**Mansfield Park** follows Fanny Price, a poor girl raised by wealthy relatives in this 1814 English novel that examines class, morality, and belonging. Austen's fiction explores the tensions between social expectations and personal integrity through Fanny's quiet observations of her adoptive family's world.
About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet’s lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income. All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match, and her uncle, the lawyer, himself, allowed her to be at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it. She had two sisters to be benefited by her elevation; and such of their acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and Miss Frances quite as handsome as Miss Maria, did not scruple to predict their marrying with almost equal advantage. But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them. Miss Ward, at the end of half a dozen years, found herself …Continue reading →
A brilliant English novelist of the early 19th century, she crafted witty social comedies that exposed the constraints facing women in Regency England. Her six novels, including Pride and Prejudice and Emma, revolutionized literature with their sharp psychological insight and sparkling dialogue, establishing her as one of history's most beloved storytellers. All works by Jane Austen →
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