Around the time that Deresiewicz reread "Mansfield Park," he became acquainted through a mutual friend with a group of wealthy people, by whom he says he was at first dazzped. "I stayed on the edges, gazed at the women, and tried to pay for my keep with witty remarks," he wrote. He never felt that he belonged, but he was fascinated. After the mutual friend married his wealthy, well-connected girlfriend, someone remarked to 锘匡豢Deresiewicz, "He got what he wanted. He's on the inside. He's been working on this for years." Deresiewicz began to wonder if the group, and his own friend, were really as fascinating as he'd thought them at first, especially as he came to realize how badly they sometimes treated people. They reminded him of the aristocrats, Henry and Mary Crawford, in "Mansfield Park" who are wealthy and seem to be kind at some portions of the novel, but are really vain and superficial. "I had fallen, I realized, for the oldest myth in the book," Deresiewicz wrote of reading "Mansfield Park." "The idea that upper-class people are all urbane and cultured and intellectually sophisticated... fat wallets and interesting thoughts have no particular connection." Reading "Mansfield Park" and seeing a negative example of how to treat people and behave well in some of his friends prodded Deresiewicz to make an effort to be considerate of others.
