Mansfield Park :: essays research papers

Mansfield ParkThis novel, originally published in 1814, is the first of Jane Austens novels not to be arevised version of adept of her pre-1800 writings. Mansfield Park has sometimes beenconsidered atypical of Jane Austen, as being solemn and moralistic, especially whencontrasted with the immediately preceding Pride and Prejudice and the immediatelyfollowing Emma. Poor nookie Price is brought up at Mansfield Park with her rich uncleand aunt, where only her cousin Edmund helps her with the difficulties she suffers fromthe rest of the family, and from her own fearfulness and timidity. When thesophisticated Crawfords (Henry and Mary), visit the Mansfield neighbourhood, the moralsense of all(prenominal) marriageable member of the Mansfield family is tested in various ways,but Fanny emerges more or less unscathed. The well-ordered (if somewhat vacuous)house at Mansfield Park, and its rustic setting, play an important role in the novel,and are contrasted with the squalour of Fannys ow n birth familys home at Portsmouth,and with the decadence of London.Readers have a wide variety of reactions to Mansfield Park-most of which alreadyappear in the Opinions of Mansfield Park collected by Jane Austen herself soon after thenovels publication. Some dislike the character of Fanny as "priggish" (however, it isEdmund who sets the moral ghost here), or have no sympathy for her forced inaction(doubtless, those are people who have never lacked confidence, or been without adate on Friday dark). Mansfield Park has also been used to draw connections betweenthe "genteel" rural English society that Jane Austen describes and the outside world,since Fannys uncle is a slave-owner (with an estate in Antigua in the Caribbean bondage was not abolished in the British empire until 1833).