Mansfield Park

by

Jane Austen

Mary Crawford Character Analysis

Mary Crawford is Henry Crawford’s sister and Mrs. Grant’s half-sister. She is very beautiful and very charming, but can sometimes transgress rules of propriety due to her lively way of thinking. Mary, who lived in London with her uncle the Admiral and his wife before moving to the Parsonage to live with Mrs. Grant, enjoys city life and sociability. Despite her love of London, her home there with the Admiral was tense, since the two of them do not get along well. Mary is ambitious and intends to marry advantageously, initially setting her sights on Tom. She ends up falling in love instead with Edmund, but cannot get over his profession as a clergyman and his small income. Ultimately, her romance with Edmund fails because of this difference and because of Mary’s support of her brother’s affair. Mary serves in Fanny’s life as both an occasional friend and a constant source of pain, due to Edmund’s affections for her.

Mary Crawford Quotes in Mansfield Park

The Mansfield Park quotes below are all either spoken by Mary Crawford or refer to Mary Crawford. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Money and Marriage Theme Icon
).
Chapter 5 Quotes

There is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry…it is, of all transactions, the one in which people expect most from others, and are least honest themselves… it is a manoeuvring business. I know so many who have married in the full expectation and confidence of some one particular advantage in the connexion, or accomplishment, or good quality in the person, who have found themselves entirely deceived, and been obliged to put up with exactly the reverse.

Related Characters: Mary Crawford (speaker), Henry Crawford, Mrs. Grant
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 30-31
Explanation and Analysis:

Manners as well as appearance are…so totally different…A girl not out has always the same sort of dress: a close bonnet, for instance; looks very demure, and never says a word… The most objectionable part is, that the alteration of manners on being introduced into company is frequently too sudden. They sometimes pass in such very little time from reserve to quite the opposite— to confidence!

Related Characters: Mary Crawford (speaker), Fanny Price, Edmund Bertram, Tom Bertram
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Guess my surprise, when I found that I had…offended all the farmers, all the labourers, all the hay in the parish…coming down with the true London maxim, that every thing is to be got with money, I was a little embarrassed at first by the sturdy independence of your country customs.

Related Characters: Mary Crawford (speaker), Edmund Bertram
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:

What strange creatures brothers are! You would not write to each other but upon the most urgent necessity in the world; and when obliged to take up the pen…it is done in the fewest possible words. You have but one style among you…‘Dear Mary, I am just arrived. Bath seems full, and everything as usual. Yours sincerely.’ That is the true manly style; that is a complete brother’s letter.

Related Characters: Mary Crawford (speaker), Fanny Price, Henry Crawford
Page Number: 40
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“How can two sermons a week… do all that you speak of? govern the conduct and fashion the manners of a large congregation for the rest of the week? One scarcely sees a clergyman out of his pulpit.”
“You are speaking of London, I am speaking of the nation at large.”
“The metropolis, I imagine, is a pretty fair sample of the rest.”
“Not, I should hope, of the proportion of virtue to vice throughout the kingdom. We do not look in great cities for our best morality.”

Related Characters: Edmund Bertram (speaker), Mary Crawford (speaker)
Page Number: 63
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

“I am so glad your eldest cousin is gone that he may be Mr. Bertram again. There is something in the sound of Mr. Edmund Bertram so formal, so pitiful, so younger-brother-like, that I detest it.”
“How differently we feel!” cried Fanny. “To me, the sound of Mr. Bertram is so cold and nothing-meaning–so entirely without warmth or character!–It just stands for a gentleman, and that’s all.”

Related Characters: Fanny Price (speaker), Mary Crawford (speaker), Edmund Bertram
Page Number: 142
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

Yes, that uncle and aunt! They have injured the finest mind; for sometimes, Fanny, I own to you, it does appear more than manner: it appears as if the mind itself was tainted.

Related Characters: Fanny Price (speaker), Edmund Bertram (speaker), Mary Crawford, The Admiral
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

Having…a general prevailing desire of recommending herself to [Sir Thomas], [Mary] took an opportunity of stepping aside to say something agreeable of Fanny.

Related Characters: Fanny Price, Sir Thomas Bertram, Mary Crawford
Page Number: 187-188
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 46 Quotes

She dared not indulge in the hope of the paragraph being false. Miss Crawford’s letter, which she had read so often as to make every line her own, was in frightful conformity with it. Her eager defence of her brother, her hope of its being hushed up, her evident agitation, were all of a piece with something very bad; and if there was a woman of character in existence, who could treat as a trifle this sin of the first magnitude, who could try to gloss it over, and desire to have it unpunished, she could believe Miss Crawford to be the woman!

Related Characters: Fanny Price, Henry Crawford, Mary Crawford
Page Number: 299
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 48 Quotes

I purposefully abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people. 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.

Related Characters: Fanny Price, Edmund Bertram, Mary Crawford
Page Number: 319-321
Explanation and Analysis:
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Mary Crawford Quotes in Mansfield Park

The Mansfield Park quotes below are all either spoken by Mary Crawford or refer to Mary Crawford. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Money and Marriage Theme Icon
).
Chapter 5 Quotes

There is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry…it is, of all transactions, the one in which people expect most from others, and are least honest themselves… it is a manoeuvring business. I know so many who have married in the full expectation and confidence of some one particular advantage in the connexion, or accomplishment, or good quality in the person, who have found themselves entirely deceived, and been obliged to put up with exactly the reverse.

Related Characters: Mary Crawford (speaker), Henry Crawford, Mrs. Grant
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 30-31
Explanation and Analysis:

Manners as well as appearance are…so totally different…A girl not out has always the same sort of dress: a close bonnet, for instance; looks very demure, and never says a word… The most objectionable part is, that the alteration of manners on being introduced into company is frequently too sudden. They sometimes pass in such very little time from reserve to quite the opposite— to confidence!

Related Characters: Mary Crawford (speaker), Fanny Price, Edmund Bertram, Tom Bertram
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Guess my surprise, when I found that I had…offended all the farmers, all the labourers, all the hay in the parish…coming down with the true London maxim, that every thing is to be got with money, I was a little embarrassed at first by the sturdy independence of your country customs.

Related Characters: Mary Crawford (speaker), Edmund Bertram
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:

What strange creatures brothers are! You would not write to each other but upon the most urgent necessity in the world; and when obliged to take up the pen…it is done in the fewest possible words. You have but one style among you…‘Dear Mary, I am just arrived. Bath seems full, and everything as usual. Yours sincerely.’ That is the true manly style; that is a complete brother’s letter.

Related Characters: Mary Crawford (speaker), Fanny Price, Henry Crawford
Page Number: 40
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“How can two sermons a week… do all that you speak of? govern the conduct and fashion the manners of a large congregation for the rest of the week? One scarcely sees a clergyman out of his pulpit.”
“You are speaking of London, I am speaking of the nation at large.”
“The metropolis, I imagine, is a pretty fair sample of the rest.”
“Not, I should hope, of the proportion of virtue to vice throughout the kingdom. We do not look in great cities for our best morality.”

Related Characters: Edmund Bertram (speaker), Mary Crawford (speaker)
Page Number: 63
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

“I am so glad your eldest cousin is gone that he may be Mr. Bertram again. There is something in the sound of Mr. Edmund Bertram so formal, so pitiful, so younger-brother-like, that I detest it.”
“How differently we feel!” cried Fanny. “To me, the sound of Mr. Bertram is so cold and nothing-meaning–so entirely without warmth or character!–It just stands for a gentleman, and that’s all.”

Related Characters: Fanny Price (speaker), Mary Crawford (speaker), Edmund Bertram
Page Number: 142
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

Yes, that uncle and aunt! They have injured the finest mind; for sometimes, Fanny, I own to you, it does appear more than manner: it appears as if the mind itself was tainted.

Related Characters: Fanny Price (speaker), Edmund Bertram (speaker), Mary Crawford, The Admiral
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

Having…a general prevailing desire of recommending herself to [Sir Thomas], [Mary] took an opportunity of stepping aside to say something agreeable of Fanny.

Related Characters: Fanny Price, Sir Thomas Bertram, Mary Crawford
Page Number: 187-188
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 46 Quotes

She dared not indulge in the hope of the paragraph being false. Miss Crawford’s letter, which she had read so often as to make every line her own, was in frightful conformity with it. Her eager defence of her brother, her hope of its being hushed up, her evident agitation, were all of a piece with something very bad; and if there was a woman of character in existence, who could treat as a trifle this sin of the first magnitude, who could try to gloss it over, and desire to have it unpunished, she could believe Miss Crawford to be the woman!

Related Characters: Fanny Price, Henry Crawford, Mary Crawford
Page Number: 299
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 48 Quotes

I purposefully abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people. 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.

Related Characters: Fanny Price, Edmund Bertram, Mary Crawford
Page Number: 319-321
Explanation and Analysis: