Mansfield Park has sometimes been considered as atypical of Jane Austen as being solemn and moralistic. Poor Fanny Price is brought up at Mansfield Park with her uncle and aunt. Where only her cousin Edmund helps her with the difficulties she suffers from the rest of the family, and from her own fearfulness and timidity. When the sophisticated Crawfords (Henry and Mary) visit the Mansfield neighbourhood, the moral sense of each marriageable member of the Mansfield family is tested in various ways, but Fanny emerges unscathed.

We need to look at the way Austen portrays Fanny Price after the wit and vivacity of her earlier heroines, it is often wondered how Austen could have created such a character as Fanny Price.

Fanny is a Christian heroine who is submissive, physically delicate and all too collusive with the privileged world of Mansfield Park. Having Fanny as the heroine displaces the energy and vitality of Mary Crawford. However Fanny is the heroine of this novel and we have to discover if she is only the heroine due to the fact that all the other characters in the novel falter in

The parents of Maria and Julia do not have much to do with their upbringing. Sir Thomas spends long spells away from the house on business trip to Antigua. Lady Bertram in he indolence abdicates the role of mistress of the house and of mother allowing Mrs Norris to have far too large a hand in the upbringing of the two girls.

Julia has received the same education as Maria that is directed towards accomplishments rather that morals. It is believe that it is a combination of things which allow Julia to run a way with Mr Yates: her fathers strictness, Mrs Norris's indulgence and the prospect of increased restrictions at home after Maria's elopement. However, her part in her own affair with Mr Yates is a passive one, though a girl with steadfast moral purpose would not have yielded.

At the end of the novel Fanny becomes Edmund's wife but it is not until she overcomes her own faults, whilst retaining the positive side of her nature , that she can take her rightful place as mistress of Mansfield Parsonage.

Her relationship with Henry Crawford is considered serious enough to get into the newspapers. Adultery was not treat lightly at this time. Divorce however was legal but still Sir Thomas could not condone what Maria has done and will not allow her to return to local society.

She is disillusioned when she realises that she has not been able to charm Edmund to alter his determination to be a clergyman thus making her angry and vengeful. Fanny is the only one who sees "a mind led astray, and bewildered, and without any suspicion of being so; darkened yet fancying itself light ."

 She is seen as reticent and even shy

Fanny believes that the presence of Henry and Mary is what is leading her cousins astray. It is Fanny who sees that Henry is trifling with Maria and Julia and she, as well as Edmund who is scandalised by the sketch of Mary's years at the Admirals house.

After another pause, he [Mr Rushworth] went on - "Pray, Miss Price, are you such a great admirer of this Mr Crawford as some people are? For my part, I can see nothing in him."

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Approximate Word count = 2188
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)