On Reading Between the Lines
a Passage
Lately I reread Austen’s Mansfield Park, which is perhaps her most controversial work. It is a book which inspires as much distaste as admiration. In the front of the edition I read were several essays. One or two of these advocated for readings of the text which struck me as not merely looking between the lines, but off the page altogether.
The merits or demerits of this novel, I will not pretend to judge here. Rather, I lament this incessant search for ulterior motives and alternative meanings in novels, which never had any part in the authors’ intentions. There are subtleties in all great literature, of course, but they are not generally clues to a gymnastic conspiracy meant to hoodwink the reader.
In the case of Mansfield Park, at least, the motive behind these alternative readings, seems to be rooted in a dislike of the novel’s principles (and principals). Very well. I do not think it justifiable, however, to put forth as a “true” reading of a text that which is, in fact, an entirely different fiction; and I would wish, for the sake of literature, that but half the time eaten up in the writing of these essays, was instead put towards the creation of new stories. I am sure all, including the essay-writers themselves, would be far happier with the results.