Mansfield Park

We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.” Mansfield Park, published in 1814, remains a unique novel in Jane Austen oeuvre. Markedly contrasting pride and Prejudice, its immediate predecessor, Mansfield Park does not celebrate the traits of spiritedness, vivacity, celebrity and lightness associating them with happiness and virtue, but rather praises social stasis. Lionel thrilling, in discussing the novel, examines this departure and observes, ‘it was Jane Austen who first represented the specifically modern personality and the culture in which it had its being. When the Crawford brother and sister duo arrive from London, however, to take up residence in the neighbourhood, they set in motion a series of romantic engagements within the Mansfield mansion that lead to scandal, heartbreak and much disrepute.