As literary critic Amanda Claybaugh insists on her introduction to the novel, ' Mansfield Park stands as Austen's most profound treatment of politics, her richest response to the wars and revolutions of the times.' Simply put, Austen was an artist who utilized her art to effect social change.Īccording to William Dean Howells in his 1895 My Literary Passions, 'Austen is the most artistic of the British novelists.' In his estimation, 'she was the first and last British novelist to treat material with entire truthfulness,' and it remains of some interest to note how critics and scholars have viewed the novel. After all, Fanny Price, unlike most of Austen's other heroines, never does go to London, and all of the characters who do travel to the city are 'infected' by a loosening of their better judgments and morals. In this regard, the novel can be viewed as an expression of a political agenda: traditional values are represented by the bucolic country estate, Mansfield Park, while the young characters, Fanny Price withstanding, are seduced by the invading evil influences that are represented by the bustling city of London. These traditional values were of particular importance when the novel was written, in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, and amid the tumultuous beginnings of industrialism, which drained the farm workers from the countryside and enticed them toward the overcrowded city of London. Unlike the other heroines, who have a myriad of lessons to learn, Fanny possesses the innate sensibility expected of a Regency lady of this era.

As Adolphus Alfred Jack remarked in his 1897 Essay on the Novel, Mansfield Park is 'more finished,' 'more subtle,' and 'quieter than her earlier works.' As Austen grew older, he continues, 'her powers grew and deepened.while Pride and Prejudice is gay, Mansfield Park is sombre.' Indeed, it is of interest to note that it is Mary Crawford - witty, active, and unable to stand still - who is cast in the mold of other Austen heroines such as the effervescent Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and the silly, meddling Emma Woodhouse in Emma, while it is the weak, mild-mannered, motionless, often ill Fanny Price who remains the novel's central character.and a highly likeable one at that. While Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice are considered, as one critic remarks 'the gay offsprings of her youth,' Mansfield Park is a far more mature, darker novel, written by a woman who had by then experienced more of the world. Mansfield Park, considered the author's most ambitious novel, was published anonymously, as were all of Jane Austen's novels, in 1814.

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