- Mansfield Park: Jane Austen.
When Fanny Price is ten years old, she is taken from her parent's house in Portsmouth to live with her wealthy aunt and uncle at Mansfield Park. Her two girl cousins and awful Aunt Norris remind her daily how grateful she should be for this change of circumstance. Fanny is like Cinderella; useful as a companion for the indolent Lady Bertram but not a person in her own right. Fortunately Edmund, the younger brother, is kind to her and she looks up to him. Her admiration turns into a deep, abiding love over time.
Fanny's world consists of her new family at Mansfield Park, the Grants in the parsonage and their relations the Crawfords, Mary and Henry, who have come down from London to live with them. While Uncle Thomas is away in Antigua overseeing his sugar plantations, the young people are left to their own devices and they come up with the idea of putting on a play. Fanny is entreated to take on a small role but she is reluctant as she doesn't want to act. Neither is Edmund and this sets them apart from the rest and highlights the difference in values between them and the others, between liveliness and moral propriety. Fanny, although quiet, is a keen observer of people and has the measure of everyone which proves to be right in the end.
I enjoyed reading Austen again, but I didn't find this one particularly enjoyable.
I found it rather long, particularly the first half. I think there was too much time devoted to the play. It was hard to understand Fanny's and Edmund's position until I read the introduction and learned why this was such an issue for them. The play itself wasn't discussed much either and I realised what it was much later on in a footnote and understood better then. Austen's position against disorder and impropriety where good principles, even temper and duty should prevail, made this a worthy book and a little heavy going.
While I had huge sympathy for Fanny, she is a really quiet character and only becomes animated half way through the book when Mr. Crawford proposes to her and she takes a stance against it and him and rightly so. I enjoyed this section and the part where she stays in Portsmouth. She finds out that she has nothing in common with her own family any more and she feels displaced. Mansfield Park, with all its faults, is where she belongs.
Overall, I liked it. I didn't love it. I'll read another Austen at some stage.