Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park has been described by a leading literary critic as "one of the most profound novels of the nineteenth century". As the title suggests, it is the story of a house, Mansfield Park, and the people who come and go and carry on their intrigues and affairs in and around it. Mansfield Park centres on the development of its heroine Fanny Price from a timid, passive girl to a mature and self-knowing woman. Fanny is 'inwardly' shaped by the house which is the symbol of a cultivated, harmonious way of life. The most dramatic exterior happenings are those that disturb that way of life.