Jane Austen loved theater. Though best known for her Regency-period novels, she came from a thespian family whose primary form of entertainment was putting on plays for themselves and their neighbors. From these experiences, Austen must have concluded that throwing together a play was a ripe scenario for generating drama and tension between a close set of characters in her fiction. Hence the infamous playacting subplot in her 1814 novel Mansfield Park, a novel written when Austen was at her professional peak.
The heroine of Mansfield Park, Fanny Price, is the most moralistic young person in her household (and the most ignored). She’s appalled at the prospect of participating in a risqué play, as is her highly conservative cousin, Edmund Bertram. When the bohemian and button-pushing Thomas Bertram comes to the country homestead from partying in the city, he declares he wants to stage Elizabeth Inchbald’s Lovers’ Vows, a loose translation of August von Kotzebue’s Das Kind der Liebe, with the help of their new neighbors, the attractive and scheming Crawford siblings, Henry and Maria. This is a shockingly scandalous choice for an amateur theater debut. Edmund is roped into the production reluctantly, while Fanny wants nothing at all to do with it. But why? Was Lovers’ Vows really that bad?
Apparently, by Regency standards, it was. The play’s serious depiction of class politics and illegitimate birth were considered shocking by contemporary audiences. The controversial plot follows the woes of Agatha, a middle-aged woman who was seduced by treacherous lover and left alone to raise a (since grown) illegitimate son. Meanwhile, a baron’s daughter falls deeply in love with a clergyman, defiantly forgoing societal expectations to experience true love.
Spoiler alert: Austen’s characters never successfully stage Lovers’ Vows. Instead, a tragic farce in one sweeping act unfolds between two rival sisters—Fanny’s cousins, Maria and Julia—and the man they both desire, Henry Crawford. Meanwhile, cousin Edmund, an aspiring clergyman, falls under the charms of Mary Crawford, written by Austen as a charming but immoral woman. Fanny, the only audience member of this chaotic improv performance, watches it all play out in horror.
Weekly Newsletter
According to literary scholar Elaine Jordan, the play was dangerous material for a wild troupe of unsupervised youngsters to take on, and the results were predictable.
More to Explore
Jane Austen’s Mock History Book
“The consequences of the private theatricals on the lives of [Austen’s] characters,” Jordan writes,
following on their behaviour in the course of rehearsals—the dangerous intimacies which lead to Julia’s elopement and Maria’s adultery—suggest an answer from Jane Austen to Mrs. Inchbald’s claim for the possible good effect of Lovers’ Vows in eradicating the crime of seduction: yes, such a play performed privately in these circumstances will have an effect on feelings and conduct, and a very bad one too.
Private behaviors, even those done in service a of play, contribute to, if not cause, harmful public actions.
From a creative perspective, who was the better playwright, Inchbald the professional or Austen, who merely played around at it in her fiction? Who was the superior puppeteer of would-be lovers and young heroines who stuck to their principles? Well, that might be a matter best left to the drama critics.
Support JSTOR Daily! Join our membership program on Patreon today.
