Book Review: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Having been moderately obsessed with Jane Austen in high school, I was very quick to recommend Mansfield Park as my book club choice for this month (confession: I am in two book clubs. Nerd alert. This particular book clubs is very small- only 6 people- and we are devoted exclusively to the classics. How does the other half live?) Perhaps having just come off the high of reading Lady Chatterly's Lover, the girls were all for another dive into a formidable piece of brit lit. Although this pick waned in popularity compared with D.H. Lawrence's sex thriller, I thought it proved classic Austen and well worth the read.

The protagonist, Fanny Price, is a young girl from a poor family, raised by her rich aunt and uncle, but treated more like the hired help by everyone except for her cousin, Edmund. He and Fanny are most virtuous in their own personal and social lives, while the rest of the family and friends suffer from a number of character flaws, including being vain and spoiled. Fanny's two female cousins, Maria and Julia, closely resemble Cinderella's evil stepsisters, and without spoiling the book (for all of my imaginary readers who no doubt have Mansfield Park next on their reading list), much like Cinderella, good triumphs over evil.

And that's really it. Because as any of us who have read Austen know, she thoroughly develops her characters for the entire plot and only writes the book's ending in the last two pages (really my only criticism of Austen). But ah the character development! Her writing is truly a pleasure and while sometimes dense with running sentence structure, her prose make such a comprehensive narrative.

As for Fanny Price, her upstanding character is the subject of much of the book's criticism: namely, she's just too good to be true. She is timid, keenly aware of even the slightest ill motive and very disapproving. It's hard to relate to perfect Fanny Price, but her character is endearing all the same as she does a likable job at serving as a near-biblical example of how we should act and treat others.