Will I love Mansfield Park?

For many Austen devotees, "it is a truth universally acknowledged" that MANCHESTER PARK is Jane Austen's least engaging novel. But picking up MANCHESTER PARK again this year was a revelation and an argument for second readings. I remembered it from a first encounter forty years ago as the one Jane Austen book that I didn't enjoy. It was also the one Austen novel I'd never reread, until this year. Fanny Price, the main character, couldn't hold a candle to Lizzie Bennet or Emma Woodhouse, I'd thought. She was timid and without an ounce of spirit or wit. Yes, Fanny is… show more.

It helps us understand the world of Jane Austen and the people of that time and place.

Jane Austen is unparalleled in her depiction of good and evil on a domestic level. While the situations are slightly less dramatic than in the other books I have selected, Mansfield Park compellingly presents the consequences of habituated action. Fanny Price is not perfect and certainly not most people’s cup of tea, but, like all Austen heroines, represents virtue and a growing self-knowledge over the course of the novel. The Crawford siblings are vivid examples of dulled moral vision. Without committing the literary sin of giving away the end, I will say that the “anti-romance” trajectory of the plot is… show more.

Fanny and Edmund, the heroine and hero, never develop the chemistry on the page one might wish for, but I still enjoy this biting moral satire. Fanny is an object of charity, quiet and meek and poor, but somehow has the strength to stand up for herself. Meanwhile, the liveliest, most attractive characters in this book are Mary and Henry Crawford—but are they good? Jane Austen was herself the daughter of an Anglican vicar, and if you read this with that in mind, you’ll notice that the entertainingly awful Aunt Norris is a vicar’s widow, that the new vicar’s family… show more.

Things here get tricky, but for me, the next best book by Austen is Mansfield Park. Fans are divided, and as you read, you will be, too. You will either have to overlook the piety and passivity of heroine Fanny Price or embrace her as an example of what Austen is most often writing about: the need to be authentic to one’s unique self, in all its flawed humanity, and resilient enough to go after what one really wants. Mansfield Park pulls no punches: the characters fail each other just like in real life. But this being Austen, they… show more.