Sunday 8 May 2011

Austen, Jane "Mansfield Park"


Austen, Jane "Mansfield Park" - 1814

Another one of this wonderful author's books. The life of Fanny Price, a poor girl growing up with rich relatives. I really liked the heroine and the way she stood up to all that pressure. The difficulties women had to face in that day and age were immense already. But here it was added. Fanny didn't get to experience the financial burden as so many other women at the time but she had to pay a huge price for this.

Not my absolute favourite of her novels but certainly one of my favourite books overall.

From the back cover: "At the age of ten, shy, vulnerable Fanny Price leaves behind her impoverished family in Portsmouth to go and live with her rich relatives at Mansfield Park.
Growing up with her cousins Tom, Edmund, Maria and Julia, she is aware that she is different from them and that her place in society cannot be taken for granted, although she is not treated unkindly. A dashing couple from London, Mary Crawford and her brother Henry, enter this stable, rural world. They succeed in dazzling everyone at Mansfield Park, except for Fanny, who sees through their shallow veneer. Throughout the dramatic events that follow it is she who is able to bring back some stability to the ruptured lives of those around her.
One of the great novels of the nineteenth century,
Mansfield Park echoes Jane Austen's fears and awareness of the dawn of a modern age, which was to bring about a complete break from the old country traditions and way of life."

I have reviewed "Mansfield Park" a second time as a member of The Motherhood and Jane Austen Book Club.  Find that review here and a list of all my "motherhood" reviews here.

I read a lot of novels by or about Jane Austen. Find a link to all my reviews here.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2022.

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