Deep Chronotopes Map

The deep chronotopes map, like that for syuhzet, shows how Mansfield Park evolves with Fanny. The 'little white attic' and 'the old school-room' are both 'castle' and 'idyll', so alternately lonely and entrapping, and homely, comforting, and familiar. A key feature of the provincial novel, and of 'nested' spaces is they are grounded in time and space, but remain relatively abstract. Places are named, but could be anywhere. The places that hold the greatest significance (or action) are rooms (drawing-rooms, ball-rooms), roads, and gardens. The deep chronotopic map for Mansfield Park, with its dominant chronotopes of 'parlour', 'castle', 'threshold', 'encounter', and 'road', neatly aligns with this base provincial structure. What is more revealing is the relative subordination of the 'idyll'. The map shows that the way Fanny considers space is how it should be, not how it actually is. Her idealising generates the 'idyll', but the reality is the far more dominant 'parlour'. The barely connected 'metanarrative' points to the muted narrator and a narrative style that is nearly omniscient, and the way that the 'anti-idyll' is only accessed through 'metanarrative' illustrates how the novel’s most unsavoury aspects are kept apart from the main action.