Rebbia Shahab's Post: Please, I incest!

*Note: Submitted at 1:11 a.m. Saturday

Edmund Bertram has been described throughout in the novel, Mansfield Park, as one of the most levelheaded and serious individuals who places great emphasis on propriety and the rightness of actions. Of course, he falls in love with the pretentious Mary Crawford but that only makes him human and so he can be easily forgiven for this minor lapse in judgment. However, a closer reading makes one wonder as to who Edmund really is? Is he as fair and moral as he is depicted to be? Or is there another side to him which remains unknown to the readers upon their first reading? Here are my thoughts on the oh-so moral Edmund Bentram:

The nature of Edmund Bertram’s romantic relationships in Mansfield Park can be interpreted as incestuous. The two women that he falls in love with and wishes to marry are both like his sisters though in different respects. Mary Crawford, the woman that he desires initially, is very much like his own sister Mariah. Both women are alike in terms of their beauty, vanity, materialism or their desire to pursue a man of great financial standing. They are so much alike in both behavior and personality that even their names are similar sounding.

Fanny Price on the other hand, who Edmund ends up marrying, can be construed as his sister in the sense that they grow up together as brother and sister. In fact, Edmund himself calls Fanny her sister in Chapter 15 of Volume 3 when distraught by Mariah’s and Julia’s elopement he comes to fetch Fanny and upon meeting her says, “My Fanny- my only sister-my only comfort now”.  Moreover, Fanny can also be seen as the only ‘true’ sibling of Edmund in the sense that strangely enough Edmund is most different from all his siblings as unlike him the latter are portrayed as superficial, arrogant, and even immoral. Therefore, even though Fanny is not part of Edmund’s immediate family, she is most similar to him in personality and character and so logically speaking Fanny is more likely to be his sibling than anyone else is.

 Furthermore, the elopement of Maria with Henry (Mary’s brother) can be seen as perhaps reinforcing the concept of an incestuous relationship as Henry too falls for a woman who resembles his sister a lot. This is not to say that this is precisely why Edmund later chooses Fanny but this can be read as for sure a catalyst in making him turn to her as this is when the true nature of Mary surfaces and Edmund realizes that he was chasing the wrong woman the whole time. In a nutshell, the elopement of Maria with Henry possibly justified incest in Edmund’s eyes as it showed him that such a relationship can exist though in his case it was of course neatly packed with morality.