Mansfield Park Summary: Jane Austen's Quietest and Most Divisive Novel
What Mansfield Park is about
Mansfield Park was Jane Austen's third published novel, brought out by Thomas Egerton in 1814. A second edition followed from John Murray in 1816, still within Austen's lifetime. Oddly for a book now firmly in the canon, it received no public reviews at all until 1821.
The story begins with a transaction dressed up as charity. Fanny Price, aged ten, is sent away from her overcrowded, impoverished home in Portsmouth to live with her wealthy aunt and uncle at Mansfield Park. She is the poor relation, and everyone makes sure she knows it. Her four older cousins, Tom, Edmund, Maria and Julia, mostly ignore or mistreat her. Only Edmund is kind. Her other aunt, Mrs Norris, the wife of the clergyman at the Mansfield parsonage, is actively cruel, and when she is widowed five years later her visits to the great house increase along with her unpleasantness.
The novel then follows Fanny into early adulthood. Sir Thomas Bertram leaves for Antigua to deal with problems on his sugar plantation, taking his spendthrift heir Tom with him. With the head of the household gone, the young people are left to themselves. Mrs Norris secures the rich but weak-willed Mr Rushworth for Maria, who accepts him for his money. Then Henry Crawford and his sister Mary arrive at the parsonage to stay with their half-sister, and their fashionable London manners unsettle everything.
Much of the middle of the book turns on a private theatrical. Tom pushes the household into rehearsing Elizabeth Inchbald's play Lovers' Vows. Edmund objects, both because his father would disapprove and because the subject matter is unsuitable, but he gives in and takes the role of lover to Mary's character. The rehearsals give Henry further cover to flirt with Maria, who is already engaged. Sir Thomas returns home without warning, finds the play in progress and is furious. The theatrical is cancelled. Henry leaves without explanation, and Maria, humiliated, marries Mr Rushworth anyway.
Henry returns and decides, for entertainment, to make Fanny fall in love with him. He oversteps his own plan and proposes. Fanny refuses, because she has seen how he treats women, and she will not explain her reasons for fear of exposing Maria. Sir Thomas, baffled by her refusal of so advantageous a match, sends her back to Portsmouth so that poverty might teach her sense.
The main characters
Fanny Price is one of Austen's least immediately likeable heroines, which is precisely why she has been argued over for two centuries. She is physically frail, socially timid and morally immovable. Her power in the book is entirely negative: she refuses things.
Edmund Bertram, the second son, intends to take orders. He is Fanny's protector and her blind spot, since he cannot see that Mary Crawford's charm comes attached to a contempt for his chosen profession. Mary tells him outright that she will never dance with a clergyman.
Henry and Mary Crawford are the novel's real engine. They are witty, generous, genuinely attractive and entirely without an inner compass. Mrs Norris is a masterpiece of petty tyranny, and Lady Bertram, who barely moves from her sofa, is comic indolence taken to its logical conclusion.
The themes
Class runs through every page, but it is handled coldly. Fanny's worth is never in doubt to the reader and never acknowledged by the family until the book is nearly over. The Portsmouth episode is the sharpest piece of social writing Austen produced, forcing Fanny to compare the chaos of her birth family with the order of the house that has slighted her for a decade.
Then there is the question of what Mansfield Park is built on. Sir Thomas's wealth comes from a sugar plantation in Antigua, and the novel's treatment of slavery has been one of the central critical arguments about it. Readers have also disagreed over Austen's views on theatrical performance, and over how central ordination and religion really are to the book's design. These disagreements have shaped the stage and screen adaptations, which tend to pick a side.
How it ends
Skip this paragraph if you want the ending left alone. Henry and Maria have an affair, which is reported in the newspapers. Mr Rushworth sues for divorce and the Bertrams are disgraced. Tom falls gravely ill. Edmund brings Fanny home, where she steadies the household, and Sir Thomas finally sees that her refusal was right. Edmund learns that Mary regrets only that the adultery was discovered, not that it happened, and breaks with her. He turns to Fanny, and in time they marry and settle at the Mansfield parsonage.
Why it still matters
Mansfield Park is the Austen novel that refuses to flatter its reader. The charming people are hollow and the dull person is right. Critical interpretation has been diverse since the beginning, particularly over Fanny herself, and that argument has never been settled. It is the book to read when you want Austen at her most uncomfortable, examining what a great house costs and who pays.
