Synopsis
This satirical Austen novel points to the hypocrisy of a country that calls itself free--England--yet denies women full moral stature. Fanny Price, unlike any of Austen's other heroines, is from a poor family--though she was raised by her rich uncle and aunt in the grand country house of the title, where only her cousin Edmund (with whom she falls in love) helps her with the difficulties she suffers from the rest of the family, caused partly by her own fearfulness and timidity. When the sophisticated Crawfords (Henry and Mary), visit the Mansfield neighborhood, the moral sense of each marriageable member of the Mansfield family is tested.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1995-11-01 | | Narrated by: | Juliet Stevenson | | Edition Description: | Abridged |
| Size | | Height: | 5.8 in | | Width: | 4.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 9.6 oz |
Industry Reviews
"'Is she queer?--Is she prudish?' These are not quotations from contenders in the brouhaha over Jane Austen's sexuality. They are questions the rakish Henry Crawford in 'Mansfield Park' asks as he wonders about the nerdiest of all heroines, Fanny Price. The erotic charm that makes other women in that novel yield one after another to Henry's desire fails to make a dent on this mousy and withdrawn girl...Henry Crawford's sense that Fanny is either queer or prudish also describes two contending traditions of Austenian reception that have prevailed since the mid-19th century...Those adhering to the elegaic tradition...believe Austen gives us a reassuringly orthodox world...where...the desires of gentlemen and ladies for each other are obviously complementary, mutually fulfilling, and above all inevitable...[In] another, anti-normative tradition...Austen has been suspected of sexual abnormality for a good long time..."
London Review of Books - Claudia Johnson (10/05/1995)
"'Mansfield Park' is a fairy tale....The charm of 'Mansfield Park' can be fully enjoyed only when we adopt its conventions, its rules, its enchanting make-believe. Miss Austen's is not a violently vivid masterpiece....Novels like 'Madame Bovary' or 'Anna Karenina' are delightful explosions admirably controlled. 'Mansfield Park', on the other hand, is the work of a lady and the game of a child. But from that workbasket comes exquisite needlework, and there is a streak of marvelous genius in that child."
"Lectures on Literature" - Vladimir Nabokov (01/01/1980)
"What is the matter with Fanny Price, shadow heroine of Jane Austen's 'Mansfield Park'? Why is she so wimpy, nervous, passive, lacking in spirit, so relentlessly correct, so given--when she is invited--to little puffs of sanctimony, and why despite these qualities does she end up the respected mistress of the Bertram family and of their worthy country seat, Mansfield Park?...Not one of [Austen's other] heroines...has begun life as radically disentitled as Fanny Price of Portsmouth, and in the reading and understanding of her character we can bring forward some of our contemporary psychological insights....[O]nce again, Austen has read all the signs and correctly apportioned the rewards."
Salon - Carol Shields (01/12/1998)
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