Catherine, can't you read? was Re: No Sex Please - We're Post-Human!

Christian Gregory christian11 at mindspring.com
Sat Feb 17 07:40:11 PST 2001



>
> Exactly -- that is what the book is about --
> how mansfield park (the place) crushes, poisons,
> corrupts the sin qua non of human as opposed
> to merely animal life, the mutual dependency
> which defines us as human.
>
> Carrol

Bzzzt. Sorry, no. But we do have lovely parting gifts. _Mansfield Park_ transcodes the Burkean idea of political transformation as _conservation_ into a family melodrama about marriage and estate improvement. Fanny and Edmund, the two most noxious prudes in the novel, are held up as the models of sense and reason (i.e. progress), while everyone who proceeds according to the idea of liberal (secular) self-interest is represented as stupid and indolent (the lady Bertram), dogmatically stern (Thomas Bertram elder), libertine (Thomas the younger), impudent (Maria Bertram) or just cynical (Mary and Henry Crawford).

". . . mutual dependency that makes us human"? How Harold Bloom can you get?

Christian



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