Jane Austen began writing Mansfield Park in 1811 but did not publish it until 1814. With this, the penultimate novel published during her lifetime, she focused on financially comfortable small communities of individuals, raising the quotidian to a level of importance. Focusing on everyday matters, she shaped a “comedy of manners,” a phrase that would later become synonymous with her name. While this novel, like her next work, Emma (1816), carried a moral message, Austen edged her tone with less irony than usual.

Not a particularly popular novel when published, Mansfield Park focuses on Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram of Mansfield Park, along with their adult offspring, Maria, Julia, Tom, and Edmund. The younger generation has been raised to follow proper social behavior but knows little of morality. Austen chose to represent the regrettable Regency support of capitalist enterprise through the descent into chaos of the Bertram family, so focused on materialism that they lose the order dictated by traditional ethical behavior.

Lady Bertram’s not-so-wealthy niece, Fanny Price, lives with the family for a time, suffering patronizing treatment from all except Edmund. Her quiet demeanor at first marks her as merely dull, but her later refusal to join the ensuing chaos allows readers to reinterpret her seeming passivity as quiet strength. Feminist critics interpret the traditional enforced silence of Fanny as her method of coopting power from her judgmental surroundings.

When Sir Thomas must leave the country for a time, his children turn completely self-indulgent, a turn resisted by the teenage Fanny, who, despite her lesser financial status, has been raised with far more grace and sense of value than her cousins. Although engaged to Mr. Rushworth, Maria flirts with Henry Crawford, whose sister Mary enthralls Edmund. When the fickle Maria decides to end her flirtation and return to Rushworth, Henry Crawford expresses his attraction for Fanny.

Sir Thomas returns in time to note Fanny’s rejection of Crawford; he upbraids her for throwing away a chance at a secure financial future. Fanny returns home to Portsmouth, but almost immediately wants to return to Mansfield Park to Edmund, whom she comes to understand she loves. She arrives to find that Maria Bertram Rushworth has scandalized the family by running away with Henry Crawford, while Julia elopes with another ne’er-do-well named Mr. Yates.

Edmund has hoped to escape his home by taking orders, but he sacrifices the affections of Mary Crawford, who has no desire to marry a preacher. Fanny suffers no such qualms, however, and she and Edmund realize their love and plan their wedding. They develop the only relationship among the several in the novel that promises any happiness.

Bibliography
Ross, Josephine. Jane Austen: A Companion. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002.
Southam, B. C., ed. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park: A Casebook. London: Macmillan, 1976.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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