#henry Crawford

[thatscarletflycatcher]

The problem with discussions about Henry Crawford is that there are two different questions being asked at the same time: 1) Can Fanny reform Henry? and 2) Can Henry reform?

Austen answers negatively to the first one, but I'd argue she's very ambivalent in her answer to the second.

Austen is not in the habit of "punishing" her villains; none of them are struck by accidents of fortune or anything the like, but we commonly perceive the downgrade between what they could have had and what they end up having. Edward Ferrars is an infinitely preferrable husband to Robert Ferrars, but Lucy Steele never seems to become aware of that fact. Isabella tries to get Captain Tilney over James Morland. Mr. Elliot is not crying by the corners over the fact that he lost Anne Elliot. Even Willoughby's regret is not about Marianne's actual goodness, but his personal convenience. Austen's "villains" as a rule are morally stupid people.

When Aristotle says that no one can be good who is stupid, he doesn't have in mind things like being good at Math or being well read or quick-witted; he's thinking of a certain intuition, clear-sightedness about what is good, what contributes to human flourishing, and this seems to be a strong component of what Austen calls sense. Sense is almost convertible (if not completely) with prudence, and prudence is a rather intuitive virtue, as it regulates the when, the how, the how much, etc of the other moral virtues. (and there goes my first thesis topic that I never did!).

In that way it is interesting that only 4 characters are said to possess sense in Mansfield Park: Edmund, Fanny, Henry, and Tom (and Tom doesn't even fully count, because his is expressed negatively: instead of having sense, he doesn't lack it). Here are the Henry instances:

"He did not want them to die of love; but with sense and temper which ought to have made him judge and feel better, he allowed himself great latitude on such points." "Henry Crawford had too much sense not to feel the worth of good principles in a wife, though he was too little accustomed to serious reflection to know them by their proper name; but when he talked of her having such a steadiness and regularity of conduct, such a high notion of honour, and such an observance of decorum as might warrant any man in the fullest dependence on her faith and integrity, he expressed what was inspired by the knowledge of her being well principled and religious." "That punishment, the public punishment of disgrace, should in a just measure attend his share of the offence is, we know, not one of the barriers which society gives to virtue. In this world the penalty is less equal than could be wished; but without presuming to look forward to a juster appointment hereafter, we may fairly consider a man of sense, like Henry Crawford, to be providing for himself no small portion of vexation and regret: vexation that must rise sometimes to self-reproach, and regret to wretchedness, in having so requited hospitality, so injured family peace, so forfeited his best, most estimable, and endeared acquaintance, and so lost the woman whom he had rationally as well as passionately loved."

(I'm not counting the one time Edmund calls him a man of sense, and the one time Sir Thomas does the same, for obvious contextual reasons).

It's not only interesting that he is the only rake to be called a man of sense by the narrator (Mrs. Smith calling Mr. Elliot a man of sense in Persuasion is clearly not meant to be taken straight), but that it is always specifically tied to moral perceptiveness; he was morally perceptive enough to know he shouldn't have played the way he did, and he chose to ignore it. He perceives Fanny's moral worth, and it is the core reason why he wants to marry her.* He also perceives William's moral worth as something both good and desirable:

"To Henry Crawford they gave a different feeling. He longed to have been at sea, and seen and done and suffered as much. His heart was warmed, his fancy fired, and he felt the highest respect for a lad who, before he was twenty, had gone through such bodily hardships and given such proofs of mind. The glory of heroism, of usefulness, of exertion, of endurance, made his own habits of selfish indulgence appear in shameful contrast; and he wished he had been a William Price, distinguishing himself and working his way to fortune and consequence with so much self-respect and happy ardour, instead of what he was!"

Both here and at the end of the novel, Henry's moral perceptiveness leads to remorse for his own moral wrongdoings. Compare this to Willoughby's regret over Marianne:

"Willoughby could not hear of her marriage without a pang; and his punishment was soon afterwards complete in the voluntary forgiveness of Mrs. Smith, who, by stating his marriage with a woman of character, as the source of her clemency, gave him reason for believing that had he behaved with honour towards Marianne, he might at once have been happy and rich. That his repentance of misconduct, which thus brought its own punishment, was sincere, need not be doubted;—nor that he long thought of Colonel Brandon with envy, and of Marianne with regret. But that he was for ever inconsolable, that he fled from society, or contracted an habitual gloom of temper, or died of a broken heart, must not be depended on—for he did neither. He lived to exert, and frequently to enjoy himself. His wife was not always out of humour, nor his home always uncomfortable; and in his breed of horses and dogs, and in sporting of every kind, he found no inconsiderable degree of domestic felicity."

This sense/moral perceptiveness of Henry Crawford, and his experiencing remorse for his own wrongdoings sets him apart from the other Austen rakes. He's also not a drinker or a gambler; he does take at least minimal care of Everingham ("Everingham could not do without him in the beginning of September. He went for a fortnight") and did some modifications to it as soon as he got it. The same way Darcy's character is revealed as we see Pemberley, so the inflexion point of Henry's redemption attempt is his trying to become a better master of his estate:

For her approbation, the particular reason of his going into Norfolk at all, at this unusual time of year, was given. It had been real business, relative to the renewal of a lease in which the welfare of a large and—he believed—industrious family was at stake. He had suspected his agent of some underhand dealing; of meaning to bias him against the deserving; and he had determined to go himself, and thoroughly investigate the merits of the case. He had gone, had done even more good than he had foreseen, had been useful to more than his first plan had comprehended, and was now able to congratulate himself upon it, and to feel that in performing a duty, he had secured agreeable recollections for his own mind. He had introduced himself to some tenants whom he had never seen before; he had begun making acquaintance with cottages whose very existence, though on his own estate, had been hitherto unknown to him. This was aimed, and well aimed, at Fanny. It was pleasing to hear him speak so properly; here he had been acting as he ought to do. To be the friend of the poor and the oppressed! Nothing could be more grateful to her; and she was on the point of giving him an approving look, when it was all frightened off by his adding a something too pointed of his hoping soon to have an assistant, a friend, a guide in every plan of utility or charity for Everingham: a somebody that would make Everingham and all about it a dearer object than it had ever been yet. She turned away, and wished he would not say such things. She was willing to allow he might have more good qualities than she had been wont to suppose. She began to feel the possibility of his turning out well at last; but he was and must ever be completely unsuited to her, and ought not to think of her.

I have half an idea of going into Norfolk again soon. I am not satisfied about Maddison. I am sure he still means to impose on me if possible, and get a cousin of his own into a certain mill, which I design for somebody else. I must come to an understanding with him. I must make him know that I will not be tricked on the south side of Everingham, any more than on the north: that I will be master of my own property. I was not explicit enough with him before. The mischief such a man does on an estate, both as to the credit of his employer and the welfare of the poor, is inconceivable. I have a great mind to go back into Norfolk directly, and put everything at once on such a footing as cannot be afterwards swerved from. Maddison is a clever fellow; I do not wish to displace him, provided he does not try to displace me; but it would be simple to be duped by a man who has no right of creditor to dupe me, and worse than simple to let him give me a hard-hearted, griping fellow for a tenant, instead of an honest man, to whom I have given half a promise already. Would it not be worse than simple? Shall I go? Do you advise it?” “I advise! You know very well what is right.” “Yes. When you give me your opinion, I always know what is right. Your judgment is my rule of right.” “Oh, no! do not say so. We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.

This is even more hammered in by the narrator: "Had he done as he intended, and as he knew he ought, by going down to Everingham after his return from Portsmouth, he might have been deciding his own happy destiny."

All these elements seem to point towards his being redeemable; he almost managed it! If only he'd gone to Everingham instead of London, catastrophic failure would have been averted! And yet at the same time we are told this:

Henry Crawford, ruined by early independence and bad domestic example, indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded vanity a little too long. Once it had, by an opening undesigned and unmerited, led him into the way of happiness. Could he have been satisfied with the conquest of one amiable woman’s affections, could he have found sufficient exultation in overcoming the reluctance, in working himself into the esteem and tenderness of Fanny Price, there would have been every probability of success and felicity for him. His affection had already done something. Her influence over him had already given him some influence over her. Would he have deserved more, there can be no doubt that more would have been obtained, especially when that marriage had taken place, which would have given him the assistance of her conscience in subduing her first inclination, and brought them very often together. Would he have persevered, and uprightly, Fanny must have been his reward, and a reward very voluntarily bestowed, within a reasonable period from Edmund’s marrying Mary.

Ruined by early independence and bad domestic example. Mansfield Park is in a way a rather pessimist novel: it is a novel about education, and once your education has "set", your character is fixed, and your fate determined. Much of Maria and Julia's disgrace was also directly caused by their upbringing in a household where all importance was given to superficial qualities, and very little effective affection was shared; one can compare the restrained calm of Mansfield as a reflection of Sir Thomas' own unwillingness to see reality and give himself some discomfort in making others comfortable, with the bustle of the Musgrove household, and connect the dots to what makes the relationship between sisters Maria and Julia so different from the one between Louisa and Henrietta in similar situations.

In the end, it's a bit of a Schröedinger's cat situation. Can Henry reform? Yes, says Austen, he has the qualities needed for moral improvement, but no, his upbringing ruined him, and his character is fixed.

While this idea is the strongest in MP, it is present one way or another in all Austen's novels. Characters reforming is usually more about one specific quality or moral tone not being fine tuned than proper metanoia. Darcy was taught to do right, and did right; what he needed was to add proper humility and kindness to his practice. There is an exception, though, the one thing Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen agree upon: a close brush with death is the best recipe for moral cure in the otherwise incurable.

Maybe the key is to wish Henry a good pneumonia, or a strong horsefall-induced concussion.

_____________

*On a side note, it's interesting that before he proposes, he considers how attached Fanny is to Mansfield, as undeserving as he thinks the Bertrams to be of her affection, and even draws a plan that contemplates giving her pleasure that way too: "I will not take her from Northamptonshire. I shall let Everingham, and rent a place in this neighbourhood; perhaps Stanwix Lodge."

[bethanydelleman]

Also when it comes to Henry Crawford's promotion of William in Mansfield Park vs. Darcy's saving of Lydia in Pride & Prejudice, people praise Darcy to high heavens for doing it in secret and shame Henry for doing it in the open. Except they are totally different circumstances!

Darcy knew, 100%, that Elizabeth disliked him and did not want to marry him. If he had saved Lydia in the open, it would have been a total dick move because it would create obligation and it would be on someone who rejected him. So he does it in secret and good on him.

Henry Crawford has not been refused, he thinks Fanny likes him, "For—for very little more than opportunity. Mary, she is not like her cousins; but I think I shall not ask in vain.” And he's not crazy to think this, we know from the narrator that Fanny's behaviour towards him has changed, "She had by no means forgotten the past, and she thought as ill of him as ever; but she felt his powers: he was entertaining; and his manners were so improved, so polite, so seriously and blamelessly polite, that it was impossible not to be civil to him in return." Sure, he overestimates this civility, but it is there.

So he's giving a gift to a woman he's proposing to, with absolutely no idea that she will refuse him. It's overly presumptuous for sure, but it's not as evil as people want to make it out to be.

Now Willoughby and his freaking HORSE...

[besotted-with-austen]

Elizabeth Bennet: *trying really hard not to be impolite and show how much she dislikes Mr Darcy*

Fitzwilliam Darcy: *to himself* she is exchanging good-natured banter with me-she truly likes me! I must up my game!

Fanny Price: *trying really hard not to be impolite and show how much she dislikes Mr Crawford*

Henry Crawford: *to himself* she is not even exchanging good-natured banter with me-she truly dislikes me! I must up my game!

[farosdaughter]

You don't knock anymore And I always knew it.

[junewongapologia]

It is no secret that I hate the Fanny/Henry pairing, bc like...

How can you read that book, and how Henry acts, and the distress it causes Fanny while we're in her head the whole way through...

And want her to be wrong? And want her to be the one to have to admit she was wrong?

No! Terrible, awful ending. Henry Crawford is not a good person. He's not, like, evil. But he's selfish and self-centred and thinks he deserves Fanny because he's rich and charming and made the bare minimum effort to seem like a better person. I fully buy into the idea that he likes her because he likes a challenge, and that if finally faced with what she like every day (shy and retiring and quiet and uncomfortable around loads of ppl) he'd start to resent her sharpish.

This is a book about selfishness and selfish people, and even in this cast, he's near the top of the most selfish, the most careless with the feelings of others. At the centre is Fanny, who is maligned and mistreated, but despite all is selfless and good, though she struggles with jealousy and negative thoughts and feelings.

It's a book about how she - poor and dependent and not especially well educated or taken care of by her relatives - knows her own mind and deserves to be treated as a rational, intelligent person.

It is literally crucial to her arc and the arc of the story that she's right about Crawford!

[clarythericebot]

Henry Crawford is not a good person. And yet what draws him so irresistibly toward Fanny is that she is. He sees that she is kind and patient and good, and - in spite of so many contrary influences in his life - he intuits that goodness' value. And because of that, he falls in love,

Here's the thing. Falling in love with a good person is not the same as being a good person, and I love how Jane Austen recognizes that--I love how that message is highlighted and underlined within the text. But it could be the catalyst for redemption.

Something I've pondering is that, in spite of the ending of Mansfield Park, maybe it still could be. We leave Henry Crawford like this:

All that followed was the result of her imprudence; and he went off with her at last, because he could not help it, regretting Fanny even at the moment, but regretting her infinitely more when all the bustle of the intrigue was over, and a very few months had taught him, by the force of contrast, to place a yet higher value on the sweetness of her temper, the purity of her mind, and the excellence of her principles.

That punishment, the public punishment of disgrace, should in a just measure attend his share of the offence is, we know, not one of the barriers which society gives to virtue. In this world the penalty is less equal than could be wished; but without presuming to look forward to a juster appointment hereafter, we may fairly consider a man of sense, like Henry Crawford, to be providing for himself no small portion of vexation and regret: vexation that must rise sometimes to self-reproach, and regret to wretchedness, in having so requited hospitality, so injured family peace, so forfeited his best, most estimable, and endeared acquaintance, and so lost the woman whom he had rationally as well as passionately loved.

I wonder if that regret and self-reproach ever turns into redemption, even after he could no longer hope for a union between him and Fanny Price. Maybe after everything, he still learns to be more just and upright--he can't unsee the goodness he saw in her. Maybe Fanny Price was the making of him after all?

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Mansfield Park - Henry Crawford and Fanny Price

I want to lay out how I see these characters and their relationship, because to me they seem to be set up as a deliberate contrast to Pride and Prejudice. At the tine of Henry’s first proposal, they are in a similar place to Elizabeth and Darcy at the time of Darcy’s first proposal, albeit with extremely different personalities than those characters: Fanny refuses him despite his wealth and her economic precarity because she cannot like or even respect him. However, Fanny, who is far shyer than Elizabeth, cannot lay out in direct and specific terms the foundation of her disapprobation of him.

From there, Henry sets out to win her regard in ways that very closely recall some of the events between Elizabeth and Darcy.

1) He does a great favour for a relative of hers. In his case, it is getting his uncle the admiral to have Fanny’s brother William promoted to lieutenant; in Darcy’s, it is saving the Bennets from disgrace by getting Wickham to marry Lydia. Darcy’s favour is far greater, and much more personally unpleasant for him, and he keeps it intentionally secret; he does it out of love of Elizabeth, but not to make her feel obligated. Henry’s takes only a few days of his time, its goal is get to Fanny to like him better, and he leverages it both at first and later to make her feel obliged to him.

2) He changes his manners to suit her. In Darcy’s case this means being polite rather than rude and haughty; in the case of Henry, who has always been charming and gregarious, it involves softening his manners to suit Fanny’s shy and quiet personality and engaging in more serious talk. In Darcy’s case this is a fundamental change in response to Elizabeth’s reproof; in Henry’s, it’s a simple adaptation to one person’s taste rather than another. He’s intelligent and able to engage in serious conversation when he wants to, but that’s not indicative of any fundamental change in his thinking.

3) He is polite to her family (the Prices, in Portsmouth) even when they are embarrassing.

4) He speaks with Fanny about reforms he is making on his estates to make sure his tenants are being treated fairly. These feels like a parallel to Elizabeth’s improved opinion of Darcy upon visiting Pemberley and hearing how well his servants speak of him. The difference is that Darcy has always been like that, whereas we are told early in Mansfield Park that Henry has been little on his estates during his adulthood: “To any thing like a permanence of abode, Henry Crawford had…a great dislike”. Darcy is acting in line with deep-seated principles; Henry is doing it as part of his courtship of Fanny, so he can bring it up to her and look good. He also tries to get her to counsel him to continue in this current vein, to engage her in a desire to fix/improve him, which Fanny shuts down laudably: “I advise! - you know very well what is right,” and when he reples that he always knows what is right when she tells him: “We all have a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person could be.” The weakness of Henry’s motivation is seen in the ending, where he puts off a visit to his estates to set matters right there in order to flirt with the now-married Maria Rushworth.

In short, Darcy is already good in many concrete ways, and sincerely improves in the ways where he is faulty, not in order to get Elizabeth to love him but because he thinks about her criticisms, agrees with them, and wants to be better for its own sake; and he helps her family solely out of love for her and deliberately hides it. Henry changes his manner and talk as part of his courtship, but his deeper values and attitudes do not change, and everything is directed at getting Fanny to fall for him.

The second area of contrast is in what the heroines object to. Elizabeth’s aspersions on Darcy’s character, regarding his interactions with Wickham, are found to be mistaken; her legitimate objections are to his attitude and arrogance, and he amends this. Henry’s manners are impeccable and his company charming; Fanny’s objections are to his character. She sees him deliberately flirt with both her cousins at once to a degree that implies an intent to propose, and play them off against one another; she sees him make some very deliberate and mutually-understood innuendo towards Maria, signifying that she should break off her engagement and be with him instead, all with zero intention of actually proposing if she did do so; she sees him use the theatricals to continue this pursuit of Maria. And this is very usual behaviour for Henry; his sister says he has broken many hearts, and when he starts courting Fanny his goal is to make her fall in love with him and then leave her “feeling she will never be happy again”.

This is what makes me judge Henry much more harshly than his sister Mary. Mary can be selfish, but she is not malicious or cruel, and she can be kind when it doesn’t inconvenience her (and one of her better traits is that even when she is unhappy or disappointed she never takes it out on other people). In contrast, Henry’s principal diversion and entertainment for years has been deliberately making young women miserable, leading them on, getting them to reject other suitors in hopes of him, and then departing without a care, to please his own vanity. He is, in truth, doing not once but habitually, what Willoughby did to Marianne: always implying enough to seem on the edge of an engagement but never following through, and then pretending it was all nothing. It’s a casual cruelty he finds amusing as a proof of his skills. In short, he’s a deceptive playboy. Even after Maria is married, he can’t resist flirting with her, which is what leads to her disgrace and social destruction.

Even though Austen lays out an alternative scenario where Henry might have married Fanny if not for that final flirtation with Maria Rushworth, all of the above does not lead me to believe she find that scenario desirable. She’s painstakingly laid out all the contrasts with her previous novel that make this scenario a very different one from Pride and Prejudice.

In addition to Henry’s serial seductions, one of the biggest red flags is his attempt to make Fanny responsible for his character, with an attitude of ‘you’re such an angel, you can make me do whatever you want’. This gives me Tenant of Wildfell Hall vibes, where Helen’s aunt tries to warn her off thinking that an older man of the world will let himself be guided and led by a younger woman who is in his power. Fanny rejects this idea: Henry knows what is right, can make his own choice to do it, and she will not let herself be appropriated as his conscience. Henry isn’t debauched like Huntington, but if Fanny married him the chances of him feeling bored after some years - when he no longer has the thrill of the pursuit to keep him interested - and pursuing other flirtations and affairs to Fanny’s misery, seems pretty high based on his character; and he’s skilled enough at skirting the line that he could easily brush away any objections from her as “oh, it’s nothing, just being sociable.”

On top of all the faults of character - even if Henry did reform, I have trouble seeing Fanny and Henry being happy together. At the core of his personality is a need for change, for stimulus, for challenge (the latter, rather than sexual desire, is the main thing driving his string of conquests), and for company. Fanny, in contrast, very much prefers quiet and the company of a few people she is close to, and I think this is her genuine personality, not something that needs to be overcome by “bringing her out of her shell”. Henry would be bored to misery living the kind of lifestyle that Fanny is comfortable with, and Fanny would be deeply unhappy living in the social whirl and flurry of activity that Henry prefers. In contrast, Fanny and Edmund are both “me after a quiet day in: time for a quiet night in” people.

So, with all this, why is Henry/Fanny a popular AU? Apart from fannish dislike of Edmund (which I don’t share), I think part of it is that we don’t get an open confrontation between Fanny and Henry, the way we do between Elizabeth and Darcy, where she lays out her objections to him: I saw you flirting with both my cousins at once, I saw you making them both unhappy for your own amusement, I saw you repeatedly tempting Maria to break her engagement with no intention of following through if she did, just because you liked the challenge of winning an engaged woman. And the lack of this naturally raises the question of: how would Henry react if this confrontation happened? Which provides fertile soil for AUs.

[whenthegoldrays]

The thing that drives me crazy about Henry Crawford is that he almost made it. He almost changed. A bit more restraint, a little more core morality, and his life could’ve been so different. Everything could’ve been so different.

[eminent-victoriana]

Fanny Price: I can't fix him

[do-not-call-me-sunshine]

henry crawford winning me over with his trust fund baby frat boy seducer aura was not on my 2024 bingo card!

[cottagecore-raccoon]

Hypothetical Scenario: Fanny Price is a dear friend of yours. She comes to you frequently for advice and social time, but you do not have the means to provide for her/otherwise help her out. One day, she comes to you and tells you that Henry Crawford has proposed and that she has yet to give him an answer. She asks you what you think she should do/if she should accept him

[bethanydelleman]

Writing Villains (Advice from Jane Austen)

One of the reasons that I find Jane Austen's novels so wonderful is that they have amazingly realistic villains, some that are fully fleshed out characters. Austen's biggest strength is that she gives her villains clear, logical motives. In fact, for many of her villainous characters you can turn the entire story around and see a rational story from the other side.

For example, Lucy Steele. She doesn't attack Elinor out of mindless evil, but because Edward Ferrars is her golden ticket to wealth and she knows that Edward loves Elinor. Lucy might twist the knife a little on Elinor out of sadism, but generally she attacks Elinor in an attempt to secure Edward. When it comes to other characters, Lucy is overly sweet if she wants something from them, otherwise she acts normally. As an example, she leaves Marianne alone because Marianne is not competing for Edward and also can't do anything for Lucy. Anne, Lucy's sister, likes her. Lucy has friends and family she stays with, she's a fairly well-rounded person.

You can put yourself in Lucy's shoes, you can turn the entire narrative on it's head and play it out from her perspective and it would make complete sense. You could even make Lucy sympathetic! She probably sees herself as a hardworking underdog, trying to wrest her one chance at prosperity away from the conniving Elinor Dashwood. I'm sure she thinks the pain she causes Elinor is justified.

If you can't do that with your villains, then there is a good chance they are just evil for evil's sake. I picked Lucy Steele on purpose because I hate when the entire motivation for a antagonist female character is "bitches be crazy". Bitches may be mean, but almost always for a good reason.

Even Mrs. Norris, who is probably the most cruel of Austen's female villains, can be perspective switched. Her life is about being useful to the Bertram family so she can feel important because her married status/wealth is lower than she wished. As she must always be deferential towards the Bertrams, she takes out her negative emotions on those below her, the servants and Fanny, while also showing off how good she is at "managing" those people. (And yes, she is your childhood bully)

We often hear her perspective and she clearly sees herself as a useful part of the family and a defender of Sir Thomas's wealth. She thinks she's a good person! Which is also an important point: most people doing wrong do not believe that they are doing wrong. That is what really makes a villain scary. Mrs. Norris thinks she's helping Fanny in a very twisted way by teaching Fanny her station in life. If you asked her, she'd give you a self-justified answer and she'd probably actually believe it.

Another way to do a good villain is to just make a person very selfish. Henry Crawford doesn't sit around all day laughing about how much pain he causes women, he doesn't think about it. He only thinks about the fun of flirting for himself, not the harm to others. The glimpses we get into his perspective are not cruel at all. It's the same with Willougby, he thinks only of his own pleasure and tries very hard to ignore that he has crushed Marianne and destroyed Eliza Williams. When he is forced to accept that people were hurt, he blames everyone but himself.

Wickham thinks that he's a victim, Caroline Bingley is ambitious and doesn't care who she steps on to get to the top, Mr. Elton is insulted that Emma could even dream he's a match with Harriet but he can't touch Emma so he punches down at Harriet. They all make sense, they all probably believe that their actions are justified.

Also, imagine taking the heroine/hero right out of the story, would the villain still act the same way? If Anne didn't exist, Mr. Elliot would still try to bring himself into the Elliot family because he was afraid of losing the title. If Elizabeth didn't exist, Wickham would have had another favourite in Meryton. If Fanny didn't exist, Mrs. Norris would have found some other puppy to kick. The villains don't just appear for the plot of the main characters, they have their own reasons for moving around and messing shit up.

Lastly, explaining but not excusing (though unfortunately some people will excuse anyway but that's not your fault). Mary Crawford is mercenary and doesn't seem to believe that love is even a real thing. It's pointed out several times in the novel that her defects have to do with being raised in an immoral environment and a broken home. She was taught by her aunt to marry for wealth and disregard love. Austen doesn't excuse Mary, she doesn't give her a happy ending, but she does explain how she came to be. She's not just greedy, she has been taught that wealth is the best recipe for happiness. As an adult now, it is her responsibility to question that maxim or remain a villain.

Austen wrote amazing morally grey characters and "villains" (a term I used a little liberally here, some of them probably only count as antagonists, not full blown villains). I love how real and human she made her characters, it's something I aspire to myself!

Linking my Caroline rant because it's related, people remove her motives so often and flatten her into a "bitches be crazy".

[besotted-with-austen]

Henry Crawford: if I marry Fanny, she will get appreciation and every comfort the Bertrams are too negligent to provide her! They are just capable of guilting her into doing things she is not comfortable with, they don't respect her!

Also Henry Crawford: * doesn't respect Fanny's decision to reject him and tells Sir Thomas so that he would guilt her into saying yes*

[farosdaughter]

The sluttiest most romantic thing a man can do is travel half the country just to visit you in your dreary hometown and personally make sure you’re alright while repeatedly expressing his wish to take care of you forever

[hotjaneaustenmenpoll]

Propaganda:

Mr Elliot :

Henry Crawford:

[misscrawfords]

No sooner had Susan and her cousins left their box at the intermission than they came face to face with Miss Crawford and a gentleman exiting another box a few doors down. The gentleman was a stranger to Susan but the similarity of his appearance to the lady was such as made his identity as obvious as it was unanticipated.

Julia stopped dead and even Miss Crawford, usually so self-possessed, blushed and hesitated. Her brother too seemed struck by astonishment at the sight of the party. Only Mr. Yates, whose happy disposition did not admit of any embarrassment, was unperturbed.

“Crawford!” he boomed. “This is capital! No idea you were in the country, let alone in town! It's been years! But of course we should meet at the theatre - where else? You remember my wife, of course? And this is her cousin, Miss Price. Susan, this is the famous Mr. Crawford.”

Susan was as surprised as the others but for different reasons. This was the infamous Mr. Crawford? Her cousin had ruined herself and plunged her family into disgrace for him? Why, he was such a short and slight man! Susan was on the taller side of average for her sex but she was nevertheless unaccustomed to stand eye to eye with a man in the way she was able to with Mr. Crawford. And those expressive, dark features - so elegant and pretty on his sister - were not so attractive on the gentleman. He cut an insignificant sort of figure, especially when put next to the broad bulk of Mr. Yates, who loomed over them all in his usual way. She had only met him briefly many years ago but he had seemed taller and more impressive in her memory.

What was she to say to him? She did not desire an introduction; indeed, Yates probably ought not to have done it. She could not see Julia’s expression but her silence was speech enough. Perhaps she could cut him, she could give him the cut direct and walk straight past him with her head held high and Fanny in her heart… except of course that she did not dare.

In the event, he was the first to speak. The awkwardness and evident embarrassment of his address as well as its obvious insincerity as he reacquainted himself with Mrs. Yates and professed a delight to meet Miss Price gave Susan the courage to respond with a clear and direct look, “How do you do, Mr. Crawford? But we have met before in Portsmouth five years ago; perhaps you do not recall.”

Surprise crossed his face. “I do recall our meeting. How could I forget?”

How indeed? Later, she would think of many retorts, albeit none of them suitable to be spoken aloud. Instead she found herself asking if was enjoying the play. 

“With reservations,” he replied, his gaze never straying from hers. “And yourself, Miss Price?”

“Tolerably,” said Susan at the same time as Mr. Yates jumped in to inform them that this was Miss Price’s first ever visit to the theatre and how important it was that it was to such a wonderful production as The Distress’d Mother and had they ever seen anything so touching as Andromache’s tragic devotion?

“I find her a little too pious for my own taste,” interjected Miss Crawford. “I find myself drawn to Hermione and I cannot feel ashamed of it. But you have a very fine performance in Orestes for your first play, Miss Price. You have chosen well.”

Susan acknowledged that it was so and that she was very much looking forward to seeing him go mad in the final act. Yates declared there was no better actor anywhere in Europe and seemed on the point of anticipating the mad scene itself in the corridor when Julia finally roused herself to insist that the performance must be starting soon and hurried Susan back into the box, leaving the Crawfords behind to make of Mr. Yates’ paroxysms of dramatic enthusiasm what they would.

As for Susan, her spirit was disturbed by the meeting but she was determined that Mr. Crawford should not have any power over her - he had done quite enough damage by the Bertrams already for her to wish to give him any further satisfaction. Her attention should be devoted solely to the progress of the drama on stage before her. Nevertheless, it was strange to think that such a man should have been so captivating to both her cousins - he was not even handsome! And his address, well, there was nothing extraordinary about it. She could not understand it at all. And as for his view of the play, she could not help wondering over his reservations. What a very curious way to respond to her question which she had only asked out of politeness! Really, if he had reservations, he should at the least have said what they were! And so it was that at the end of several hours, when the play finally drew to a close, mad scene and all, having vowed that Mr. Crawford’s name should not even cross her mind, she found to her consternation she had thought of little else.