighted:

He looked at her with a glow of regard. She was warmly gratified—and in another moment still more so by a little movement of more than common friendliness on his part.—He took her hand;—whether she had not herself made the first motion, she could not say—she might, perhaps, have rather offered it—but he took her hand, pressed it, and was certainly on the point of carrying it to his lips—when, from some fancy or other, he suddenly let it go.—… his manners had in general so little gallantry … but she thought nothing became him more.—It was with him of so simple, yet so dignified a nature. … It spoke such perfect amity.

(E, pp. 385-6)

The ardour of Emma's and Mr. Knightley's feelings—their surprise, hesitation, and pleasure—breaks through to the surface and is apparent in the many interruptions and dashes throughout the passage. As is often the case in Austen's novels, this romantic scene is also a domestic scene; it takes place in the parlour at Hartfield before the eyes of the unsuspecting Mr. Woodhouse. And even in this episode, Austen's emphasis is still very much on the spiritual quality of their relationship: the ‘perfect amity’ of the brother and sister-in-law, their mutual regard and gratitude, Mr. Knightley's simple, dignified nature.

The love of Emma and Mr. Knightley has originated and been disclosed in their relation as brother and sister; the unfolding of the love affair takes place within the family. When Emma understands the true nature of her love for Mr. Knightley, she still thinks of his regard for her as brotherly: ‘from family attachment and habit, and thorough excellence of mind, he had loved and watched over her from a girl, with an effort to improve her, and an anxiety for her doing right, which no other creature had at all shared’ (E, p. 415, italics added). Even when Mr. Knightley proposes to Emma, Austen dismisses the romantic scene between them in the garden at Hartfield with a curt ‘What did she say?—Just what she ought, of course. A lady always does’ (E, p. 431). Instead, she stresses the fraternal attachment of the pair, just as she emphasizes the fraternal attachment of Fanny and Edmund at the end of Mansfield Park. Indeed, Mr. Knightley's reminiscences of Emma as a girl suggest that while he has always looked upon her as a sister, his fraternal love is also the love that leads to marriage: ‘I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it. … God knows, I have been an indifferent lover’ (E, p. 430). However, it matters not to Austen if Mr. Knightley has been an ‘indifferent lover’; what matters is that he has been a good brotherly lover, without the gallant flourishes and blind affection of a passionate lover, such as the deceitful Frank Churchill. Instead, as in the union of Fanny and Edmund, the love of Emma and Mr. Knightley grows out of domestic happiness, years of warm friendship, and tender affection.

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

Like Fanny's marriage to Edmund in Mansfield Park and Emma's marriage to Mr. Knightley in Emma, Elinor's marriage to Edward in Sense and Sensibility takes place very much within the family. Although marriage between a man and his sister's husband's sister was not prohibited in Austen's time, the union of Elinor and Edward, like that of Mr. Knightley and Emma, is incestuous in the special sense that we have defined. Throughout the novel Elinor and Edward treat one another as blood brother and blood sister; while they do not possess the childhood associations of Edmund and Fanny or Emma and Mr. Knightley, their relationship is still very much like that of siblings. Moreover, the relationship of Elinor and Edward is similar to that of Fanny and Edmund in Mansfield Park in another sense. Although the heroine loves the man from the outset of the novel, the fraternal love of the hero is not fully transformed into conjugal love until the end of the work.

As in Mansfield Park and Emma, there is a clear-cut distinction in Sense and Sensibility between the brotherly Edward and the passionate lover, Willoughby. Edward is introduced early on in the novel as the brother of Mrs. John Dashwood. Although he is ‘pleasing’ and ‘gentlemanlike’, with an ‘open affectionate heart’ and ‘good understanding’ (SS, p. 15), he is certainly not a dashing, handsome, or charming hero, and he cuts a poor figure beside the sexy Willoughby, much as Edmund Bertram cuts a poor figure beside charming, witty Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park, and as Mr. Knightley, ‘a sensible man of seven or eight and thirty’ (E, p. 9), seems old and rather dull when first compared with the young and handsome Frank Churchill. But Austen expresses disapproval in her novels of the gallant lover. In Sense and Sensibility, for instance, Elinor criticizes Willoughby's conduct: ‘he was a lover; his attentions were wholly Marianne's, and a far less agreeable man might have been more generally pleasing’ (SS, p. 55). Willoughby is apparently smitten with Marianne and spends his time making himself attractive and agreeable to her alone. He sacrifices general politeness and propriety in order to give Marianne his undivided attention. Elinor censures Willoughby for his disregard of decorum, his selfishness, his violence of feeling, and his irresponsible enthusiasm as a lover.

By way of contrast, Marianne criticizes her brother-in-law elect, Edward, for his deficiency as a lover, his lack of spirit and sensibility. Edward is not a gallant man, but he is a humane one. Through most of the novel, while Elinor is unsure of Edward's affection for her, she admires and esteems him for his goodness of heart and mind, his benevolence and understanding. She treats him ‘as she thought he ought to be treated from the family connection’ (SS, p. 89). Edward seems to admire Elinor, but for the major part of the work he does not distinguish between her and Marianne; he seems to have fraternal feelings for both of them. In fact, early in the novel, Elinor misunderstands Edward's intentions. Since he is bound to Lucy, he cannot marry Elinor. His social conscience appears to act as a brake on any amatory feelings that may originate for Elinor, and so he loves her as one of his family. Thus, out of honour to his betrothed and also because he restrains himself from encouraging an aimless love relationship which could disrupt domestic peace, Edward regards Elinor as a sister. In fact, Edward's fraternal love is not metamorphosed into passionate love until Lucy elopes with Robert, and Edward can lift the taboo he has imposed on his feelings. But, earlier in the work, when Edward bids Elinor and Marianne farewell, ‘it was the good wishes of an affectionate brother to both’ (SS, p. 39). The eventual marriage of Elinor and Edward is endogamous in that, like Fanny and Edmund in Mansfield Park, they behave more like siblings than lovers until late in the novel; future spouses, in each case, are known more as members of the family than as lovers.

The main weapon Lucy Steele uses to beat down Elinor when she discovers the friendship between her and Edward is her spiteful reminder that Edward thinks of Marianne—and Elinor—‘quite as his own sisters’ (SS, p. 130). Dismayed by Lucy's revelation about her betrothal to Edward, Elinor is bitter; but she always remembers that Edward is her relation and pays him the attention properly deserved by a brother-in-law. When Colonel Brandon tells Elinor that the living on his estate is vacant, for instance, Elinor exerts herself to tell her brother-in-law of his great fortune. Edward and Lucy have previously been unable to marry since Mrs. Ferrars cut her son off from the family fortune, and Edward has no means of support. With Colonel Brandon's living, Edward will be able to marry Lucy. His reaction to Elinor's tidings, however, is certainly not one of jubilation. This potentially romantic scene between the characters is turned into a domestic scene between two near relations; despite their initial embarrassment and distress and Edward's ‘look so serious, so earnest, so uncheerful’ (SS, p. 290) when Elinor gives him the news, there is no romantic interchange between them. Instead, Austen stresses their fraternal regard for each other's welfare and Edward's gratitude rather than his suppressed amour.

Later in the novel, another potentially romantic scene between Elinor and Edward is turned into a domestic scene. Freed from his engagement to Lucy, Edward rushes to Barton. Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters are all sewing in the sitting-room when he arrives. After he informs them, much to their amazement, that Lucy has married his brother Robert, Edward picks up a pair of their scissors and spoils them and their sheath by cutting the latter to pieces. Both Edward's newly-charged passion for Elinor and his perplexity at the transformation in his situation are objectified by his actions. In this scene, there is no romantic dialogue between the hero and heroine, and Austen focuses on the domestic situation and the varying reactions of Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters to their relation's tidings. At the end of the scene, Austen gives an abrupt summary of what ensues between Elinor and Edward: ‘This only need be said;—that when they all sat down to table at four o'clock, about three hours after his arrival, [Edward] had secured his lady, engaged her mother's consent, and was not only in the rapturous profession of the lover, but in the reality of reason and truth, one of the happiest of men’ (SS, p. 361). The ‘rapturous’ couple proceed to sit down for tea; their passion is tempered by their excellence of mind, ‘perfect amity’, fraternal estimation, and admiration for each other. Lovers are defined here as people who fit into certain domestic situations created by family connections. Austen stresses that the rightness of their union has very little to do with sexual passion.

The story of the incestuous love of Colonel Brandon and Eliza Williams, located at the heart of Sense and Sensibility, is the melodramatic material of gothic and sentimental novels. This narrative seems at first to be contrived and incongruous with the rest of the text; Austen dwells on the wretchedness of two fallen women, who are coincidentally mother and daughter. But, in fact, the story fits into and is another facet of the incest formula in Austen's oeuvre. Drawing on the eighteenth-century novel paradigm of the orphan girl who is raised with male relatives, Austen experiments in the story of Brandon and Eliza with a plot configuration she later developed more fully in Mansfield Park.

Eliza Williams is one of Brandon's ‘nearest relatives’ and his father's ward. Austen highlights the shared childhood associations of the cousins, how they were ‘playfellows and friends’ from their earliest years. Their fervent love for each other springs naturally from their domestic attachment. Unlike the impecunious Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, Eliza has a large fortune. For this reason, her uncle forces her to marry Brandon's elder brother, much to her chagrin. The marriage of Eliza and Brandon's brother has sinister overtones, for, as Brandon remarks, ‘his pleasures were not what they ought to have been’ (SS, p. 206); moreover, Eliza's husband treats her unkindly. To escape their misery, Brandon and Eliza arrange to elope; their plans, however, are betrayed by Eliza's maid.

Rather than tantalizing the reader with the incestuous implications of the relationship between Brandon and Eliza, Austen arouses sympathy for them and presses home the spiritual nature and sibling association of the bond between them. While Brandon and Eliza's proposed elopement defied parental authority, we lament that their scheme did not succeed. Austen seems to imply that the marriage of these two cousins, who cannot remember a time when they did not love each other, would doubtless have been a fulfilling union. As a result of the discovery of their proposed elopement, Brandon is banished from his home, and Eliza is allowed no freedom or company until she submits to her uncle's will. Worse is in store for Brandon's ‘unfortunate sister’ (SS, p. 207); her husband divorces her, and Eliza turns to prostitution, ends up in a spunging house, and dies of consumption. Years later, her daughter has an illegitimate child by Willoughby. Such is Brandon's attachment to Eliza that he falls in love with Marianne because of her resemblance to his sister. He wants to protect and console Marianne like an elder brother or father, as he once protected and consoled Eliza. In this respect, his love for Marianne seems more like a transfer or resuscitation of his former passion for Eliza. At the end of the novel, the unions of Colonel Brandon and Marianne and Edward and Elinor create a tight ring at Delaford. The two couples live almost within sight of each other, the Colonel and Marianne residing at the mansion-house, and Elinor and Edward close by at the parsonage. The ring closes the ranks against predatory outsiders, such as Willoughby and Lucy Steele, who threaten to lower moral standards and desecrate the temple of the home.

Although their situations differ, one point remains constant: Austen will not allow her heroes and heroines to marry on the ground of sexual magnetism or romantic love. She constructs marriages on the foundation of sibling ties.²⁷ The incestuous themes of Mansfield Park, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility offer a revolutionary development in the treatment of what had become a standard novel formula. Moreover, the in-family marriages provide a frame of reference in which to view contemporary events; they manifest Austen's desire to preserve the vitality of the home or the estate. Her attitude is one of self-defence during a time of transition and uproar. At the end of all of the novels, there is finally the promise of an untainted family circle. These, then, are the types of alliances that Austen most favours and approves. The marriages of Edmund and Fanny, Mr. Knightley and Emma, and Edward and Elinor, far from seeming illicit or immoral unions, become more nearly moral imperatives. For Austen, in fiction as in life, collateral relations should proceed from prudence and seek to permanence.

Notes

1. Elizabeth Jenkins, ‘Address’ to the General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society (Report for the Year 1980), p. 26.

2. Such a marriage was regarded very differently in nineteenth-century Russia. A man's sister or brother could not marry his wife's brother or sister since they were regarded as relatives. For example, in Tolstoy's War and Peace (1866), if Natasha had married Prince Andrew, his sister Maria would not have been able to wed Natasha's brother Nicholas. See [Sybil Wolfram, In-Laws and Outlaws: Kinship and Marriage in England (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987)] pp. 66, 75.

3. R. F. Brissenden, ‘Mansfield Park: Freedom and the Family’ in John Halperin (ed.), Jane Austen: Bicentenary Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 169.

4. Julia Prewitt Brown, ‘The Victorian Anxieties of Mansfield Park’ in Jane Austen's Novels: Social Change and Literary Form (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 99.

5. Claudia L. Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 119.

6. Johanna H. Smith, ‘“My Only Sister Now”: Incest in Mansfield Park’, Studies in the Novel, 19 (1987) 1.

7. See Brissenden, p. 169; Brown, p. 99; Johnson, p. 115; and Smith, p. 2.

8. As several critics have noted, in Mansfield Park, Austen tries to come to terms with a new social reality. See Brown, pp. 80-100, and Avrom Fleishman, A Reading of Mansfield Park: An Essay in Critical Synthesis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967), pp. 19-42.

9. Smith, p. 13.

10. Brissenden, p. 166.

11. [Nancy Fix Anderson, “Cousin Marriage in Victorian England”, Journal of Family History, 11 (1986) p. 286.]

12. There is clearly an autobiographical reference here. Jane Austen's sailor brother Charles brought back a topaz cross on a gold chain from one of his sailing expeditions in 1801. The brother's gift in real life becomes the cousin's gift in the novel. See [John Halperin, The Life of Jane Austen (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984)] p. 236.

13. See Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 98-103, for a more detailed discussion of Austen's attitude towards social changes, especially the centrifugal movement within communities.

14. Austen followed the fates of the Prince Regent and his estranged wife Princess Caroline with fascination. The novelist supported the Princess and strongly disapproved of the scandalous affairs and lax morals of the future George IV and his court; however, she grudgingly dedicated Emma to the Prince Regent, who was a great patron of the arts and an ardent admirer of Austen's novels, at the request of his librarian, the Reverend James Stanier Clarke. See Halperin, Life, pp. 215, 282-3.

15. Huang Mei, Transforming the Cinderella Dream: From Frances Burney to Charlotte Brontë (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990), p. 80.

16. Alistair M. Duckworth, The Improvement of the Estate: A Study of Jane Austen's Novels (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), pp. 54-5.

17. See Fleishman, pp. 24-9, on the foreign source and radical content of Lovers' Vows.

18. See Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas, p. 232.

19. See also Musselwhite who contends that Mansfield Park derives its characters from the dramatis personae in Lovers' Vows, pp. 25-6.

20. Fleishman, p. 65.

21. [Paula Marantz Cohen, ‘Stabilizing the Family System at Mansfield Park’, English Literary History, 54 (Fall 1987) p. 686.]

22. Brown, p. 99.

23. Johnson, p. 114.

24. John Halperin compares Mary Crawford to Becky Sharp and Milton's Satan and points out that, as in Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Milton's Paradise Lost, Austen's moral perspective on false values never wavers. See ‘The Novelist as Heroine in Mansfield Park: A Study in Autobiography’, Modern Language Quarterly 44 (1983) 137.

25. Juliet McMaster, Jane Austen on Love (Victoria, B.C.: English Literary Studies, 1978), p. 61. McMaster also notes that pedagogic relationships between heroes and heroines act as aphrodisiacs in Austen's novels and have both emotional and sexual implications.

26. See McMaster, p. 58.

27. For a contrasting argument to my own, see Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979). The authors argue that ‘the happy ending of an Austen novel occurs when the girl becomes a daughter to her husband’ (p. 154).