JANE AUSTEN: Mansfield Park Remember to support your ideas with details from the writing. Either 9 Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it: They entered. Fanny's imagination had prepared her for something grander than a mere, spacious, oblong room, fitted up for the purpose of devotion-with nothing more striking or more solemn than the profusion of mahogany, and the crimson velvet cushions appearing over the ledge of the family gallery above. 'I am disappointed, cousin,' said she, in a low voice to Edmund. ‘This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing awful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here are no aisles, no arches, no inscriptions, no banners. No banners, cousin, to be 'blown by the night wind of Heaven.' No signs that a 'Scottish monarch sleeps below."' 'You forget, Fanny, how lately all this has been built, and for how confined a purpose, compared with the old chapels of castles and monasteries. It was only for the private use of the family. They have been buried, I suppose, in the parish church. There you must look for the banners and the achievements.' 'It was foolish of me not to think of all that, but I am disappointed.' Mrs Rushworth began her relation. ‘This chapel was fitted up as you see it, in James the Second's time. Before that period, as I understand, the pews were only wainscoat; and there is some reason to think that the linings and cushions of the pulpit and family seat were only purple cloth; but this is not quite certain. It is a handsome chapel, and was formerly in constant use both morning and evening. Prayers were always read in it by the domestic chaplain, within the memory of many. But the late Mr Rushworth left it off.' 'Every generation has its improvements,' said Miss Crawford, with a smile, to Edmund. Mrs Rushworth was gone to repeat her lesson to Mr Crawford; and Edmund, Fanny, and Miss Crawford remained in a cluster together. 'It is a pity,' cried Fanny, 'that the custom should have been discontinued. It was a valuable part of former times. There is something in a chapel and chaplain so much in character with a great house, with one's ideas of what such a household should be! A whole family assembling regularly for the purpose of prayer, is fine!' 'Very fine indeed!' said Miss Crawford, laughing. 'It must do the heads of the family a great deal of good to force all the poor housemaids and footmen to leave business and pleasure, and say their prayers here twice a day, while they are inventing excuses themselves for staying away.' 'That is hardly Fanny's idea of a family assembling,” said Edmund. 'If the master and mistress do not attend themselves, there must be more harm than good in the custom.' 'At any rate, it is safer to leave people to their own devices on such subjects. Every body likes to go their own way-to chuse their own time and manner of devotion. The obligation of attendance, the formality, the restraint, the length of time-altogether it is a formidable thing and what nobody likes; and if the good people who used to kneel and gape in that gallery could have foreseen that the time would ever come when men and women might lie another ten minutes in bed, when they woke with a head-ache, without danger of reprobation, because chapel was missed, they would have jumped with joy and envy. Cannot you imagine with what unwilling feelings the former belles of the house of Rushworth did many a time repair to this chapel? The young Mrs Eleanors and Mrs Bridgets- starched up into seeming piety, but with heads full of something very different-especially if the poor chaplain were not worth looking at-and, in those days, I fancy parsons were very inferior even to what they are now.' For a few moments she was unanswered. Fanny coloured and looked at Edmund, but felt too angry for speech; and he needed a little recollection before he could say, 'Your lively mind can hardly be serious even on serious subjects. You have given us an amusing sketch, and human nature cannot say it was not so. We must all feel at times the difficulty of fixing our thoughts as we could wish; but if you are supposing it a frequent thing, that is to say, a weakness grown into a habit from neglect, what could be expected from the private devotions of such persons? Do you think the minds which are suffered, which are indulged in wanderings in a chapel, would be more collected in a closet?' [from Chapter 9] Explore the ways in which Austen makes this such a revealing moment in the novel.

1. Explore the ways in which Austen makes this such a revealing moment in the novel.[25]