Jane Austen 
Mansfield Park 

‘Mansfield Park’ is a novel by Jane Austen published in three volumes in 1814. In its tone and discussion of religion and religious duty, it is the most serious of Austen’s novels.

While ‘Mansfield Park’ appears in some ways to continue where ‘Pride and Prejudice’ left off, it is a much darker work, which challenges the very values (of tradition, stability, retirement and faithfulness) it appears to endorse. 



Adopted into the household of her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, Fanny Price grows up a meek outsider among her cousins in the unaccustomed elegance of Mansfield Park. Soon after Sir Thomas absents himself on estate business in Antigua (the family’s investment in slavery and sugar is considered in the Introduction in a new, post-colonial light), Mary Crawford and her brother Henry arrive at Mansfield, bringing with them London glamour, and the seductive taste for flirtation and theatre that precipitates a crisis.