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 one of her pre-1800 writings. Mansfield Park has sometimes beenconsidered atypical of Jane Austen, as being solemn and moralistic, especially whencontrasted with the immediately antecede Pride and Prejudice and the immediatelyfollowing Emma. Poor tush bell is brought up at Mansfield Park with her rich uncleand aunt, where only her cousin Edmund helps her with the difficulties she suffers fromthe sopor of the family, and from her avouch fearfulness and timidity. When thesophisticated Crawfords (Henry and Mary), visit the Mansfield neighbourhood, the moralsense of individually 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 country setting, play an important role in the novel,and are contrasted with the squalour of Fannys own birth familys home at Portsmouth,and with the decadence of London.Readers have a all-embracing 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 tone here), or have no reason for her forced inaction(doubtless, those are people who have never lacked confidence, or been without adate on Friday night). Mansfield Park has also been utilise to draw connections betweenthe "genteel" rural English society that Jane Austen describes and the right(prenominal) world,since Fannys uncle is a slave-owner (with an estate in Antigua in the Caribbeanslavery was not abolished in the British empire until 1833).