I'd been warned that Mansfield Park tends to be the least popular of Austen's novels. I'll grant you that I prefer novels where the action starts immediately or nearly so. I want to be able to identify with the protagonist. This story begins with exposition. It explains the background of the primary characters. I became very tired of the tone which is meant to display the snobbishness and class consciousness of the characters. So it's all explained in a high falutin manner which tells you in details (as well as in number of English pounds) what the various characters are worth. Page after page.

By the time one gets to actually meet Fanny Price, the little girl who is sent away from her large disadvantaged family in London to live with her well-to-do relatives in the English countryside, you might be ready to throw the book across the room, but at least you will have an idea of what the poor girl is going to be up against. Once the story begins and there is dialogue, I found it more interesting, and a little before halfway through I was hooked. I wanted to find out how Fanny was going to fare in her new surroundings.

Fanny is a timid girl. Every time a relative or acquaintance is kind to her and every time she manages to state her feelings clearly, you want to jump for joy. Now if you've read Jane Austen, you know that her sentences are extremely long and there is much ado about every event. But you might get caught up in the day-to-day dramas as there is a bit of comedy here as well as drama. Watch how a visit to her birth family's home affects Fanny--it's quite ironic and interesting. Can you go home again? You decide.

 

At the end when the fate of Fanny and the other key characters is made known, I was disappointed because the book returned to exposition--telling rather than showing. It's a nice ending and I wanted to hear some conversation. I was sure that I was going to cry or at least have tears in my eyes, but the manner of closing the book was too cut and dried for me. I was disappointed. I'm giving it four stars because I loved Fanny and I enjoyed the story, but I wasn't always happy with the way it was told. Like most of Austen's works, this one has a large following. Unlike her other works, it's not my cup of tea. It's hard for me to relate to Fanny, the main character. I sympathize with her and understand why she acts as she does, but I feel no companionship with her - or any of the characters for that matter. A book where you do not connect with anyone is a difficult book to read.

The writing is also not Austen's best. It's cumbersome at times, hard to follow, and awkward. After the first several chapters you get into the rhythm of the style of this book, but it can be difficult to persevere. This is my second time reading this work. I read it a number of years ago and was thoroughly disappointed and put off by the book. Fanny was just too good and literally has no faults (unless not standing up for herself is one, but given her position she could hardly do that). She is truly the moral compass of the work, and that is nice to see, but most of the other characters are so bad that it creates an almost unbelievable situation. In everything, however,

Fanny does nothing to advance the plot. Everything is done to her or around her. She moves nothing, and that's a hard lot for the central character. The work is hardly surprising in what actually happens in its course, being mostly predictable, which is always a disappointment. Many of the societal points Austen makes in this work, she also makes in Pride & Prejudice, though they are perhaps more clearly seen here. While I like this book better upon a 2nd reading, it is still my least favorite of her works (aside from the posthumously published Love & Friendship collection, which is simply painful samples of her early writing).