Restless confinements

In a 1971 article, Ann Banfield writes, “If Mansfield is ‘modern, airy, and well-situated,’ the house at Sotherton, ‘built in Elizabeth’s time’ and ‘furnished in the taste of fifty years back,’ is ‘ill-placed,’ for ‘it stands in one of the lowest spots of the park.’ It is without the essential feature of the pleasing landscape – a ‘fair prospect.’ The lawn is ‘bounded on each side by a high wall,’ and beyond this ‘iron palissades’ hinder the view and forbid entrances to the wilderness. Sotherton violates the landscape gardener’s ideal of a garden freed from boundaries. Furthermore, its avenue and its wood, ‘laid out with too much regularity,’ suggest the remains of formal gardens, dating from the house’s construction . . . .

“These features – circumscribed view and geometric gardens – are translated into their psychological counterparts. Sotherton’s old-fashioned, formal grounds elicit feelings of restraint. The visit occurs on an oppressively hot August day, and the company finds the house confining, ‘as by one impulse, one wish for air and liberty, all walked out,’ seeking ‘happy independence.’ Their failure to find it within Sotherton’s gates supports Rushworth’s conviction that it ‘looked like a prison – a dismal old prison.’”

An old, stately, and formal house, Sotherton is far from the ideal for Austen. In fact, Austen makes it clear that Sotherton is a grand nullity, a great formal building that hides what Banfield calls “moral emptiness.” This is symbolized by the chapel, an “improved” chapel where services are no longer regularly held. This, importantly, is the chapel where Maria Bertram and Rushworth are married, a marriage that is as empty a formality as the chapel itself.

At Sotherton, the effect of this confinement and sense of overbearing restraint is a feeling of restlessness, of pointless movement, ultimately of transgression, as Henry conducts Maria through the iron gate while Rushworth is back at the house trying to find the key.