Mansfield Park Memory and the Past Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

[S]he could scarcely see an object in that room which had not an interesting remembrance connected with it. Everything was a friend, or bore her thoughts to a friend [...] (16.2).

Fanny seems to personify her objects and trinkets here, turning them into friends and companions. Fanny also seems to turn memory itself into a sort of friend or companion.

Quote #5

The table between the windows was covered with work-boxes and netting-boxes which had been given her at different time, principally by Tom; and she grew bewildered as to the amount of the debt which all these kind remembrances produced (16.3).

Past "remembrances" create obligations and duties for Fanny. In a way, Fanny's memories are almost binding and greatly influence the way she acts and thinks long after.

Quote #6

"How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!" And following the latter train of thought, she soon afterwards added: "If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. [...]. We are, to be sure, a miracle every way – but our powers of recollecting and forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out" (22.12).

This is probably the best and clearest thematic statement about memory and the past in the entire book. What is particularly notable here is that Fanny is the one who says this. Since Fanny rarely speaks, and almost never speaks at such length, this section really stands out. It's notable that of all the themes and concepts with which to associate Fanny, memory is the one to which she's most explicitly tied. What might this say about Fanny's character?