Rereading Mansfield Park: Discovering Fanny's Imperfections

Abstract

Mansfield Park is considered an anomaly among Jane Austen’s novels. The majority opinion seems to be that while her other novels are delightfully ironic and have charming heroines, both irony and charming heroines are absent from Mansfield Park. In my thesis I will argue against that majority opinion, using contemporary conduct literature to show that Austen was also ironic in Mansfield Park. The end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century was the golden age of conduct books. Jane Austen refers to conduct books in her letters, and she ridicules conduct books in “Catharine, or The Bower” and in Pride and Prejudice. I will argue that she continues and extends her ridicule in Mansfield Park.