Mansfield Park By Jane Austen

This is Austen's most complex and controversial work. It has some overtones which make it seem more Victorian than Regency. The Heroine, Fanny Price is not liked by everyone, she comes across at times as dull, prudish and irritatingly humble like Uriah Heep. Fanny is a poor relation, like some Victorian heroines. Her mother made a bad marriage to a Marine officer, and they ended up living in Portsmouth with a large family and not much money. Mrs Price's sister, Lady Bertram had married a rich baronet and Sir Thomas, her husband is a strict but kind man who offers to help her and the children, as best he can. Mrs Norris, Lady Bertram's other sister is a mean and nasty woman, who married the clergyman at Mansfield, and who shamelessly crawls to her rich sister and brother in law. She makes a vague suggestion that she might adopt Fanny but she has no intention of taking on a child and having to provide for her out of a moderate income so Fanny ends up living at the Mansfield Park house, with her cousins, Tom, Edmund, Maria and Julia. Tom, the eldest son, is lazy, and not very bright... Edmund, his younger brother is very serious, and rather dull and is intended for the Church. THe two sisters are silly and spoiled and they tend to bully Fanny who is also treated very much as a poor relation by Mrs Norris who runs the house since Lady Bertram tends to spend most of her time lying on a sofa doing nothing, though she is pleasant enough. Edmund feels sorry for Fanny but he does not really realise how much the child suffers by being bullied by Mrs Norris and ignored by Julia and Maria.