Mansfield Park

"Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings."

Fanny Price is adopted into the family of her rich uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram. Brought up with the four Bertram children, she is condescendingly treated as a poor relation by 'Aunt Norris,' a satirical portrait of a busybody. Of her cousins, only Edmund, a young clergyman, appreciates her fine qualities, and she falls in love with him. Edmund, unfortunately is irresistibly drawn to the shallow, worldly Mary Crawford...

Mary is seeming the quintessential Jane Austen heroine. Gregarious, warm-hearted, and, above all else, witty, she displays all the familiar Austen virtues, and she stands in need of the familiar Austen lessons as well. Like Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of Pride and Prejudice, she banters archly with the man she is falling in love with, and, like Elizabeth, she must learn to set aside her preconceptions in order to recognize that love. Like Emma Woodhouse, the heroine of Emma, she speaks more brilliantly and speculates more dazzlingly than anyone around her, and, like Emma, she must learn to rein in the wit that tempts her at times to impropriety.

But Mary Crawford is not the heroine of Mansfield Park—Fanny Price is, and therein lies the novel's hook. For Fanny differs not merely from Mary, but also from our most basic expectations of what a novel's protagonist should do and be.

"Full of the energies of discord — sibling rivalry, greed, ambition, illicit sexual passion, and vanity." (Margaret Drabble).

"Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire." (J.K. Rowling).

"Austen looks at her world with a cool, undressing gaze... she is a formidable opponent of hypocrisy and sentimentality." (The Observer).