Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽'s Reviews > Mansfield Park

Upping my rating from 3 stars to 4 on reread. Mansfield Park isn't as easy to love as most of Jane Austen's other novels, but it has a lot of insights to offer into the personalities, strengths and weaknesses of not just Fanny, but all of the other characters who live in and around Mansfield Park, a country manor in England. Like Kelly says in her truly excellent review of this book, it's called "Mansfield Park" - not Fanny or Foolishness and Awkwardness - for a good reason.

The other thing that helped me was mentally repeating the mantra that stood me in good stead when I was rereading Rebecca: This is not a romance novel. If you read it with the standard romantic expectations, you're likely to be disappointed. A starry-eyed view of romance and happily-ever-after is not the point of Mansfield Park (and, really, not of any of Austen's other novels, Darcy and Wentworth notwithstanding). Here it's much more about the social commentary, and often about the ways people hurt others through their selfishness or lack of consideration.

After rereading both Mansfield Park and Persuasion, I think that Fanny is just as good a heroine as Anne Elliot, and actually they have a lot in common in their personalities: sensitive, rather shy, physically weak, kind-hearted and giving to a fault. Anne just got the benefit of a better romantic plot line and (sorry/notsorry, Edmund) a far more appealing hero in Frederick Wentworth.

Once I stopped trying to squeeze Fanny and Edmund into the roles of romantic heroine and hero, I was able to appreciate how nuanced and realistically Austen drew these characters. Fanny is the poor cousin who is taken in by her Aunt Bertram's family as a young girl. She's a sensitive soul and a quiet personality, with an unfailing moral compass. Fom the modern point of view she can be a bit of a prig at times, but she was in line with the social expectations for her time, especially for a dependent young woman.

Fanny struggles with her health, partly because of her Aunt Norris' unflagging (and unasked for) efforts to keep Fanny humble and always, always useful, and to save the Bertrams' money at Fanny's expense: her rooms are bitterly cold in winter; there's never a fire in her sitting room until her inattentive uncle realizes it one day. (Aunt Norris, by the way, is a brilliant creation, a shockingly appalling person that still makes you laugh.)

And Fanny also struggles with her unrequited love for her cousin Edmund, the only truly loving person in the Bertram family toward her. So it's a rough blow for Fanny when the fashionable, self-centered and worldly brother and sister team, Henry and Mary Crawford, sweep into town and upend everything at Mansfield Park. Edmund's sisters, Maria and Julia, fight over Henry's attention (Maria's engagement to another man not posing much of an obstacle in her mind; she'd love to trade up personality- and intelligence-wise). Edmund promptly falls for Mary Crawford, who can't quite believe she's really giving a second son - and one who's going to be a clergyman! - the time of day. Edmund is still absentmindedly kind to Fanny, but he's completely head over heels for Mary, to Fanny's vast chagrin.

I never thought Mary quite as unworthy a person as Fanny does, though that may be my modern perspective talking. Henry clearly starts out as a player and a user, but Fanny's sweetness and goodness start to change his jaded heart.

Mansfield Park is so insightful about people’s faults and foibles and personal relationships. Just, look somewhere else if you want a soul-satisfying romance.

Bonus material: After reading Mansfield Park, I jumped into Sherwood Smith's Henry and Fanny: An Alternate Ending to Mansfield Park to see if she could convince me that, just maybe, Jane Austen got the ending wrong here. She is pretty convincing! Give this a shot if you’re interested. It’s one of the few JAFF (Jane Austen fan fiction, for the uninitiated) works I think is really good.

Initial review: Fanny always struck me as a sad sack, and Edmund as needing a nice big shot of testosterone so he could step it up a notch. I really need to reread this one to see if I can develop more appreciation for the main characters.

Maybe my problem is that I want all of my Austen heroines to be more like Elizabeth Bennet.