Mansfield Park: Jane Austen

Mansfield Park is the story of an outsider who rises to the top. In many ways the most imposing and intriguing of Jane Austen’s novels, it is also one of the most serious and profound, Shakespearian in scope and brilliant in execution. By establishing a shy waif as her heroine, Austen is able to use Fanny Price’s personal drama to observe the world of abused privilege from within and without. In so doing she explores the great themes of nature and nurture, appearance and reality, knowledge and experience, achievement and inheritance. Anticipating the methods of Eliot and James, the author constructs a series of magnificent scenes which carry these themes forward without losing any opportunity to exercise her razor wit and sharp eye. This is a dark comedy which grows in stature with every reading.