A harpist arrives at Mansfield Park: music and the moral ambiguity of Mary Crawford.

ONLY A READER NEW TO Mansfield Park can truly appreciate the delicacy with which Austen suspends the possibility that Mary Crawford might, through loving Edmund Bertram, become as morally sound as Edmund himself. A first-time reader may, indeed, share Edmund's hope that Mary will improve--or, if sympathetic to Fanny Price, suspect and hope that Mary will not. Of Mary's brother Henry, Austen states explicitly early on that he is "thoughtless and selfish from prosperity and bad example" (115), though she does also open the prospect that Fanny might redeem him. Austen makes no such declaration regarding Mary, trusting instead to a series of telling episodes through which Mary's behavior increasingly persuades Fanny--and us--of her moral hollowness.

All such suspense is lost, of course, on readers returning to the novel, who are bound to remember that Mary ultimately incarnates, rather than overcomes, the superficial and even vicious views to which she has been exposed in London, especially at the home of her uncle the Admiral. Even as we recall the outcome of Mary's moral ambiguity, however, we can increase our appreciation of Austen's handling of it by examining those scenes to which it is central. Through Mary's harp-playing in particular, Austen reveals this character's precarious balance of selfishness and generosity, self-absorption and self-awareness. Mary's amazement in Chapter Six at the difficulty of conveying her instrument from London is a memorable indication of her ignorance and disdain of country customs, as many scholars have pointed out. More complex are the scenes in which Mary plays for Edmund and for Fanny, as well as the passages in which Mary, or occasionally the narrator, comments on the motives for and effects of her playing.

Austen's readers and critics have long noted that, while she supplies few details about the instruments or tunes her characters play, she nevertheless employs music-making to reveal crucial aspects of character. (1) The nuances of her treatment of Mary have yet to be fully recognized, however. Mary's harp is much more than a "fit accessory for the siren she is," as Tony Tanner has slyly called it (150). Certainly the instrument contributes a visual enhancement to Mary's own physical charms, as well as an aural enticement to any character intrigued by music (a category that includes not only Edmund but Fanny, in spite of her own lack of interest in learning to play). Indeed, Mary herself fully embraces these conventional associations of music as a feminine accomplishment. Yet Mary also derives her own pleasure and relief from playing, as well as contributing to others'. Weighing these complementary, and sometimes conflicting, effects of Mary's music-making takes us into the heart of one of Austen's most ambiguous characters.

PLAYING--OR DISPLAYING?--TO EDMUND: MUSIC, ACCOMPLISHMENT, AND COURTSHIP

One of the most trenchant assessments of feminine accomplishments in all of Austen's novels is Mary's comment to Fanny that "'one knows, without being told, exactly what [any three sisters] are--all very accomplished and pleasing, and one very pretty.... Two play on the piano-forte, and one on the harp--and all sing--or would sing if they were taught--or sing all the better for not being taught--or something like it'" (288). Mary's sarcastic and amusing observation on the ubiquity of musical daughters is reminiscent of Elizabeth Bennet's outspoken statements on accomplished women in Chapter Eight of Austen's previous published novel, Pride and Prejudice. Mary's remark here, however, arises from a different impulse than Elizabeth's assertion that she has never seen a paragon such as Darcy and Caroline Bingley describe. Unlike Elizabeth, who is not worried that her less-than-stellar skills at the pianoforte will impede her marriage prospects, Mary Crawford is anxious indeed that another musical young woman might steal the heart of Edmund Bertram. According to the narrator, Mary is "trying to appear gay and unconcerned" (288) as she inquires about the talents of the Miss Owens, to whose brother Edmund is paying a visit.

Unbeknownst to Mary, of course, it is the resolutely unaccomplished Fanny who is her real rival for Edmund's affections. Fanny's own attitude towards music-making has been formed by her observation of her Bertram cousins Julia and Maria, who--as both children and adults--engage in the supposedly decorative pursuits that were considered appropriate to marriageable gentlewomen in this era. As even the ten-year-old Fanny can recognize (and as Austen emphasizes repeatedly to the reader), the artistic talents of Julia and Maria have been cultivated to the exclusion of more fundamental qualities of character: "In every thing but disposition," the narrator pointedly notes, "they were admirably taught" (19). That encouragement in accomplishments placed girls at risk of vanity was a commonplace objection in Austen's day, articulated by Hannah More among many others. (2) In keeping with such moral arguments, Sir Thomas Bertram realizes in the novel's final chapter that promoting his daughters' "elegance and accomplishments" (463) has contributed to their (or at least Maria's) downfall. Fanny, too, apparently bears out these contentions. To the delight of Mrs. Norris, who is eager to maintain distinctions between the Bertram sisters and their lowly cousin Price, Fanny is unable to draw, play, or sing--and she maintains without effort the moral consciousness with which, in spite of her unprivileged early upbringing, she arrives at Mansfield Park.

While Julia's and Maria's duets and drawings remain in the background of the novel, however, Austen repeatedly places Mary and her harp at the center of her narrative, requiring that we pay attention to it--and

to Mary. (3) We first learn of the existence of Mary's harp in Chapter Six, when she discusses its conveyance to Mansfield. Mary's announcement to Edmund at the start of this passage that she has "'tidings of [her] harp at last'" (57), however, suggests that she has spoken of the instrument to him before. In light of this implication, that Edmund subsequently speaks "of the harp as his favourite instrument" (59) may seem less like a mere compliment to Mary. We may still remain skeptical that Edmund claims as a favorite an instrument that, to our knowledge, does not exist in the neighborhood of Mansfield Park; Fanny has "never heard the harp at all" (59). (In keeping with Mary's assertion about musical sisters, Julia and Maria both play the pianoforte; there is no third Bertram sister to play the harp.) If Edmund is not simply flattering Mary, and he really does like the sound of a musical instrument that his young cousin has never heard, this preference is noteworthy, given Edmund's role in forming Fanny's own tastes. As Fanny reminds Edmund following her famous monologue on the harmony of nature (as opposed to music), "'[y]ou taught me to think and feel on the subject, cousin'" (113).

Mary's description of her effort to secure a cart to transport her harp has often been read primarily as a telling illustration of her trust in what she herself offers up as a "'true London maxim, that every thing is to be got with money'" (58). Several other elements of the passage are revealing, however. The harp is an instrument both weighty and fragile, both useful and, because of its expense, an unmistakable sign of social status. (4) As Richard Leppert points out, the harp, like the even more popular pianoforte, is "oddly shaped and hence difficult and expensive to pack and ship ... delicate, hence easily damaged, and highly sensitive to climatic change" (The Sight of Sound 107). Given these characteristics, what could be more appropriate than for Mary's harp to travel comfortably in her brother's barouche? That such a comparatively luxurious mode of travel is suitable as well to the lady who plays the instrument in question underscores Leppert's comment that the delicacy of the harp and pianoforte "parallels the delicacy men perceived in the women who played them" (107). In other words, the image of a harp in a cart owes its incongruity not only to the contrast between rustic conveyance and elaborately decorated instrument but to the suggested contrast between such a vehicle and elegant Mary herself.

Significant, too, are the conversational topics that immediately precede and follow the discussion of the harp's transport. (I will discuss in the final section of this essay Mary's statement that she "'dearly love[s] music'" herself [59].) Mary initially mentions the harp with the hope of distracting Edmund, with "further smiles and liveliness" (57), from the worried silence with which he has responded to her less-than-respectful comments on her uncle. By juxtaposing these two subjects, Austen alerts the keen-eyed reader to wonder whether Mary's attitude towards her music-making, unlike that towards her uncle, will suit Edmund's "sense of propriety" (57). Even more subtle is the implication that arises from the turn Mary's talk takes after she has finished speaking of the harp. Having solicited Edmund's promise to reassure his brother about the harp's safe arrival, Mary moves into an entertaining commentary on the "'true manly style'" of brotherly letter-writing (59). While Austen makes nothing, on the surface of the text, of this conversational conjunction between music-making and writing, she offers food for thought to readers familiar with the author's own daily practice of piano-playing, about which I have written elsewhere (102-104). Finally, Mary's chatter brings her to what contemporary readers identify as her bawdiest speech of this portion of the novel, her pun on "'Rears, and Vices'" (60)--an utterance that renders Edmund again "grave," and from which he rescues her (and himself) by "revert[ing] to the harp, and [being] again very happy in the prospect of hearing her play" (60). As at the beginning of the passage, the harp affords a safe topic on which to seize when Mary seems in danger of going too far.

When Mary begins to play for Edmund, however, Fanny realizes that the instrument, in Mary's hands, is far from innocuous. Mary's performances for her willing listener are only partially, and indeed subordinately, musical experiences. The primary effect of her playing, as the narrator makes clear, is to enhance her attractive qualities, both physical and conversational: "The harp arrived, and rather added to her beauty, wit, and good humour, for ... there was something clever to be said at the close of every air" (64). The narrator mentions the "expression and taste" with which Mary plays, but only in order to note that these "were peculiarly becoming" (64). As the passage continues, Austen creates a veritable portrait in words of this most alluring performer:

   A young woman, pretty, lively, with a harp as elegant as herself;
   and both placed near a window, cut down to the ground, and opening
   on a little lawn, surrounded by shrubs in the rich foliage of
   summer, was enough to catch any man's heart. The season, the
   scene, the air, were all favourable to tenderness and sentiment....
   [I]t was all in harmony.... (65)

As Austen moves outwards from Mary and her instrument, to the surprisingly detailed landscape outside the window, only the word "harmony" and the possible double meaning of the word "air" remind us that at the center of this most appealing image is a musician. All of the elements to which Austen calls our attention are visual: it is the harp's elegance, rather than its sound or tone, that matters here. Moreover, Mary is merely "with" the harp, "placed" near the window--this is the language of posing, not of actively playing.

In emphasizing the visual rather than the aural effects of Mary's appearance with her harp, Austen is fully in line with contemporary portraitists, who likewise took advantage of both the pleasing contours and the genteel associations conveyed by musical instruments. The harp--as a large-scale, often highly decorated instrument set in the vertical plane (rather than being, like a keyboard instrument, parallel to the floor and thus in the horizontal visual plane)--offered painters a particularly arresting image with which to accompany their gentlewoman subjects. Richard Leppert has called attention to the rarity of instances in which instruments appear to be played convincingly, or played at all, in such musical portraits. Of the depictions of harpists that he analyzes, as well as those included in Roslyn Rensch's Harps and Harpists, most show the woman next to the harp, facing away from it towards the viewer (or occasionally heavenward), her hands distant from or only limply and inexpertly touching the strings. (See Figure 1.) Only a very few portraits suggest, through the accuracy of the sitter's posture and hand position, that actual musical sound might be emanating from this very decorative woman and her accessory. (See Figure 2.) As Leppert observes of one portrait, "it is the image of [the sitter] at music, not the musical event itself, that matters" (The Sight of Sound 110). Of another, he contends that "the musical props possess little more than iconic status. Lady Strange is not actually performing, but posing" (Music and Image 156).

[FIGURES 1-2 OMITTED]

Even while drawing our attention to the appearance, rather than the sound, of Mary at her harp, Austen relies on her reader to fill in certain gaps in her description. Playing a full-size pedal harp, as Rensch points out, requires the action of both arms and feet: "Young ladies of the late eighteenth century," she notes dryly, "had found a most acceptable way to display pretty arms and a 'well-turned ankle'" (161). Leppert too reminds us that "an actual musical performance was physical" (Music and Image 171), involving not just the display of extended limbs but the active use of them. At the harp, in other words, Mary can in propriety command Edmund's attention to her body. This effect of a musical performance--that displaying, in other words, might eclipse playing--caused no end of anxiety to conduct-book writers in Austen's era. Erasmus Darwin, to take but one example, warned that since accomplishments "consist in an exhibition of the person, they are liable to be attended with vanity, and to extinguish the blush of youthful timidity; which is in young ladies the most powerful of their exterior charms" (12).

With all this in mind, how are we to read the narrator's remark that Mary's appearance and surroundings were "enough to catch any man's heart" (65)? Is Austen excusing Edmund, partially or fully, from falling under Mary's spell? ("'IT]he charm is broken,'" he will ultimately tell Fanny. "'My eyes are opened'" [456].) However we assess Austen's level of irony here, we must acknowledge that Mary's playing works to intensify not only Edmund's interest in her--as a feminine accomplishment customarily would do--but also hers in him. She is intrigued, in part, by the difference between his appreciation and that of the London audiences to which she has been accustomed. Like Colonel Brandon, whose quiet enjoyment of Marianne's piano-playing at the end of Chapter Seven of Sense and Sensibility foreshadows his steady love for her, Edmund avoids the excesses of fashionable society when responding to Mary's playing: "he talked no nonsense, he paid no compliments" (65). Mary, in spite of herself, begins to feel "a charm, perhaps, in his sincerity, his steadiness, his integrity" (65). In Austen's hands, this apparently conventional scene of an attractive young woman at her harp has a most unexpected outcome: the woman in question, in addition to the man, finds herself captivated. Mary's harp-playing, in other words, not only effects a change of heart in Edmund but offers the possibility of one for the fair performer herself.

PLAYING FOR FANNY: PLEASURE AND PAIN

Only in Edmund's presence, however, does Mary's music-making seem to extend a possible means of moral improvement. Fanny's listening does not have the effect that Edmund's does, of charming Mary into a better self by the quiet example of steady attention. On the contrary, Fanny's earnestness seems if anything to encourage Mary to inflict pain on her, pain that is often at its most pointed when mixed with pleasure (itself a relatively rare occurrence in Fanny's life). Because Mary's harp-playing is such a strong component of the growing attachment between herself and Edmund, it affords her an especially potent means of tormenting Fanny.

Fanny, of course, is absent from the harmonious scene I discussed in the previous section, which takes place at the parsonage. She "would gladly have been there too," reports the narrator, "might she have gone in uninvited and unnoticed to hear the harp" (65). As we might expect, Fanny has no particular interest in seeing Mary perform; she is curious only to hear the sound of an instrument that, as we have earlier learned, she "had never heard ... at all, and wished for ... very much" (59). (5) Austen postpones Fanny's first hearing of the harp until Volume Two, Chapter Four, by which point her "confession" of still having never heard it "could hardly be believed" (206). This long delay does more than further whet Fanny's appetite for the instrument; more important, it allows Austen to lay substantial groundwork for the mingled pain and pleasure that will result from Mary's performance for Fanny.

That Mary will without compunction interfere with or compromise Fanny's pleasures, or alloy them with pain, is first evident very shortly after Mary first plays for Edmund. Engrossing his attention, of course, is the most obvious example of how Mary purchases delight for herself at the price of depriving Fanny. Yet this deprivation is not, according to the narrator, the "first actual pain which Miss Crawford occasioned" Fanny (66): that distinction is given to Mary's monopolizing the horse that Fanny has been used to ride. Like harp-playing, horse-riding enables Mary to spend time with Edmund (her instructor in this new, to her, endeavor) as well as to enjoy "the conviction of very much surpassing her sex in general by her early progress" (67). Here, Mary does not appear to be deliberately inconsiderate of Fanny; rather, what Austen calls the "pure genuine pleasure" of the activity so stimulates her that she "did not know how to leave off" (66). Belatedly, Edmund resolves to place the check on Mary's enjoyment that she is incapable of applying to herself: as he apologetically reminds Fanny, Mary "'rides only for pleasure, you for health'" (70).

Even in the absence of Mary's involvement, Fanny's pleasures are often diminished either by her unwillingness to assert or call attention to herself, or by her sense of duty. Most memorably, in spite of her strong reservations about the amateur theatricals, she hopes "[f]or her own gratification ... that something might be acted" (131), and once the rehearsals are underway "it was a pleasure to her to creep into the theatre" (165). Even dancing, one of Fanny's greatest sources of delight, causes her anxiety because it must be done in public: "[t]o dance without much observation" (267) is therefore her poignant goal for the ball that takes place in Volume Two, Chapter Ten. It is worth noting that Fanny is indeed interested in certain of the arts, in spite of her evident lack of desire to emulate her cousins' accomplishments.

Fanny is most susceptible to both pain and pleasure, of course, when Edmund is on her mind, and it is for this reason that Mary's playing to her in Volume Two, Chapter Four is so devastatingly effective. At first, however, Mary seems entirely focused on gratifying Fanny's wish to hear the instrument in which she has long expressed an interest and that--having dashed into the Parsonage to escape a rainstorm--she now finally sees. Indeed, Mary, "calling to mind [Fanny's] early-expressed wish on the subject, was concerned at her own neglect" (207). Mary's capacity for generosity and her desire to please Fanny remain uppermost for the first portion of the performance. Under the influence of the harp, in fact, the great differences between the two characters' temperaments and attitudes seem to disappear. Responding "with the readiest good burnout" to Fanny's wish to hear the instrument, Mary is simply "happy to have a new listener" (207), while Fanny for her part "seem[s] so much obliged, so full of wonder at the performance" (207). (6) Both Mary's tendency towards selfishness and Fanny's towards self-abnegation ebb away in the presence of the music.

Music's power to elicit the best selves of both Mary and Fanny is not long-lived, however. When Fanny, noticing the return of fairer weather, moves to depart, Mary insists that she wait till the clouds look less "'threatening'" (207). More important, as Mary herself admits, she is not ready to end the performance: "'And besides, I want to play something more to you--a very pretty piece--and your cousin Edmund's prime favourite. You must stay and hear your cousin's favourite" (207). (7) What could seem merely the desire of an enthusiastic player to share one more piece with a willing listener takes a pointed turn when Mary emphasizes the tune's status as Edmund's favorite. Playing it for Fanny is a way of reminding her of the intimacy that has grown up between Edmund and Mary. (To Mary, of course, she and Fanny are rivals only for Edmund's attention, not his romantic affection.) The effort is as effective as Mary could wish: although, as the narrator points out, Fanny "had not waited for that sentence to be thinking of Edmund, such a memento made her particularly awake to his idea"; while Fanny is "pleased with" the air itself, she becomes even "more sincerely impatient to go away" (207) as she uneasily contemplates occupying Edmund's place.

What troubles Fanny is not the mental image of Edmund watching Mary play--disturbing as that might be to contemplate, especially if Fanny were to dwell on the attractiveness of Mary's arms. Rather, Fanny is afflicted by discomfort at imagining him "listening with constant delight to the favourite air" (207, emphasis added). Here, the sound--rather than, as before, the appearance--of the harp is of foremost importance. Indeed, this scene emphasizes only the aural aspect of music-making, as the prior scene has stressed solely the visual. The consequence of the musical performance in both cases, however, is to initiate a greater intimacy between the musician and her audience. Just as Mary's harp-playing, as we have seen, offers Edmund an excuse for visiting her frequently at the Parsonage, so too does she extend an invitation to Fanny to "come and hear more of the harp" (207), which Fanny does, albeit reluctantly. The narrator's description of Fanny's attitude towards Mary as "a kind of fascination" (208) also recalls the nature of the older woman's effect on Edmund.

By this point in the narrative, however, Austen extends little hope that Mary, through music-making, will exercise her better self. Mary's motive for seeing more of Fanny derives merely from her own "desire of something new" (208), now that Julia and Maria Bertram have left Mansfield Park. Fanny's integrity and values--unlike those of Edmund--exert no influence on Mary, who remains "untouched and inattentive" (209) when the younger woman muses on landscape and memory. Not Mary but Henry, it turns out, is truly susceptible to Fanny's version of charm, and it is with his possible reformation that the remainder of the novel is concerned.

Nevertheless, Austen tantalizes us with one further, brief scene in which Mary's playing affords Fanny a less conflicted pleasure. Fanny has "nothing to do but to listen" when, at the end of Volume Two, Chapter Five, Mary turns to her harp when "vexed" by conversation (227). "With that," states the narrator simply, "she soothed herself and amused her friend" (227).

PLAYING FOR HERSELF?

Austen does not mention Mary's harp again in the novel, as Piggott has noted (75). We might suppose, however, that Mary would have need of it indeed to soothe herself after Edmund's rejection of her, when she moves in with her sister Mrs. Grant and--as the narrator states with tantalizing ambiguity--is "long in finding" a prospective mate to match the one she has lost (469). Or perhaps, thinking ahead to the embittered harpist Rosa Dartle in Charles Dickens's David Copperfield, we might envision Mary, too, taking out her disappointments on her once beloved instrument.

In another sense, however, it is difficult if not impossible to imagine Mary playing with only herself as audience, since we have never seen her turn to her harp in the absence of a potential suitor to entrance, or willing listener to beguile. (8) Indeed, Mary's most explicit avowal of enthusiasm for music-making emphasizes the importance of the audience: "'I shall be most happy to play to you both,'" she assures Edmund and Fanny in Chapter Six, "'at least, as long as you can like to listen; probably much longer, for I dearly love music myself, and where the natural taste is equal, the player must always be best off, for she is gratified in more ways than one'" (59). An eager listener, in other words, multiplies the player's own pleasure. Mary tends, of course, to be somewhat selfish about her pleasures, as we have seen, and she does indeed play longer than Fanny would like when insisting on performing Edmund's favorite air. How much delight Mary would find in the absence of an admiring audience is an open question.

Austen ultimately leaves open, too, the larger question of whether Mary leaves Mansfield a better person than when she arrived. Certainly Mary's response to Henry's elopement is not promising. In the final paragraph devoted to Mary, however, the narrator shies away from condemning her. It is Henry whom the narrator declares "ruined by early independence and bad domestic example" (467); Mary, in contrast, now possesses the "better taste she ha[s] acquired at Mansfield" (469), and is benefiting from the "true kindness of [Mrs. Grant's] heart, and the rational tranquillity of her ways" (469). In exchange for such kindness, would Mary play the harp for her sister, and learn to stop playing when her listener wearies of the music? We can only guess.

WORKS CITED

Austen, Jane. The Novels of Jane Austen. Ed. R. W. Chapman. 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP, 1969.

Byrne, Paula. "Manners." Jane Austen in Context. Ed. Janet Todd. Cambridge: CUP, 2005. 297-305.

Darwin, Erasmus. A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education in Boarding Schools. Derby, 1797.

Gammie, Ian, and Derek McCulloch, eds. Incipits from the Manuscript Sources: Jane Austen's Music. St. Albans: Corda Music, 1996.

--. Jane Austen's Music. St. Albans: Corda Music, 1996.

Gay, Penny. "Pastimes." Jane Austen in Context. Ed. Janet Todd. Cambridge: CUP, 2005. 337-45.

Kelly, Gary. "Education and Accomplishments." Jane Austen in Context. Ed. Janet Todd. Cambridge: CUP, 2005. 252-61.

Leppert, Richard. Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology, and Socio-Cultural Formation in Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: CUP, 1988.

--. The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body. Berkeley: UCP, 1993.

Libin, Kathryn L. Shanks. "Music, Character, and Social Standing in Jane Austen's Emma." Persuasions 22 (2000): 15-30.

Lustig, Jodi. "The Piano's Progress: The Piano in Play in the Victorian Novel." The Idea of Music in Victorian Fiction. Ed. Sophie Fuller and Nicky Losseff. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. 83-104.

Morra, Irene. "Singing Like a Musical Box: Musical Detection and Novelistic Tradition." The Idea of Music in Victorian Fiction. Ed. Sophie Fuller and Nicky Losseff. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. 151-72.

Piggott, Patrick. The Innocent Diversion: A Study of Music in the Life and Writings of Jane Austen. London: Douglas Cleverdon, 1979.

Rensch, Roslyn. Harps and Harpists. London: Duckworth, 1989.

Tanner, Tony. Jane Austen. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986.

Wells, Juliette. "'In music she had always used to feel alone in the world': Jane Austen, Solitude, and the Artistic Woman." Persuasions 26 (2004): 98-110.

Wiltshire, John, ed. Mansfield Park. Cambridge: CUP, 2005.

Zingel, Hans Joachim. Harp Music in the Nineteenth Century. Trans. and ed. Mark Palkovic. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992.

NOTES

(1.) See in particular Piggott, Libin, Wells, Lustig, and Morra.

(2.) For an overview of contemporary cautions against women's study of music, see Leppert, Music and Image Chapter 3, and Wells 99-102. For more general background on feminine accomplishments and music as a pastime, see Kelly, Byrne, and Gay.

(3.) Unlike the pianoforte, which is crucial to several of Austen's works, the harp takes a major role only in this novel. The harpist best known to Austen herself was her cousin Eliza Hancock, later the Comtesse de Feuillide, whose two volumes of harp music are included in the "second collection" of music manuscripts at Chawton House (Piggott 156).

(4.) Zingel and Rensch both supply information about, and pictures of, the kinds of harps available to turn-of-the-nineteenth-century performers. Characteristically, Austen does not concern herself with a technical description of Mary's instrument. Wiltshire, in a note to his Cambridge edition of the novel, makes the reasonable assumption that Mary's harp would be a double-action Erard instrument, which would weigh "approximately 20-5 lb or 9-11 kg" and "could readily be lifted by one man into a cart or barouche" (655).

(5.) Austen's word choice in this passage leaves us uncertain whether Fanny announces this interest to the assembled company or keeps it to herself; either seems plausible. That Mary later remembers what the narrator calls Fanny's "early-expressed wish on the subject" (207), however, confirms that Fanny must have stated it out loud.

(6.) The narrator also declares that Fanny "shewed herself not wanting in taste" and, later, that she perceives Mary to be playing "with superior tone and expression" (207). Piggott assesses these reactions of Fanny's in light of her absence of musical training (73).

(7.) Characteristically, Austen does not specify what Edmund's favorite air is, or indeed any of the music that Mary plays in the novel. Since Austen repeatedly states that Mary "played" (rather than "played and sang"), we can conclude that--in spite of Mary's participation in the glee-singing in Chapter Eleven--she is not in the habit of accompanying her own voice on the harp. The "air[s]" that she plays would most likely be Scottish or Irish tunes, of which a great number of popular collections were published in the early nineteenth century. A sense of these tunes can be gleaned from the excerpts from Austen's own collection included in Gammie and McCulloch's two volumes.

(8.) For a discussion of Austen's reluctance to narrate her heroines' solitary music-making, given the possible implications of women's creative pursuits, see Wells 104-08. I'm grateful to an AGM audience member for pointing out another possibility: that Mary, having seen how effective her harp was at attracting Edmund, would press it into service in her effort to secure a new suitor.

Juliette Wells, an assistant professor of English at Manhattanville College, is a co-editor of The Brontes in the World of the Arts (forthcoming) and has published essays on subjects ranging from Jane Austen to "chick lit."