July 2010
Mansfield Park and Mummies by Jane Austen and Vera Nazarian
Norilana Books
ISBN 9781607620471
Review by Carla Lee
Carla Lee has a Bachelor of Arts in English from Southeast Missouri State University and is pursuing a Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School. Her reviews have appeared in Broad Universe’s The Broadsheet; Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley; Paper Cuts, a column at InsidePulse.com; Save Yourself, a column in the Res Gestae; and at InnsmouthFreePress.com. She loves werewolves, full moons, and long distance motorcycle rides, and can be found online at carla-lee.com.
I should note three things at the start of this review.
First, I am not a Jane Austen fan. Please withhold your exclamations of shock and dismay; there is nothing you can say that my younger sister hasn’t said a thousand times before. (A wonderful writer herself, she is particularly creative when lambasting my lack of love for the works of Austen.) I have had her genius explained to me many times, but I’ve never myself experienced such joy while reading her works. This does allow me to approach Mansfield Park and Mummies without lamenting that readers should be more interested in reading the classic novel without the supernatural trappings. Maybe that is true, but I have no love for Austen to color my reading of this novel.
Second, though there’s been a lot of buzz about the Austen and monsters mash-ups and though I find the concept interesting — after all, I frequently say that werewolves make any story better — I wasn’t interested enough to want to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, in large part because I have zero interest in men rewriting the stories of women. This is not applicable to Mansfield Park and Mummies, written by Vera Nazarian (and Austen, obviously).
Third, I love mash-ups done well, when the added material comments on and expands the original. (At least musical mash-ups; this is my first experience with a written mash-up.) This is why I was interested in the concept of adding monsters to Austen’s works.
My love of werewolves trumped my lack of love for Austen and I leapt at the opportunity to review Mansfield Park and Mummies.
I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the novel. This is not only because of the inclusion of supernatural elements, however. Over the past few years, I have been working on my knee-jerk dislike of romances and romantic comedies — and the potential misogyny inherent in such an immediate response — and have found a new appreciation for the genre. I am much more appreciative of the charm and wit of Austen’s romances.
Though there are some hilarious moments which draw on the fact that the characters are far too reserved and polite to comment on the supernatural activities taking place around them — the shambling mummies walking into walls or the snuffling and howling of the society werewolves — most of the humor comes from the original, Austen’s sharp observations of the problems of wealth and the twists of society.
The original story closely follows Fanny Price, a poor child who goes to live with rich relatives at Mansfield Park. As she grows up, she falls in love with her cousin, Edmund, and faces various familial and romantic difficulties.
The supernatural elements of Mansfield Park and Mummies are, for the most part, a lot of fun. They are incorporated well into the original story; sometimes too well, in that the supernatural storyline relies so heavily on the original that I am left wondering what, exactly, is the point of the supernatural story.
Unlike the premises of some of the other mash-ups, I found the addition of Lady Bertram’s obsession with Egypt very fitting to the original setting. There was an Egyptology craze in England at the time and it is completely believable that Lady Bertram would have purchased an artifact or two that led to her possession and drive to collect as many Egyptian artifacts as she can.
The believability of the Lady Bertram’s Egyptian craze carries over into the new supernatural storyline in which she brings a mummy — and all his many mummified servants — back to life. Rameidas Xethesamen, or Lord Eastwind as he allows himself to be called, is a delightfully creepy addition to the story, lurking in shadows and in corners once he has been awakened, observing all that occurs around him without interacting with most of the characters, and slowly, inevitably pursuing the woman he has chosen to be his bride: Fanny Price.
Fanny is the only one unaffected by the supernatural aspects of the story, and therefore the only one who can save Mansfield Park from its mummies, vampires, and werewolves, oh my.
The weaknesses of Mansfield Park and Mummies mostly come down to its reliance on the narrative threads of the original story. Instead of exploring previously untouched possibilities, it strictly follows the original and suffers for it. For all the supernatural additions, there is little that actually tells a new story or examines the old in a new way.
The supernatural casting in particular is trite: Fanny’s competition for Edmund becomes, of course, the seductive and dangerous vampire and the rich boor of a potential husband for Maria becomes a werewolf. I would have rather seen some twists in the supernatural casting of characters, rather than taking the easy comparisons.
One of the advertised selling points of Mansfield Park and Mummies is the supposedly hilarious scholarly footnotes. I do not see the appeal. There are only a handful of footnotes which frequently try too hard to be humorous and fail. The same joke is often repeated, and even if a joke about Austen’s nonsexual use of “intercourse” is funny the first time (and I argue it is not), it certainly isn’t funny the second or third or so on.
Worse, within the footnotes is a play made on Austen’s use of “gay” to mean happy instead of homosexual. The footnote includes a joking aside about it, which, when coupled with “not that there’s anything wrong with that,” smacks of the condescending way some straight people feel the need to ensure that everyone knows they aren’t queer even while claiming it is just fine to be queer. If there was truly nothing wrong with it, why make the point that the speaker is not queer? Why make the point that “gay” doesn’t mean homosexual? Maybe it was simply another joke in the footnotes that fell flat, but it was one which soured me on the mash-up writing.
Mansfield Park and Mummies is an enjoyable, if somewhat shallow, combination of Austen’s classic writing and Nazarian’s supernatural plots. The various monsters are fun additions, but add little substance to the story; instead they are a lovely icing to an already delicious cake. Nazarian’s writing is occasionally witty and beautiful, including some lovely lycanthrope lines: “And the constant sidelong glances at Mrs. Norris in the bright moonlight accorded her peculiar, even grotesque, momentary illusions of lupine scowling jaws which were of course not there.” This is a fun introduction to Austen for those who need more than romantic adventures in society to encourage them to read her work, and an entertaining addition to the Austen mash-up collection for those who love all things Austen.
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