Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, or, Wash Your Mouth Out With Soap and Water

[liadnan]

I was reading Mansfield Park today, and was struck by a line I don't remember before. Miss Crawford turns away from discussion of Fanny's brother, a mere midshipman, with a comment that she only knows Admirals, but of those she knows many "Rears and Vices". And then, disingenuosly, she disclaims having made any kind of vulgar pun.

The thing is, I can only conceive of one pun that might be involved here, and it isn't something one expects to find in the mouth of even an inimical Austen character. Not that blatantly, and certainly not from a woman. And while Edmund and Fanny mutter about her afterwards, their indignation seems directed more at the fact Miss Crawford has been rude in public about her uncle, Admiral Crawford. Am I missing something here? Is it I who need my brain scrubbed out?

***

Spent the weekend being quite the observant Catholic at the cathedral (yes, despite being a heretic on several counts, a semi-agnostic at least half the time, and the rest, I still do go to mass on and off-and a Happy Easter to those who observe it in some way) and then seeing my mother (and sister and family for Easter Sunday lunch). Somewhat trying, this seeing family most weekends. Love them dearly as I do. And the bloody paperwork seems never-ending: mum can't really cope with it all, and while my siblings have done an awful lot, probably more than me, two of them have babies under six months and the other lives at the other end of the country.

Comments

[chrysaphi.livejournal.com]

I, er, interpreted that line the same way you did. And concluded it was what was meant. I don't have my copy to hand, so I can't go back and re-read Edmund & Fanny's reactions, but I do find it hard to imagine Fanny getting it, even if Jane Austen did.

[beingfrank.livejournal.com]

Doesn't sound like there could be many other interpretations. I'll have to reread, because I don't recall it.

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

I interpreted it exactly the same way you did. After all; Austen was a woman of the eighteenth century not the nineteenth, largely, and her brothers were in the Navy: I daresay she had heard much worse jokes than that one. And anyway; what else could it mean?

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Me too - Austen probably *had* heard the jokes.

Miss Crawford may have heard the jokes but may not have fully understood them - while she knew she was saying something risque, she may not have known just how risque it was.

[liadnan]

Yes, I see your point about Austen. Actually, it now occurs to me to wonder whether this was (and is) a hoary old joke in the RN.
But I'm not sure Fanny understood that comment, or surely her horror would be far greater (her sisters might, but they've been with a drunken Navy father all their lives, whereas she left when very young). After all, she seems to me one of Austen's most virtuous characters. Elizabeth Bennett, by contrast, might have taken it in her stride. Edmund maybe gets it. And it does seem to me to very strongly emphasise that Miss Crawford is... can't think of the 1814 terminology but perhaps a hundred years later she'd have been "fast"? By the time of that conversation she's already mouthed off about the clergy, thus unknowingly putting her foot in it with Edmund, of course.

[eccles.livejournal.com]

Page 57 according to google print (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mansfield+park) with a footnote about it on page 487 which it doesn't want to show me. Damn technology.

[booklectica]

THat's how I read it too, and was mildly surprised (when old enough to understand).

I don't think it's necessarily about homosexuality though, it could be more general than that.

[nicnac.livejournal.com]

I took 'Rears' to mean something along the lines of calling someone an arse nowadays and 'Vices' to be bad habits. But now you mention it...

[red11.livejournal.com]

my edition of it (recent penguin classic) has a fair bit of exegesis on this and IIRC refers to the joke appearing in print before MP was written. Incidentally, isn't it an exciting book ? Best JA plot IMNSHO.

[threeoranges.livejournal.com]

Graham Robb's STRANGERS: HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY quotes that very passage in its first chapter.

"Of Rears, and Vices, I saw enough. Now, do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat". Hmmm. Was "mooning" popular amongst sailors in the 18th-century? Were French ships greeted in this manner? She does, after all, say "I saw enough"...