Sense and Sensibility

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This article is about the novel. For other uses, see Sense and Sensibility (disambiguation).
Sense and Sensibility

Title page from the original 1811 edition

Author Jane Austen
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre Romance novel
Publisher Thomas Egerton, Military Library (Whitehall, London)
Publication date 1811
OCLC 44961362
Followed by Pride and Prejudice 

Sense and Sensibility is a novel by Jane Austen, published in 1811. It was published
anonymously; By A Lady appears on the title page where the author's name might have been. It
tells the story of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor (age 19) and Marianne (age 16½) as they come of
age. They have an older half-brother, John, and a younger sister, Margaret (age 13).

The novel follows the three Dashwood sisters as they must move with their widowed mother
from the estate on which they grew up, Norland Park. Because Norland is passed down to John,
the product of Mr. Dashwood's first marriage, and his young son, the four Dashwood women
need to look for a new home. They have the opportunity to rent a modest home, Barton Cottage,
on the property of a distant relative, Sir John Middleton. There they experience love, romance,
and heartbreak. The novel is likely set in South West England, London, and Sussex between
1792 and 1797.[1]

The novel, which sold out its first print run of 750 copies in the middle of 1813, marked a
success for its author. It had a second print run later that year. It was the first Austen title to be
republished in England after her death, and the first illustrated Austen produced in Britain, in
Richard Bentley's Standard Novels series of 1833.[2] The novel has been in continuous
publication since 1811, and has many times been illustrated, excerpted, abridged, and adapted for
stage and film.[3]

Contents
 1 Plot summary
 2 Characters
 3 Development of the novel
 4 Title
 5 Critical views
 6 Publication history
 7 Adaptations
o 7.1 Screen
o 7.2 Radio
o 7.3 Stage
o 7.4 Literature
 8 References
 9 External links

Plot summary
Henry Dashwood, his second wife, and their three daughters live for many years with Henry's
wealthy bachelor uncle at Norland Park, a large country estate in Sussex. That uncle decides, in
late life, to will the use and income only of his property first to Henry, then to Henry's first son
(by his first marriage) John Dashwood, so that the property should pass intact to John's four-
year-old son Harry. The uncle dies, but Henry lives just a year after that and he is unable in such
short time to save enough money for his wife Mrs Dashwood, and their daughters, Elinor,
Marianne, and Margaret, who are left only a small income. On his deathbed, Mr Henry
Dashwood extracts a promise from his son John to take care of his half-sisters. But before Henry
is long in the grave, John's greedy wife, Fanny, persuades her husband to renege on the promise,
appealing to his concerns about diminishing his own son Harry's inheritance, despite the fact that
John is already independently wealthy thanks to both his inheritance from his mother, and his
wife's dowry. Henry Dashwood's love for his second family is also used by Fanny to arouse her
husband's jealousy, and persuade him not to help his sisters financially.
John and Fanny immediately move in as the new owners of Norland, while the Dashwood
women are treated as unwelcome guests by a spiteful Fanny. Mrs Dashwood seeks somewhere
else to live. In the meantime, Fanny's brother, Edward Ferrars, visits Norland and is attracted to
Elinor. Fanny disapproves of their budding romance, and offends Mrs Dashwood by implying
that Elinor must be motivated by his expectations of coming into money.

Mrs Dashwood moves her family to Barton Cottage in Devonshire, near the home of her cousin,
Sir John Middleton. Their new home is modest, but they are warmly received by Sir John and
welcomed into local society, meeting his wife, Lady Middleton, his mother-in-law, the garrulous
but well-meaning Mrs Jennings, and his friend, Colonel Brandon. Colonel Brandon is attracted to
Marianne, and Mrs Jennings teases them about it. Marianne is not pleased, as she considers the
thirty-five-year-old Colonel Brandon an old bachelor, incapable of falling in love or inspiring
love in anyone.

A 19th-century illustration by Hugh Thomson showing Willoughby cutting a lock of Marianne's

hair

While out for a walk, Marianne gets caught in the rain, slips, and sprains her ankle. The dashing
John Willoughby sees the accident and assists her, picking her up and carrying her back to her
home. After his rescue of her, Marianne quickly comes to admire his good looks and his similar
tastes in poetry, music, art, and love. His attentions, and Marianne's behaviour, lead Elinor and
Mrs Dashwood to suspect that the couple are secretly engaged. Elinor cautions Marianne against
her unguarded conduct, but Marianne refuses to check her emotions. Willoughby engages in
several intimate activities with Marianne, including taking her to see the home he expects to
inherit one day and obtaining a lock of her hair. When an engagement, or at least the
announcement of one, seems imminent, Mr Willoughby instead informs the Dashwoods that his
aunt, upon whom he is financially dependent, is sending him to London on business, indefinitely.
Marianne is distraught and abandons herself to her sorrow.
Edward Ferrars pays a short visit to Barton Cottage, but seems unhappy. Elinor fears that he no
longer has feelings for her, but she will not show her heartache. After Edward departs, sisters
Anne and Lucy Steele, vulgar cousins of Mrs. Jennings, come to stay at Barton Park. Lucy
informs Elinor in confidence of her secret four-year engagement to Edward Ferrars that started
when he was studying with her uncle, and she displays proof of their intimacy. Elinor realises
Lucy's visit and revelations are the result of her jealousy and cunning calculation, and it helps
Elinor to understand Edward's recent sadness and behaviour towards her. She acquits Edward of
blame and pities him for being held to a loveless engagement to Lucy by his sense of honour.

Elinor and Marianne accompany Mrs Jennings to London. On arriving, Marianne rashly writes
several personal letters to Willoughby, which go unanswered. When they meet by chance at a
dance, Willoughby is with another woman. He greets Marianne reluctantly and coldly, to her
extreme distress. She leaves the party completely distraught. Soon Marianne receives a curt letter
enclosing their former correspondence and love tokens, including the lock of her hair.
Willoughby is revealed to be engaged to a young lady, Miss Grey, who has a large fortune.
Marianne is devastated. After Elinor reads the letter, Marianne admits to Elinor that she and
Willoughby were never engaged. She behaved as if they were because she knew she loved him
and thought that he loved her.

As Marianne grieves, Colonel Brandon visits and reveals to Elinor that Willoughby seduced,
impregnated, then abandoned Brandon's young ward, Miss Eliza Williams. Willoughby's aunt
subsequently disinherited him, and so, in great personal debt, he chose to marry Miss Grey for
her money. Eliza is the illegitimate daughter of Brandon's first love, also called Eliza, a young
woman who was his father's ward and an heiress. She was forced into an unhappy marriage to
Brandon's elder brother, in order to shore up the family's debts, and that marriage ended in
scandal and divorce while Brandon was abroad with the Army. After Colonel Brandon's father
and brother died, he inherited the family estate and returned to find Eliza dying in a pauper's
home, so Brandon took charge of raising her young daughter. Brandon tells Elinor that Marianne
strongly reminds him of the elder Eliza for her sincerity and sweet impulsiveness. Brandon
removed the younger Eliza to the country, and reveals to Elinor all of these details in the hope
that Marianne could get some consolation in discovering Willoughby's true character.

Meanwhile, the Steele sisters have come to London as guests of Mrs Jennings. After a brief
acquaintance, they are asked to stay at John and Fanny Dashwood's London house. Lucy sees the
invitation as a personal compliment, rather than what it is: a slight to Elinor and Marianne who,
being family, should have received such an invitation first. Too talkative, Anne Steele betrays
Lucy's secret engagement to Edward Ferrars, Fanny's brother. As a result, the sisters are turned
out of the house, and Edward is ordered by his wealthy mother to break off the engagement on
pain of disinheritance. Edward, still sensitive of the dishonour of a broken engagement and how
it would reflect poorly on Lucy Steele, refuses to comply. He is immediately disinherited in
favour of his brother, Robert, which gains him respect for his conduct and sympathy from Elinor
and Marianne. Colonel Brandon shows his admiration by offering Edward the living (a
clergyman's income) of the Delaford parsonage, so to enable him to marry Lucy after he takes
orders.
Mrs Jennings takes Elinor and Marianne to the country to visit her second daughter, Mrs.
Charlotte Palmer, at her husband's estate, Cleveland. Marianne, still in misery over Willoughby's
marriage, goes walking in the rain and becomes dangerously ill. She is diagnosed with putrid
fever, and it is believed that her life is in danger. Elinor writes to Mrs. Dashwood to explain the
gravity of the situation, and Colonel Brandon volunteers to go and bring Marianne's mother to
Cleveland to be with her. In the night, Willoughby arrives and reveals to Elinor that his love for
Marianne was genuine and that losing her has made him miserable. He elicits Elinor's pity
because his choice has made him unhappy, but she is disgusted by the callous way in which he
talks of Miss Williams and his own wife. He also reveals that his aunt said she would have
forgiven him if he married Miss Williams but that he had refused.

Marianne recovers from her illness, and Elinor tells her of Willoughby's visit. Marianne realizes
she could never have been happy with Willoughby's immoral, erratic, and inconsiderate ways.
She values Elinor's more moderated conduct with Edward and resolves to model herself after her
courage and good sense. Edward later arrives and reveals that, after his disinheritance, Lucy
jilted him in favour of his now wealthy younger brother, Robert. Elinor is overjoyed. Edward and
Elinor marry, and later Marianne marries Colonel Brandon, having gradually come to love him.
The two couples live as neighbours, with both sisters and husbands in harmony with each other.
Willoughby considers Marianne as his ideal but the narrator tells the reader not to suppose that
he was never happy.

Characters
 Elinor Dashwood – the sensible and reserved eldest daughter of Mr and Mrs Henry
Dashwood. She represents the "sense" half of Austen's title Sense and Sensibility. She is
19 years old at the beginning of the book. She becomes attached to Edward Ferrars, the
brother-in-law of her elder half-brother, John. She sympathetically befriends Colonel
Brandon, Marianne's long-suffering admirer and eventual husband. Always feeling a
keen sense of responsibility to her family and friends, she places their welfare and
interests above her own and suppresses her own strong emotions in a way that leads
others to think she is indifferent or cold-hearted. For example, even though she is
extremely distressed upon learning of Lucy Steele's secret engagement to Edward, Elinor
keeps Lucy's secret and does not reveal her discomfort with the information. While the
book's narrative style is 3rd person omniscient, it is Elinor's viewpoint that is primarily
reflected. Thus, the description of most of the novel's characters and events reflects
Elinor's thoughts and insights.
 Marianne Dashwood – the romantically inclined and eagerly expressive second
daughter of Mr and Mrs Henry Dashwood. Her emotional excesses identify her as the
"sensibility" half of Austen's title (at the time, this word meant what we now call
"sensitivity"). She is 16 years old at the beginning of the book. She is the object of the
attentions of Colonel Brandon and Mr Willoughby. She is attracted to young, handsome,
romantically spirited Willoughby and does not think much of the older, more reserved
Colonel Brandon. Marianne undergoes the most development within the book, learning
her sensibilities have been selfish. She decides her conduct should be more like that of
her elder sister, Elinor.
 Edward Ferrars – the elder of Fanny Dashwood's two brothers. He forms an attachment
to Elinor Dashwood. Years before meeting the Dashwoods, Ferrars proposed to Lucy
Steele, the niece of his tutor. The engagement has been kept secret owing to the
expectation that Ferrars' family would object to his marrying Miss Steele. He is disowned
by his mother on discovery of the engagement after refusing to give it up.
 John Willoughby – a philandering nephew of a neighbour of the Middletons, a dashing
figure who charms Marianne and shares her artistic and cultural sensibilities. It is
generally presumed by many of their mutual acquaintances that he is engaged to marry
Marianne (partly due to her own overly familiar actions, e.g., addressing personal letters
directly to him); however, he abruptly ends his acquaintance with the family and leaves
town just when an engagement with Marianne seems imminent, and it is later revealed
that he becomes engaged to the wealthy Sophia Grey because of the discontinuance of his
financial support from his aunt. He is also contrasted by Austen as being "a man
resembling 'the hero of a favourite story'".[4]
 Colonel Brandon – a close friend of Sir John Middleton. He is 35 years old at the
beginning of the book. He falls in love with Marianne at first sight, as she reminds him of
his father's ward, Eliza, whom he had fallen in love with when he was young. He was
prevented from marrying Elizabeth because his father was determined she marry his older
brother. He was sent into the military abroad to be away from her, and while gone, Eliza
suffered numerous misfortunes—partly as a consequence of her unhappy marriage. She
finally dies penniless and disgraced, and with a natural (i.e., illegitimate) daughter, also
named Eliza, who becomes the ward of the Colonel. He is a very honourable friend to the
Dashwoods, particularly Elinor, and offers Edward Ferrars a living after Edward is
disowned by his mother.
 Henry Dashwood – a wealthy gentleman who dies at the beginning of the story. The
terms of his estate — entailment to a male heir — prevent him from leaving anything to
his second wife and their children. He asks John, his son by his first wife, to look after
(meaning ensure the financial security of) his second wife and their three daughters.
 Mrs Dashwood – name always refers to the second wife of Henry Dashwood. She is left
in difficult financial straits by the death of her husband. She is 40 years old at the
beginning of the book. Much like her daughter Marianne, she is very emotive and often
makes poor decisions based on emotion rather than reason.
 Margaret Dashwood – the youngest daughter of Mr and Mrs Henry Dashwood. She is
thirteen at the beginning of the book. She is also romantic and good-tempered but not
expected to be as clever as her sisters when she grows older.
 John Dashwood – the son of Henry Dashwood by Henry's first wife. He intends to do
well by his half-sisters, but he has a keen sense of avarice, and is easily swayed by his
wife.
 Fanny Dashwood – the wife of John Dashwood, always referred to as "Mrs. John
Dashwood" or "Fanny Dashwood" – not to conflict with "Mrs. Dashwood (above) – and
sister to Edward and Robert Ferrars. She is vain, selfish, and snobbish. She spoils her son
Harry. She is very harsh to her husband's half-sisters and stepmother, especially since she
fears her brother Edward is attached to Elinor.
 Sir John Middleton – a distant relative of Mrs Dashwood who, after the death of Henry
Dashwood, invites her and her three daughters to live in a cottage on his property.
Described as a wealthy, sporting man who served in the army with Colonel Brandon, he
 is very affable and keen to throw frequent parties, picnics, and other social gatherings to
bring together the young people of their village. He and his mother-in-law, Mrs Jennings,
make a jolly, teasing, and gossipy pair.
 Lady Middleton – the genteel, but reserved wife of Sir John Middleton, she is quieter
than her husband, and is primarily concerned with mothering her four spoiled children.
 Mrs Jennings – mother to Lady Middleton and Charlotte Palmer. A widow who has
married off all her children, she spends most of her time visiting her daughters and their
families, especially the Middletons. She and her son-in-law, Sir John Middleton, take an
active interest in the romantic affairs of the young people around them and seek to
encourage suitable matches, often to the particular chagrin of Elinor and Marianne.
 Robert Ferrars – the younger brother of Edward Ferrars and Fanny Dashwood, he is
most concerned about status, fashion, and his new barouche. He subsequently marries
Miss Lucy Steele after Edward is disinherited.
 Mrs Ferrars – Fanny Dashwood and Edward and Robert Ferrars' mother. A bad-
tempered, unsympathetic woman who embodies all the foibles demonstrated in Fanny
and Robert's characteristics. She is determined that her sons should marry well. She
disowns her eldest son for his engagement to Lucy Steele but her youngest son later
marries the very same woman.
 Charlotte Palmer – the daughter of Mrs Jennings and the younger sister of Lady
Middleton, Mrs Palmer is pleasant and friendly but somewhat silly, and laughs at
inappropriate things, such as her husband's continual rudeness to her and to others.
 Thomas Palmer – the husband of Charlotte Palmer who is running for a seat in
Parliament, but is idle and often rude. He is considerate toward the Dashwood sisters.
 Lucy Steele – (never called "Miss Steele") a young, distant relation of Mrs Jennings, who
has for some time been secretly engaged to Edward Ferrars. She assiduously cultivates
the friendship with Elinor Dashwood and Mrs John Dashwood. Limited in formal
education and financial means, she is nonetheless attractive, manipulative, and scheming.
 Anne "Nancy" Steele – (often called "Miss Steele") Lucy Steele's elder, socially-inept,
and less clever sister.
 Mr Harris – an apothecary who treats Marianne when she falls ill at Cleveland.
 Miss Sophia Grey – a wealthy and malicious heiress whom Mr Willoughby marries to
retain his expensive lifestyle after he is disinherited by his aunt.
 Miss Morton – wealthy daughter of Lord Morton – whom Mrs Ferrars wants her eldest
son, Edward, and later Robert, to marry.
 Mr Pratt – an uncle of Lucy Steele and Edward's tutor.
 Eliza Williams (Jr.) (daughter) – the ward of Col. Brandon, she is about 15 years old
and bore an illegitimate child to John Willoughby. She has the same name as her mother.
 Eliza Williams (Sr.) (mother) – the former love interest of Colonel Brandon. Williams
was Brandon's father's ward, and was forced by him to marry Brandon's older brother.
The marriage was an unhappy one, and it is revealed that her daughter was left as Colonel
Brandon's ward when he found his lost love dying in a poorhouse.
 Mrs Smith – the wealthy aunt of Mr Willoughby who disowns him for seducing and
abandoning the young Eliza Williams, Col. Brandon's ward.

Development of the novel

Jane Austen wrote the first draft of the novel in the form of a novel-in-letters (epistolary form)
perhaps as early as 1795 when she was about 19 years old, or 1797, at age 21, and is said to have
given it the title Elinor and Marianne. She later changed the form to a narrative and the title to
Sense and Sensibility.[5]

Austen drew inspiration for Sense and Sensibility from other novels of the 1790s that treated
similar themes, including Adam Stevenson's Life and Love (1785) which he had written about
himself and a relationship that was not meant to be. Jane West's A Gossip's Story (1796), which
features one sister full of rational sense and another sister of romantic, emotive sensibility, is
considered to have been an inspiration as well. West's romantic sister-heroine also shares her
first name, Marianne, with Austen's. There are further textual similarities, described in a modern
edition of West's novel.[6]

Austen may have drawn on her knowledge of Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of
India, in her portrayal of Colonel Brandon. Hastings had been rumoured to be the biological
father of Austen's cousin Eliza de Feuillide. Linda Robinson Walker argues that Hastings "haunts
Sense and Sensibility in the character of Colonel Brandon": both left for India at age seventeen;
both may have had illegitimate daughters named Eliza; both participated in a duel.[7]

Title
"Sense" means good judgment, wisdom, or prudence, and "sensibility" means sensitivity,
sympathy, or emotionality. Elinor is described as a character with great "sense" (although
Marianne, too, is described as having sense), and Marianne is identified as having a great deal of
"sensibility" (although Elinor, too, feels deeply, without expressing it as openly). By changing
the title, Austen added "philosophical depth" to what began as a sketch of two characters.[8]

Critical views
Sense and Sensibility, much like Austen's other fiction, has attracted a large body of criticism
from many different critical approaches. Early reviews of Sense and Sensibility focused on the
novel as providing lessons in conduct (which would be debated by many later critics) as well as
reviewing the characters. The Norton Critical Edition of Sense and Sensibility, edited by Claudia
Johnson, contains a number of reprinted early reviews in its supplementary material. An
"Unsigned Review" in the February 1812 Critical Review praises Sense and Sensibility as well
written with well supported and drawn characters, realistic, and with a "highly pleasing" plot in
which "the whole is just long enough to interest the reader without fatiguing."[9] This review
praises Mrs. Dashwood, the mother of the Dashwood sisters, as well as Elinor, and claims that
Marianne's extreme sensibility makes her miserable.[9] It claims that Sense and Sensibility has a
lesson and moral which is made clear through the plot and the characters.[9] Another "Unsigned
Review" from the May 1812 British Critic further emphasizes the novel's function as a type of
conduct book. In this author's opinion, Austen's favouring of Elinor's temperament over
Marianne's provides the lesson.[9] The review claims that "the object of the work is to represent
the effects on the conduct of life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an
overrefined and excessive susceptibility on the other."[9] The review states that Sense and
Sensibility contains "many sober and salutary maxims for the conduct of life" within a "very
pleasing and entertaining narrative."[9] W. F. Pollock's 1861 review from Frasier's Magazine,
titled "British Novelists," becomes what editor Claudia Johnson terms an "early example of what
would become the customary view of Sense and Sensibility."[10] In addition to emphasizing the
novel's morality, Pollock reviews the characters in catalogue-like fashion, praising and criticizing
them in according to the notion that Austen favours Elinor's point of view and temperament. [10]
Pollock even praises Sir John Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, even commenting on the humour of
Mr. Palmer and his "silly wife."[10] Pollock criticizes Sir John Dashwood's selfishness without
mentioning Fanny's influence upon them. He also criticizes the Steele sisters for their vulgarity.
[10]

An anonymous piece titled "Miss Austen" published in 1866 in The Englishwoman's Domestic
Magazine departs from other early criticism in its sympathizing with Marianne over Elinor,
claiming that Elinor is "too good" a character.[11] The article also differs from other reviews in
that it claims that the "prevailing merit" of the book is not in its sketch of the two sisters; rather,
the book is effective because of its "excellent treatment of the subordinate characters."[11] Alice
Meynell's 1894 article "The Classic Novelist" in the Pall Mall Gazette also concurs with
Austen's attention to small things. Meynell claims that Austen deals in lesser characters and
small matters because "that which makes life, art, and work trivial is a triviality of relations."[12]
In her attention to secondary characters, Meynell discusses the children's function to "illustrate
the folly of their mothers," especially Lady Middleton.[12]

Austen biographer Claire Tomalin argues that Sense and Sensibility has a "wobble in its
approach", which developed because Austen, in the course of writing the novel, gradually
became less certain about whether sense or sensibility should triumph.[13] Austen characterises
Marianne as a sweet lady with attractive qualities: intelligence, musical talent, frankness, and the
capacity to love deeply. She also acknowledges that Willoughby, with all his faults, continues to
love and, in some measure, appreciate Marianne. For these reasons, some readers find
Marianne's ultimate marriage to Colonel Brandon an unsatisfactory ending.[14]

The Dashwood sisters stand apart as being virtually the only characters capable of intelligent
thought and any sort of deep thinking.[15] Brownstein wrote that the differences between the
Dashwood sisters have been exaggerated, and in fact the sisters are more alike than they are
different, with Elinor having an "excellent heart" and being capable of the same romantic
passions as Marianne feels, while Marianne has much sense as well.[15] Elinor is more reserved,
more polite, and less impulsive than Marianne who loves poetry, taking walks across picturesque
landscapes and believes in intense romantic relationships, but it is this very closeness between
the sisters that allows these differences to emerge during their exchanges.[15]

Many critics explore Sense and Sensibility in relation to authors and genres popular during
Austen's time. One of the most popular forms of fiction in Austen's time was epistolary fiction.
This is a style of writing in which all of the action, dialogue, and character interactions are
reflected through letters sent from one or more of the characters. In her book Romantic
Correspondence: Women, Politics, and the Fiction of Letters, Mary Favret explores Austen's
fraught relationship with epistolary fiction, claiming that Austen "wrestled with epistolary form"
in previous writings and, with the publication of Sense and Sensibility, "announced her victory
over the constraints of the letter."[16] Favret contends that Austen's version of the letter separates
her from her "admired predecessor, Samuel Richardson" in that Austen's letters are "a misleading
guide to the human heart which, in the best instances, is always changing and adapting."[16]
According to Favret, with the character of Elinor Dashwood is an "anti-epistolary heroine"
whose "inner world" of thoughts and feelings does not find "direct expression in the novel,
although her point of view controls the story."[16] Sense and Sensibility establishes what Favret
calls a "new privacy" in the novel, which was constrained by previous notions of the romance of
letters.[16] This new privacy is a "less constraining mode of narration" in which Austen's narrator
provides commentary on the action, rather than the characters themselves through the letters.[16]
Favret claims that in Sense and Sensibility, Austen wants to "recontextualize" the letter and bring
it into a "new realism."[16] Austen does so by imbuing the letter with dangerous power when
Marianne writes to Willoughby; both their love and the letter "prove false."[16] Additionally,
Favret claims that Austen uses both of the sisters' letter writing to emphasize the contrasts in
their personalities.[16] When both of the sisters write letters upon arriving in London, Elinor's
letter is the "dutiful letter of the 'sensible sister'" and Marianne writes a "vaguely illicit letter"
reflecting her characterization as the "sensitive" sister.[16] What is perhaps most striking about
Favret's analysis is that she notes that the lovers who write to one another never unite with each
other.[16]

A common theme of Austen criticism has been on the legal aspects of society and the family,
particularly wills, the rights of first and second sons, and lines of inheritance. Gene Ruoff's book
Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility explores these issues in a book-length discussion of the
novel. Ruoff's first two chapters deal extensively with the subject of wills and the discourse of
inheritance. These topics reveal what Ruoff calls "the cultural fixation on priority of male
birth."[17] According to Ruoff, male birth is by far the dominant issue in these legal conversations.
Ruoff observes that, within the linear family, the order of male birth decides issues of eligibility
and merit.[17] When Robert Ferrars becomes the eldest son, Edward is no longer appealing to his
"opportunistic fiance" Lucy, who quickly turns her attention to the foppish Robert and "entraps
him" in order to secure the inheritance for herself.[17] According to Ruoff, Lucy is specifically
aiming for a first son because of the monetary advantage for a man in this birth order.[17] William
Galperin, in his book The History Austen, comments on the tendency of this system of
patriarchal inheritance and earning as working to ensure the vulnerability of women.[18] Because
of this vulnerability, Galperin contends that Sense and Sensibility shows marriage as the only
practical solution "against the insecurity of remaining an unmarried woman."[18]

Feminist critics have long been engaged in conversations about Jane Austen, and Sense and
Sensibility has figured in these discussions, especially around the patriarchal system of
inheritance and earning. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's seminal feminist work The
Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination contains
several discussions of Sense and Sensibility. Gilbert and Gubar read the beginning of Sense and
Sensibility as a retelling of King Lear from a female perspective and contend that these "reversals
imply that male traditions need to be evaluated and reinterpreted from a female perspective."[19]
Gilbert and Gubar argue that Austen explores the effects of patriarchal control on women,
particularly in the spheres of employment and inheritance. In Sense and Sensibility they educe
the fact that Mr. John Dashwood deprives his sisters from their home as well as promised income
as an instance of these effects. They also point to the "despised" Mrs. Ferrars's tampering with
the patriarchal line of inheritance in her disowning of her eldest son, Edward Ferrars, as proof
that this construction is ultimately arbitrary.[19] Gilbert and Gubar contend that while Sense and
Sensibility's ultimate message is that "young women like Marianne and Elinor must submit to
powerful conventions of society by finding a male protector," women such as Mrs. Ferrars and
Lucy Steele demonstrate how women can "themselves become agents of repression,
manipulators of conventions, and survivors."[19] In order to protect themselves and their own
interests, Mrs. Ferrars and Lucy Steele must participate in the same patriarchal system that
oppresses them.

In the chapter "Sense and Sensibility: Opinions Too Common and Too Dangerous" from her
book Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel, Claudia Johnson also gives a feminist
reading of Sense and Sensibility. She differs from previous critics, especially the earliest ones, in
her contention that Sense and Sensibility is not, as it is often assumed to be, a "dramatized
conduct book" that values "female prudence" (associated with Elinor's sense) over "female
impetuosity" (associated with Marianne's sensibility).[20] Rather, Johnson sees Sense and
Sensibility as a "dark and disenchanted novel" that views "institutions of order" such as property,
marriage, and family in a negative light, an attitude that makes the novel the "most attuned to
social criticism" of Austen's works.[20] According to Johnson, Sense and Sensibility critically
examines the codes of propriety as well as their enforcement by the community.[20] Key to
Austen's criticism of society, per Johnson's argument, is the depiction of the unfair
marginalization of women resulting from the "death or simple absence of male protectors."[20]
Additionally, the male characters in Sense and Sensibility are depicted unfavourably. Johnson
calls the gentlemen in Sense and Sensibility "uncommitted sorts" who "move on, more or less
unencumbered, by human wreckage from the past."[20] In other words, the men do not feel a
responsibility to anyone else. Johnson compares Edward to Willoughby in this regard, claiming
that all of the differences between them as individuals do not hide the fact that their failures are
actually identical; Johnson calls them both "weak, duplicitous, and selfish," lacking the honesty
and forthrightness with which Austen endows other "exemplary gentlemen" in her work.[20]
Johnson's comparison of Edward and Willoughby reveals the depressing picture about gentlemen
presented in the novel.

Mary Poovey's analysis in The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the
Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen concurs with Johnson's on the
dark tone of Sense and Sensibility. Poovey contends that Sense and Sensibility has a "somber
tone" in which conflict breaks out between Austen's engagement with her "self-assertive
characters" and the moral codes necessary to control their potentially "anarchic" desires.[21]
Austen shows, according to Poovey, this conflict between individual desire and the restraint of
moral principles through the character of Elinor herself.[21] Except for Elinor, all of the female
characters in Sense and Sensibility experience some kind of female excess. Poovey argues that
while Austen does recognize "the limitations of social institutions," she demonstrates the
necessity of controlling the "dangerous excesses of female feeling" rather than liberating them.[21]
She does so by demonstrating that Elinor's self-denial, especially in her keeping of Lucy Steele's
secret and willingness to help Edward, even though both of these actions were hurtful to her,
ultimately contribute to her own contentment and that of others.[21] In this way, Poovey contends
that Austen suggests that the submission to society that Elinor demonstrates is the proper way to
achieve happiness in life.
Sense and Sensibility criticism also includes ecocritical approaches. Susan Rowland's article
"The 'Real Work': Ecocritical Alchemy and Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility" studies the
effects of alienation upon Edward Ferrars. Edward is alienated from society because he lacks
what Rowland calls "useful employment."[22] According to Rowland, Edward's condition
represents problems with the history of work in Western industrialized societies. Edward's
alienation from work also represents "the culture evolution of work" as a "progressive
estrangement from nonhuman nature."[22] Rowland argues that human culture estranges people
from nature rather than returning them to it. Marianne also suffers from this estrangement of
nature as she is ripped from her childhood home where she enjoyed walking the grounds and
looking at trees.[22] Rowland thus connects both Edward's and Marianne's progressive discomfort
throughout the novel to their alienation from nature.

Publication history

The three volumes of the first edition of Sense and Sensibility, 1811

In 1811, Thomas Egerton of the Military Library publishing house in London accepted the
manuscript for publication in three volumes. Austen paid to have the book published and paid the
publisher a commission on sales. The cost of publication was more than a third of Austen's
annual household income of £460 (about £15,000 in 2008 currency).[23] She made a profit of
£140 (almost £5,000 in 2008 currency)[23] on the first edition, which sold all 750 printed copies
by July 1813. A second edition was advertised in October 1813.

The novel has been in continuous publication through to the 21st century as popular and critical
appreciation of all the novels by Jane Austen slowly grew. The novel was translated into French
by Madame Isabelle de Montolieu as Raison et Sensibilité.[24] Montolieu had only the most basic
knowledge of English, and her translations were more of "imitations" of Austen's novels as
Montolieu had her assistants provide a summary of Austen's novels, which she then translated
into an embellished French that often radically altered Austen's plots and characters.[24] The
"translation" of Sense and Sensibility by Montolieu changes entire scenes and characters, for
example having Marianne call Willoughby an "angel" and an "Adonis" upon first meeting him,
lines that are not in the English original.[25] Likewise, the scene where Mrs. Dashwood criticizes
her husband for planning to subsidise his widowed stepmother might be disadvantageous to "our
little Harry", Mrs. Dashwood soon forgets about Harry and it is made apparent her objections are
founded in greed; Montolieu altered the scene by having Mrs. Dashwood continuing to speak of
"our little Harry" as the basis of her objections, completely changing her motives.[26] When Elinor
learns the Ferrars who married Lucy Steele is Robert, not Edward, Montolieu adds in a scene
where Edward, the Dashwood sisters and their mother all break down in tears while clasping
hands that was not in the original.[27] Austen has the marriage of Robert Ferrars and Lucy Steele
end well while Montolieu changes the marriage into a failure.[28]

Adaptations
Screen

 1971: This adaptation for BBC television was dramatized by Denis Constanduros and
directed by David Giles.[29]
 1981: This seven-episode TV serial was directed by Rodney Bennett.[30]
 1995: This theatrical release was adapted by Emma Thompson and directed by Ang Lee.
[31]

 2000: A Tamil version titled Kandukondain Kandukondain stars Mammootty (Colonel

Brandon), Ajith Kumar (Edward Ferrars), Tabu (Elinor), and Aishwarya Rai (Marianne).
[32]

 2008: This three-episode BBC TV series was adapted by Andrew Davies and directed by
John Alexander.

Radio

In 2013, Helen Edmundson adapted Sense and Sensibility for BBC Radio 4.[33]

Stage

 2013: Sense & Sensibility, the Musical (book and lyrics by Jeffrey Haddow and music by
Neal Hampton) received its world premiere by the Denver Center Theatre Company in
April 2013, as staged by Tony-nominated director Marcia Milgrom Dodge.[34]
 2014: The Utah Shakespeare Festival presented Joseph Hanreddy and J.R. Sullivan's
adaptation.[35]
 2016: The Bedlam theatrical troupe mounted a well-received minimalist production that
was adapted by Kate Hamill and directed by Eric Tucker, from a repertory run in 2014.[36]

Literature
  In 2013, author Joanna Trollope published Sense & Sensibility: A Novel[37] as a part of
series called The Austen Project by the publisher, bringing the characters into the present
day and providing modern satire.[38]
 2009: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is a mashup parody novel by Ben H.
Winters, with Jane Austen credited as co-author.[39]
 2016: Manga Classics: Sense and Sensibility published by UDON Entertainment's
Manga Classics imprint was published in August 2016.[40]

Pride and Prejudice

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This article is about the novel. For other uses, see Pride and Prejudice (disambiguation).
Pride and Prejudice

Title page
Author Jane Austen
Working title First Impressions
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Classic Regency novel
Genre
Romance novel
Set in Hertfordshire and Derbyshire, c. 1812
Publisher T. Egerton, Whitehall
Publication date 28 January 1813
Media type Print (hardback, 3 volumes), digitalized
OCLC 38659585
Dewey Decimal 823.7
LC Class PR4034 .P7
Preceded by Sense and Sensibility 
Followed by Mansfield Park 
Text Pride and Prejudice at Wikisource

Pride and Prejudice is an 1813 romantic novel of manners written by Jane Austen. The novel
follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the dynamic protagonist of the book who
learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference
between superficial goodness and actual goodness. Its humour lies in its honest depiction of
manners, education, marriage, and money during the Regency era in Great Britain.
Mr. Bennet of Longbourn estate has five daughters, but his property is entailed and can only be
passed to a male heir. His wife also lacks an inheritance, so his family will be destitute upon his
death. Thus, it is imperative that at least one of the girls marry well to support the others, which
is a motivation that drives the plot. The novel revolves around the importance of marrying for
love rather than money or social prestige, despite the communal pressure to make a wealthy
match.

Pride and Prejudice has consistently appeared near the top of lists of "most-loved books" among
literary scholars and the reading public. It has become one of the most popular novels in English
literature, with over 20 million copies sold, and has inspired many derivatives in modern
literature.[1][2] For more than a century, dramatic adaptations, reprints, unofficial sequels, films,
and TV versions of Pride and Prejudice have portrayed the memorable characters and themes of
the novel, reaching mass audiences.[3]

Contents
 1 Plot summary
 2 Characters
 3 Major themes
 4 Style
 5 Development of the novel
 6 Publication history
 7 Reception
 8 Adaptations
 9 References
 10 External links

Plot summary
The novel is set in rural England in the early 19th century. Mrs. Bennet attempts to persuade Mr.
Bennet to visit Mr. Bingley, a rich bachelor recently arrived in the neighbourhood. After some
verbal sparring with her husband, Mrs. Bennet believes he will not call on Mr. Bingley. Shortly
afterwards, he visits Netherfield, Mr. Bingley's rented residence, much to Mrs. Bennet's delight.
The visit is followed by an invitation to a ball at the local assembly rooms that the entire
neighbourhood will attend.

At the ball, we are first introduced to the whole Netherfield party, which consists of Mr. Bingley,
his two sisters, the husband of one of his sisters, and Mr. Darcy, his dearest friend. Mr. Bingley's
friendly and cheerful manner earns him popularity among the guests. He appears attracted to
Jane Bennet (the Bennets' eldest daughter), with whom he dances twice. Mr. Darcy, reputed to be
twice as wealthy, is haughty and aloof, causing a decided dislike of him. He declines to dance
with Elizabeth (the Bennets' second-eldest daughter), stating that she is not attractive enough to
tempt him.[4] Elizabeth finds this amusing and jokes about it with her friends.

Mr. Bingley's sisters, Caroline and Louisa, later invite Jane to Netherfield for dinner. On her way
there, Jane is caught in a rain shower and develops a bad cold, forcing her to stay at Netherfield
to recuperate, much to Mrs. Bennet's delight. When Elizabeth goes to see Jane, Mr. Darcy finds
himself getting attracted to Elizabeth (stating she has "fine eyes"), while Miss Bingley grows
jealous, as she herself has designs on Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth herself is indifferent and unaware of
his developing interest in her.

Illustration by Hugh Thomson representing Mr. Collins, protesting that he never reads novels

Mr. Collins, Mr. Bennet's cousin and the heir to the Longbourn estate, visits the Bennet family.
He is a pompous, obsequious clergyman who intends to marry one of the Bennet girls. After
learning that Jane may soon be engaged, he quickly decides on Elizabeth, the next daughter in
both age and beauty.

Elizabeth and her family meet the dashing and charming army officer, George Wickham, who
singles out Elizabeth. He says he is connected to the Darcy family and claims Mr. Darcy
deprived him of a "living" (a permanent position as a clergyman in a prosperous parish with
good revenue) promised to him by Mr. Darcy's late father. Elizabeth's dislike of Mr. Darcy is
confirmed.[4]

At the ball at Netherfield, Mr. Darcy asks Elizabeth to dance, and, despite her vow never to
dance with him, she accepts. Excluding Jane and Elizabeth, Elizabeth's mother and younger
sisters display a distinct lack of decorum. Mrs. Bennet hints loudly that she fully expects Jane
and Bingley to become engaged, and the younger Bennet sisters expose the family to ridicule by
their silliness.

Mr. Collins proposes to Elizabeth. Her father informs her that if she doesn't marry Mr. Collins,
her mother will never speak to her again, but if she does marry Mr. Collins, her father will never
speak to her again. She rejects Collins, to her mother's fury and her father's relief. Shortly
afterward, the Bingleys suddenly depart for London with no plans to return. After Elizabeth's
rejection, Mr. Collins proposes to Charlotte Lucas, a sensible young woman and Elizabeth's
friend. Charlotte, older (27), is grateful for a proposal that guarantees her a comfortable home
and a secure future. Elizabeth is aghast at such pragmatism in matters of love. Meanwhile, a
heartbroken Jane visits her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner in London. It appears that Mr. Bingley has
no intention of resuming their acquaintance.

In the spring, Elizabeth visits Charlotte and Mr. Collins in Kent. Elizabeth and her hosts are
invited to Rosings Park, the imposing home of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, imperious patroness
of Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy's wealthy aunt. Lady Catherine expects Mr. Darcy to marry her
daughter, as planned in his childhood by his aunt and mother. Mr. Darcy and his cousin, Colonel
Fitzwilliam, are also visiting at Rosings Park. Fitzwilliam tells Elizabeth how Mr. Darcy recently
saved a friend, presumably Bingley, from an undesirable match. Elizabeth realises that the
prevented engagement was to Jane and is horrified that Mr. Darcy interfered. Later, Mr. Darcy
proposes to Elizabeth, declaring his love for her despite her low social connections. She rejects
him angrily, stating she could never love a man who caused her sister such unhappiness and
further accuses him of treating Wickham unjustly. Mr. Darcy brags about his success in
separating Bingley and Jane and suggests that he had been kinder to Bingley than to himself. He
dismisses the accusation regarding Wickham sarcastically but does not address it.

Later, Mr. Darcy gives Elizabeth a letter, explaining that Wickham, the son of his late father's
steward, had refused the living his father had arranged for him and was instead given money for
it. Wickham quickly squandered the money and when impoverished, asked for the living again.
After being refused, he tried to elope with Darcy's 15-year-old sister, Georgiana, for her
considerable dowry. Mr. Darcy also writes that he separated Jane and Bingley due to Jane's
reserved behaviour, sincerely believing her indifferent to Bingley, and also because of the lack of
propriety displayed by some members of her family. Elizabeth is ashamed by her family's
behaviour and her own lack of better judgement that resulted in blinded prejudice against Mr.
Darcy.

Elizabeth tells her father that Darcy was responsible for uniting Lydia and Wickham, one of the
two earliest illustrations of Pride and Prejudice.[5] The clothing styles reflect the time the
illustration was engraved (the 1830s), not the time in which the novel was written or set.

Some months later, Elizabeth accompanies the Gardiners on a tour of Derbyshire. They visit
Pemberley, the Darcy estate (after Elizabeth ascertains Mr. Darcy's absence). The housekeeper
there describes Mr. Darcy as kind and generous, recounting several examples of these
characteristics. When Mr. Darcy returns unexpectedly, he is exceedingly gracious and later
invites Elizabeth and the Gardiners to meet his sister, and Mr. Gardiner to go fishing. Elizabeth
is surprised and delighted by their treatment. Upon meeting, Elizabeth and his sister connect
well, to his delight. She then receives news that her sister Lydia has run off with Wickham. She
tells Mr. Darcy immediately, then departs in haste, believing she will never see him again as
Lydia has ruined the family's good name.

After an immensely agonizing interim, Wickham has agreed to marry Lydia. With some veneer
of decency restored, Lydia visits the family and tells Elizabeth that Mr. Darcy was at her and
Wickham's wedding. Though Mr. Darcy had sworn everyone involved to secrecy, Mrs. Gardiner
now feels obliged to inform Elizabeth that he secured the match, at great expense and trouble to
himself. She hints that he may have had "another motive" for having done so, implying that she
believes Darcy to be in love with Elizabeth.

Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy return to Netherfield. Bingley proposes to Jane, who accepts. Lady
Catherine, having heard rumours that Elizabeth intends to marry Mr. Darcy, visits Elizabeth and
demands she promise never to accept Mr. Darcy's proposal. Elizabeth refuses and the outraged
Lady Catherine withdraws after Elizabeth demands she leave for making insulting comments
about her family. Darcy, heartened by his aunt's indignant relaying of Elizabeth's response, again
proposes to her and is accepted. Elizabeth has difficulty in convincing her father that she is
marrying for love, not position and wealth, but Mr. Bennet is finally convinced. Mrs. Bennet is
exceedingly happy to learn of her daughter's match to Mr. Darcy and quickly changes her
opinion of him. The novel concludes with an overview of the marriages of the three daughters
and the great satisfaction of both parents at the fine, happy matches made by Jane and Elizabeth.

Characters

Scenes from Pride and Prejudice, by C. E. Brock (c. 1885)

Character genealogy

Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy by Hugh Thomson, 1894

 Elizabeth Bennet – the second-eldest of the Bennet daughters, she is attractive, witty and
intelligent – but with a tendency to form tenacious and prejudicial first impressions. As
the story progresses, so does her relationship with Mr. Darcy. The course of Elizabeth
and Darcy's relationship is ultimately decided when Darcy overcomes his pride, and
Elizabeth overcomes her prejudice, leading them both to surrender to their love for each
other.
 Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy – Mr. Bingley's friend and the wealthy owner of the family estate
of Pemberley in Derbyshire, rumoured to be worth at least £10,000 a year (equivalent to
£660,000 in 2019). While he is handsome, tall, and intelligent, Darcy lacks ease and
social graces, and so others frequently mistake his initially haughty reserve and rectitude
as proof of excessive pride (which, in part, it is). A new visitor to the village, he is
ultimately Elizabeth Bennet's love interest. Though he appears to be proud and is largely
disliked by people for this reason, his servants vouch for his kindness and decency.
 Mr Bennet – A logical and reasonable late-middle-aged landed gentleman of a modest
income of £2000 per annum, and the dryly sarcastic patriarch of the now-dwindling
Bennet family (a family of Hertfordshire landed gentry), with five unmarried daughters.
His estate, Longbourn, is entailed to the male line. His affection for his wife wore off
early in their marriage and is now reduced to him tolerating her. He is often described as
'indolent' in the novel.
 Mrs. Bennet (née Gardiner) – the middle-aged wife of her social superior, Mr. Bennet,
and the mother of their five daughters (Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine and Lydia). Mrs.
Bennet is a hypochondriac who imagines herself susceptible to attacks of tremors and
palpitations (her "poor nerves") whenever things are not going her way. Her main
ambition in life is to marry her daughters off to wealthy men. Whether or not any such
matches will give her daughters happiness is of little concern to her. She was settled a
dowry of £4,000 from her father, Mr. Gardiner Sr., most likely invested at 4 percent,
allowing her to receive £160 per annum; it was indicated by Mr. Collins during his
proposal to Elizabeth ["to fortune I am perfectly indifferent, and shall make no demands
of that nature on your father since I am well aware that it could not be complied with; and
that one thousand pounds in the 4 per cents. which will not be yours till after your
mother's decease, is all that you may ever be entitled to"][6] that it is probable that her
settlement had increased to £5,000 over the years, but remains invested at 4 percent.
In a letter to Cassandra dated May 1813, Jane Austen describes a picture she saw at a gallery
which was a good likeness of "Mrs. Bingley" – Jane Bennet. Deirdre Le Faye in The World of
Her Novels suggests that "Portrait of Mrs. Q" is the picture Austen was referring to. (pp. 201–
203)

 Jane Bennet – the eldest Bennet sister. She is considered the most beautiful young lady
in the neighbourhood and is inclined to see only the good in others (but can be persuaded
otherwise on sufficient evidence). She falls in love with Charles Bingley, a rich young
gentleman recently moved to Hertfordshire and a close friend of Mr. Darcy.
 Mary Bennet – the middle Bennet sister, and the plainest of her siblings. Mary has a
serious disposition and mostly reads and plays music, although she is often impatient to
display her accomplishments and is rather vain about them. She frequently moralises to
her family. According to James Edward Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen, Mary
ended up marrying one of her Uncle Philip's law clerks and moving into Meryton with
him.
 Catherine "Kitty" Bennet – the fourth Bennet daughter. Though older than Lydia, she
is her shadow and follows her in her pursuit of the officers of the militia. She is often
portrayed as envious of Lydia and is described as a "silly" young woman. However, it is
said that she improved when removed from Lydia's influence. According to James
Edward Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen, Kitty later married a clergyman who
lived near Pemberley.
 Lydia Bennet – the youngest Bennet sister. She is frivolous and headstrong. Her main
activity in life is socializing, especially flirting with the officers of the militia. This leads
to her running off with George Wickham, although he has no intention of marrying her.
Lydia shows no regard for the moral code of her society; as Ashley Tauchert says, she
"feels without reasoning".[7]
 Charles Bingley – a handsome, amiable, wealthy young gentleman from the north of
England (possibly Yorkshire, as Scarborough is mentioned, and there is, in fact, a real-
life town called Bingley in West Yorkshire), who leases Netherfield Park, an estate three
 miles from Longbourn, with the hopes of purchasing it. He is contrasted with Mr. Darcy
for having more generally pleasing manners, although he is reliant on his more
experienced friend for advice. An example of this is the prevention of Bingley and Jane's
romance because of Bingley's undeniable dependence on Darcy's opinion.[8] He lacks
resolve and is easily influenced by others; his two sisters, Miss Caroline Bingley and
Mrs. Louisa Hurst, both disapprove of Bingley's growing affection for Miss Jane Bennet.
He inherited a fortune of £100,000, which could be either invested at 4 per cents or 5 per
cents for a sum of £4,000 or £5,000 per annum.[9]
 Caroline Bingley – the vainglorious, snobbish sister of Charles Bingley, with a fortune
of £20,000 (giving her an allowance/pin money of £800 or £1,000 per annum, depending
on the percentage of the investment). Miss Bingley harbours designs upon Mr Darcy, and
therefore is jealous of his growing attachment to Elizabeth. She attempts to dissuade Mr
Darcy from liking Elizabeth by ridiculing the Bennet family and criticising Elizabeth's
comportment. Miss Bingley also disapproves of her brother's esteem for Jane Bennet, and
is disdainful of society in Meryton. Her wealth (which she overspends) and her expensive
education seem to be the two greatest sources of Miss Bingley's vanity and conceit;
likewise, she is very insecure about the fact that her and her family's money all comes
from trade, and is eager both for her brother to purchase an estate, ascending the Bingleys
to the ranks of the gentry, and for herself to marry a landed gentleman (i.e. Mr. Darcy).
The dynamic between Miss Bingley and her sister, Louisa Hurst, seems to echo that of
Lydia and Kitty Bennet's, and Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Phillips'; that one is no more than a
follower of the other, with Caroline in the same position as Lydia and Mrs. Bennet, and
Louisa in Kitty's and Mrs. Phillips' (though, in Louisa's case, as she's already married,
she's not under the same desperation as Caroline). Louisa is married to Mr. Hurst, who
has a house in Grosvenor Square, London.
 George Wickham – Wickham has been acquainted with Mr. Darcy since infancy, being
the son of Mr. Darcy's father's steward. An officer in the militia, he is superficially
charming and rapidly forms an attachment with Elizabeth Bennet. He later runs off with
Lydia with no intention of marriage, which would have resulted in her and her family's
complete disgrace, but for Darcy's intervention to bribe Wickham to marry her by paying
off his immediate debts.
 Mr William Collins – Mr Collins is Mr Bennet's distant second cousin, a clergyman, and
the current heir presumptive to his estate of Longbourn House. He is an obsequious and
pompous man, prone to making long and tedious speeches, who is excessively devoted to
his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
 Lady Catherine de Bourgh – the overbearing aunt of Mr. Darcy. Lady Catherine is the
wealthy owner of Rosings Park, where she resides with her daughter Anne and is fawned
upon by her rector, Mr Collins. She is haughty, pompous, domineering, and
condescending, and has long planned to marry off her sickly daughter to Darcy, to 'unite
their two great estates', claiming it to be the dearest wish of both her and her late sister,
Lady Anne Darcy (née Fitzwilliam).
 Mr. Edward Gardiner and Mrs. Gardiner – Edward Gardiner is Mrs Bennet's brother
and a successful tradesman of sensible and gentlemanly character. Aunt Gardiner is
genteel and elegant and is close to her nieces Jane and Elizabeth. The Gardiners are
instrumental in bringing about the marriage between Darcy and Elizabeth.
 Georgiana Darcy – Georgiana is Mr Darcy's quiet, amiable (and shy) younger sister,
with a dowry of £30,000 (giving her an allowance/pin money of £1,200 or £1,500 per
annum), and is aged barely 16 when the story begins. When still 15, Miss Darcy almost
eloped with Mr. Wickham, but was saved by her brother, whom she idolises. Thanks to
years of tutorage under masters, she is accomplished at the piano, singing, playing the
harp, and drawing, and modern languages, and is therefore described as Caroline
Bingley's idea of an "accomplished woman."
 Charlotte Lucas – Charlotte is Elizabeth's friend who, at 27 years old (and thus very
much beyond what was then considered prime marriageable age), fears becoming a
burden to her family and therefore agrees to marry Mr. Collins to gain financial security.
Though the novel stresses the importance of love and understanding in marriage, Austen
never seems to condemn Charlotte's decision to marry for money. She uses Charlotte to
convey how women of her time would adhere to society's expectation for women to
marry even if it is not out of love, but convenience.[10] Charlotte is the daughter of Sir
William Lucas and Lady Lucas, neighbours of the Bennet family.
 Colonel Fitzwilliam – Colonel Fitzwilliam is the younger son of an earl and the nephew
of Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Lady Anne Darcy; this makes him the cousin of Anne
de Bourgh and the Darcy siblings, Fitzwilliam and Georgiana. He is about 30 years old at
the beginning of the novel. He is the co-guardian of Miss Georgiana Darcy, along with
his cousin, Mr. Darcy. According to Colonel Fitzwilliam, as a younger son, he cannot
marry without thought to his prospective bride's dowry; Elizabeth Bennet joked that, as
the son of an Earl, Colonel Fitzwilliam wouldn't be able to settle for a bride with a dowry
lower than £50,000 (which suggests that Colonel Fitzwilliam's living allowance is about
£2,000 to £2,500 per-year).
 A comprehensive web showing the relationships between the main characters in Pride and
Prejudice

Major themes
Many critics take the title as the start when analysing the themes of Pride and Prejudice but
Robert Fox cautions against reading too much into the title (which was first entitled: First
Impressions), because commercial factors may have played a role in its selection. "After the
success of Sense and Sensibility, nothing would have seemed more natural than to bring out
another novel of the same author using again the formula of antithesis and alliteration for the
title. The qualities of the title are not exclusively assigned to one or the other of the protagonists;
both Elizabeth and Darcy display pride and prejudice."[11] The phrase "pride and prejudice" had
been used over the preceding two centuries by Joseph Hall, Jeremy Taylor, Joseph Addison and
Samuel Johnson.[12][13] Austen probably took her title from a passage in Fanny Burney's Cecilia
(1782), a popular novel she is known to have admired:

'The whole of this unfortunate business, said Dr Lyster, has been the result of PRIDE and
PREJUDICE. […] if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good
and evil balanced, that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination.'[13][14]
(capitalisation as in the original)

A theme in much of Austen's work is the importance of environment and upbringing in

developing young people's character and morality.[15] Social standing and wealth are not
necessarily advantages in her world and a further theme common to Austen's work is ineffectual
parents. In Pride and Prejudice, the failure of Mr and Mrs Bennet as parents is blamed for
Lydia's lack of moral judgment. Darcy has been taught to be principled and scrupulously
honourable but he is also proud and overbearing.[15] Kitty, rescued from Lydia's bad influence
and spending more time with her older sisters after they marry, is said to improve greatly in their
superior society.[16] The American novelist Anna Quindlen observed in an introduction to an
edition of Austen's novel in 1995:

Pride and Prejudice is also about that thing that all great novels consider, the search for self.
And it is the first great novel that teaches us this search is as surely undertaken in the drawing
room making small talk as in the pursuit of a great white whale or the public punishment of
adultery.[17]

Marriage

The opening line of the novel famously announces: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a
single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."[18] This sets marriage as a
motif and a problem in the novel. Readers are poised to question whether or not these single men
need a wife, or if the need is dictated by the "neighbourhood" families and their daughters who
require a "good fortune".

Marriage is a complex social activity that takes political economy and economy generally, into
account. In the case of Charlotte Lucas, the seeming success of her marriage lies in the
comfortable financial circumstances of their household, while the relationship between Mr and
Mrs Bennet serves to illustrate bad marriages based on an initial attraction and surface over
substance (economic and psychological). The Bennets' marriage is an example that the youngest
Bennet, Lydia, re-enacts with Wickham and the results are far from felicitous. Although the
central characters, Elizabeth and Darcy, begin the novel as hostile acquaintances and unlikely
friends, they eventually work toward a better understanding of themselves and each other, which
frees them to truly fall in love. This does not eliminate the challenges of the real differences in
their technically-equivalent social status as gentry and their female relations. It does however
provide them with a better understanding of each other's point of view from the different ends of
the rather wide scale of differences within that category.

When Elizabeth rejects Darcy's first proposal, the argument of marrying for love is introduced.
Elizabeth only accepts Darcy's proposal when she is certain she loves him and her feelings are
reciprocated.[19] Austen's complex sketching of different marriages ultimately allows readers to
question what forms of alliance are desirable especially when it comes to privileging economic,
sexual, companionate attraction.[20]

Wealth

Money plays a fundamental role in the marriage market, for the young ladies seeking a well-off
husband and for men who wish to marry a woman of means. George Wickham tried to elope
with Georgiana Darcy, and Colonel Fitzwilliam married for money. Marrying a woman of a rich
family also ensured a linkage to a high family, as is visible in the desires of Bingley's sisters to
have their brother married to Georgiana Darcy. Mrs Bennet is frequently seen encouraging her
daughters to marry a wealthy man of high social class. In chapter 1, when Mr Bingley arrives,
she declares "I am thinking of his marrying one of them".[21]

Inheritance was by descent but could be further restricted by entailment, which would restrict
inheritance to male heirs only. In the case of the Bennet family, Mr Collins was to inherit the
family estate upon Mr Bennet's death and his proposal to Elizabeth would have ensured her
security but she refuses his offer. Inheritance laws benefited males because most women did not
have independent legal rights until the second half of the 19th century and women's financial
security depended on men. For the upper-middle and aristocratic classes, marriage to a man with
a reliable income was almost the only route to security for the woman and the children she was
to have.[22] The irony of the opening line is that generally within this society it would be a woman
who would be looking for a wealthy husband to have a prosperous life.[23]

Class

Lady Catherine and Elizabeth by C. E. Brock, 1895

Lady Catherine confronts Elizabeth about Darcy, on the title page of the first illustrated edition.
This is the other of the first two illustrations of the novel.

Austen might be known now for her "romances" but the marriages in her novels engage with
economics and class distinction. Pride and Prejudice is hardly the exception. When Darcy
proposes to Elizabeth, he cites their economic and social differences as an obstacle his excessive
love has had to overcome, though he still anxiously harps on the problems it poses for him within
his social circle. His aunt, Lady Catherine, later characterises these differences in particularly
harsh terms when she conveys what Elizabeth's marriage to Darcy will become, "Will the shades
of Pemberley be thus polluted?" Although Elizabeth responds to Lady Catherine's accusations
that hers is a potentially contaminating economic and social position (Elizabeth even insists she
and Darcy, as gentleman's daughter and gentleman, are "equals"), Lady Catherine refuses to
accept the possibility of Darcy's marriage to Elizabeth. However, as the novel closes, "…through
curiosity to see how his wife conducted herself", Lady Catherine condescends to visit them at
Pemberley.[24]

The Bingleys present a particular problem for navigating class. Though Caroline Bingley and
Mrs Hurst behave and speak of others as if they have always belonged in the upper echelons of
society, Austen makes a point to explain that the Bingleys are trade rather than inheritors and
rentiers. The fact that Bingley rents Netherfield Hall – it is, after all, "to let" – distinguishes him
significantly from Darcy, whose estate belonged to his father's family and through his mother, is
the grandson and nephew of an earl. Bingley, unlike Darcy, does not own his property but has
portable and growing wealth that makes him a good catch on the marriage market for poorer
daughters of the gentry, like Jane Bennet, ambitious cits (merchant class), etc. Class plays a
central role in the evolution of the characters and Jane Austen's radical approach to class is seen
as the plot unfolds.[25]

An undercurrent of the old Anglo-Norman upper class is hinted at in the story, as suggested by
the names of Fitzwilliam Darcy and his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh; Fitzwilliam, D'Arcy, de
Bourgh (Burke), and even Bennet, are traditional Norman surnames.[26]

Self-knowledge

Through their interactions and their critiques of each other, Darcy and Elizabeth come to
recognise their faults and work to correct them. Elizabeth meditates on her own mistakes
thoroughly in chapter 36:

"How despicably have I acted!" she cried; "I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who
have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister,
and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable distrust. How humiliating is this discovery! yet,
how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But
vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the
neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and
ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew
myself."[27]

Other characters rarely exhibit this depth of understanding or at least are not given the space
within the novel for this sort of development. Tanner writes that Mrs Bennet in particular, "has a
very limited view of the requirements of that performance; lacking any introspective tendencies
she is incapable of appreciating the feelings of others and is only aware of material objects".[28]
Mrs Bennet's behaviour reflects the society in which she lives, as she knows that her daughters
will not succeed if they don't get married. "The business of her life was to get her daughters
married: its solace was visiting and news."[29] This shows that Mrs Bennet is only aware of
"material objects" and not of her feelings and emotions.[30]

Style
Pride and Prejudice, like most of Austen's works, employs the narrative technique of free
indirect speech, which has been defined as "the free representation of a character's speech, by
which one means, not words actually spoken by a character, but the words that typify the
character's thoughts, or the way the character would think or speak, if she thought or spoke".[31]
Austen creates her characters with fully developed personalities and unique voices. Though
Darcy and Elizabeth are very alike, they are also considerably different.[32] By using narrative
that adopts the tone and vocabulary of a particular character (in this case, Elizabeth), Austen
invites the reader to follow events from Elizabeth's viewpoint, sharing her prejudices and
misapprehensions. "The learning curve, while undergone by both protagonists, is disclosed to us
solely through Elizabeth's point of view and her free indirect speech is essential ... for it is
through it that we remain caught, if not stuck, within Elizabeth's misprisions."[31] The few times
the reader is allowed to gain further knowledge of another character's feelings, is through the
letters exchanged in this novel. Darcy's first letter to Elizabeth is an example of this as through
his letter, the reader and Elizabeth are both given knowledge of Wickham's true character.
Austen is known to use irony throughout the novel especially from viewpoint of the character of
Elizabeth Bennet. She conveys the "oppressive rules of femininity that actually dominate her life
and work, and are covered by her beautifully carved trojan horse of ironic distance."[7] Beginning
with a historical investigation of the development of a particular literary form and then
transitioning into empirical verifications, it reveals free indirect discourse as a tool that emerged
over time as practical means for addressing the physical distinctness of minds. Seen in this way,
free indirect discourse is a distinctly literary response to an environmental concern, providing a
scientific justification that does not reduce literature to a mechanical extension of biology, but
takes its value to be its own original form.[33]

Development of the novel

Page 2 of a letter from Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra (11 June 1799) in which she first
mentions Pride and Prejudice, using its working title First Impressions. (NLA)
Austen began writing the novel after staying at Goodnestone Park in Kent with her brother
Edward and his wife in 1796.[34] It was originally titled First Impressions, and was written
between October 1796 and August 1797.[35] On 1 November 1797 Austen's father sent a letter to
London bookseller Thomas Cadell to ask if he had any interest in seeing the manuscript, but the
offer was declined by return post.[36] The militia were mobilised after the French declaration of
war on Britain in February 1793, and there was initially a lack of barracks for all the militia
regiments, requiring the militia to set up huge camps in the countryside, which the novel refers to
several times.[37] The Brighton camp for which the militia regiment leaves in May after spending
the winter in Meryton was opened in August 1793, and the barracks for all the regiments of the
militia were completed by 1796, placing the events of the novel between 1793 and 1795.[38]

Austen made significant revisions to the manuscript for First Impressions between 1811 and
1812.[35] As nothing remains of the original manuscript, we are reduced to conjecture. From the
large number of letters in the final novel, it is assumed that First Impressions was an epistolary
novel.[39] She later renamed the story Pride and Prejudice around 1811/1812, when she sold the
rights to publish the manuscript to Thomas Egerton for £110[40] (equivalent to £7,400 in 2019). In
renaming the novel, Austen probably had in mind the "sufferings and oppositions" summarised
in the final chapter of Fanny Burney's Cecilia, called "Pride and Prejudice", where the phrase
appears three times in block capitals.[15] It is possible that the novel's original title was altered to
avoid confusion with other works. In the years between the completion of First Impressions and
its revision into Pride and Prejudice, two other works had been published under that name: a
novel by Margaret Holford and a comedy by Horace Smith.[36]

Publication history

Title page of a 1907 edition illustrated by C. E. Brock

Austen sold the copyright for the novel to Thomas Egerton from the Military Library, Whitehall
in exchange for £110 (Austen had asked for £150).[41] This proved a costly decision. Austen had
published Sense and Sensibility on a commission basis, whereby she indemnified the publisher
against any losses and received any profits, less costs and the publisher's commission. Unaware
that Sense and Sensibility would sell out its edition, making her £140,[36] she passed the copyright
to Egerton for a one-off payment, meaning that all the risk (and all the profits) would be his. Jan
Fergus has calculated that Egerton subsequently made around £450 from just the first two
editions of the book.[42]

Egerton published the first edition of Pride and Prejudice in three hardcover volumes on 28
January 1813.[43] It was advertised in The Morning Chronicle, priced at 18s.[35] Favourable
reviews saw this edition sold out, with a second edition published in October that year. A third
edition was published in 1817.[41]

Foreign language translations first appeared in 1813 in French; subsequent translations were
published in German, Danish, and Swedish.[44] Pride and Prejudice was first published in the
United States in August 1832 as Elizabeth Bennet or, Pride and Prejudice.[41] The novel was also
included in Richard Bentley's Standard Novel series in 1833. R. W. Chapman's scholarly edition
of Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1923, has become the standard edition on which many
modern published versions of the novel are based.[41]

The novel was originally published anonymously, as were all of Austen's novels. However,
whereas her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility was presented as being written "by a
Lady," Pride and Prejudice was attributed to "the Author of Sense and Sensibility". This began
to consolidate a conception of Austen as an author, albeit anonymously. Her subsequent novels
were similarly attributed to the anonymous author of all her then-published works.

Reception
Main article: Reception history of Jane Austen

At first publication

The novel was well received, with three favourable reviews in the first months following
publication.[42] Anne Isabella Milbanke, later to be the wife of Lord Byron, called it "the
fashionable novel".[42] Noted critic and reviewer George Henry Lewes declared that he "would
rather have written Pride and Prejudice, or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley Novels".[45]

Charlotte Brontë, however, in a letter to Lewes, wrote that Pride and Prejudice was a
disappointment, "a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate
flowers; but ... no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck".[45][46]

Austen for her part thought the "playfulness and epigrammaticism" of Pride and Prejudice was
excessive, complaining in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1813 that the novel lacked "shade"
and should have had a chapter "of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with
the story; an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott or the history of Bounaparté".[47]
Walter Scott wrote in his journal "Read again and for the third time at least, Miss Austen's very
finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice.."[48]

20th century
You could not shock her more than she shocks me,
Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass.
It makes me most uncomfortable to see
An English spinster of the middle class
Describe the amorous effects of 'brass',
Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety
The economic basis of society.

W. H. Auden (1937) on Austen[45]

The American scholar Claudia Johnson defended the novel from the criticism that it has an
unrealistic fairy-tale quality.[49] One critic, Mary Poovey, wrote that the "romantic conclusion" of
Pride and Prejudice is an attempt to hedge the conflict between the "individualistic perspective
inherent in the bourgeois value system and the authoritarian hierarchy retained from traditional,
paternalistic society".[49] Johnson wrote that Austen's view of a power structure capable of
reformation was not an "escape" from conflict.[49] Johnson wrote the "outrageous
unconventionality" of Elizabeth Bennet was in Austen's own time very daring, especially given
the strict censorship that was imposed in Britain by the Prime Minister, William Pitt, in the
1790s when Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice.[49]

21st century

 In 2003 the BBC conducted a poll for the "UK's Best-Loved Book" in which Pride and
Prejudice came second, behind The Lord of the Rings.[50]
 In a 2008 survey of more than 15,000 Australian readers, Pride and Prejudice came first
in a list of the 101 best books ever written.[51]
 The 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice on 28 January 2013 was celebrated around
the globe by media networks such as the Huffington Post, The New York Times, and The
Daily Telegraph, among others.[52][53][54][55][56][57][58]
 Pride and Prejudice is one of Five Books most recommended books with philosophers,
literary scholars, authors and journalists citing it as an influential text.[59]

Adaptations
Film, television and theatre

See also: Jane Austen in popular culture – Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice has engendered numerous adaptations. Some of the notable film versions
include the 1940 Academy Award-winning film, starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier[60]
(based in part on Helen Jerome's 1936 stage adaptation) and that of 2005, starring Keira
Knightley (an Oscar-nominated performance) and Matthew Macfadyen.[61] Notable television
versions include two by the BBC: a 1980 version starring Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul
and the popular 1995 version, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. This also includes Bride
and Prejudice and 'Trishna (1985 Hindi TV Series).

A 1936 stage version was created by Helen Jerome played at the St James's Theatre in London,
starring Celia Johnson and Hugh Williams. First Impressions was a 1959 Broadway musical
version starring Polly Bergen, Farley Granger, and Hermione Gingold.[62] In 1995, a musical
concept album was written by Bernard J. Taylor, with Claire Moore in the role of Elizabeth
Bennet and Peter Karrie in the role of Mr Darcy.[63] A new stage production, Jane Austen's Pride
and Prejudice, The New Musical, was presented in concert on 21 October 2008 in Rochester,
New York, with Colin Donnell as Darcy.[64] The Swedish composer Daniel Nelson based his
2011 opera Stolthet och fördom on Pride and Prejudice.[65]

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries - which premiered on a dedicated YouTube channel on April 9, 2012,
[66]
and concluded on March 28, 2013[67] - is an Emmy award-winning web-series[68] which
recounts the story via vlogs recorded primarily by the Bennet sisters.[69][70] It was created by Hank
Green and Bernie Su.[71]

Literature

Main article: List of literary adaptations of Pride and Prejudice

The novel has inspired a number of other works that are not direct adaptations. Books inspired
by Pride and Prejudice include the following:

 Mr Darcy's Daughters and The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy by
Elizabeth Aston
 Darcy's Story (a best seller) and Dialogue with Darcy by Janet Aylmer
 Pemberley: Or Pride and Prejudice Continued and An Unequal Marriage: Or Pride and
Prejudice Twenty Years Later by Emma Tennant
 The Book of Ruth by Helen Baker
 Jane Austen Ruined My Life and Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart by Beth Pattillo
 Precipitation – A Continuation of Miss Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice by Helen
Baker
 Searching for Pemberley by Mary Simonsen
 Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife and its sequel Darcy & Elizabeth: Nights and Days at
Pemberley by Linda Berdoll

In Gwyn Cready's comedic romance novel, Seducing Mr Darcy, the heroine lands in Pride and
Prejudice by way of magic massage, has a fling with Darcy and unknowingly changes the rest of
the story.

Abigail Reynolds is the author of seven Regency-set variations on Pride and Prejudice. Her
Pemberley Variations series includes Mr Darcy's Obsession, To Conquer Mr Darcy, What
Would Mr Darcy Do and Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World. Her modern
adaptation, The Man Who Loved Pride and Prejudice, is set on Cape Cod.[72]

Bella Breen is the author of nine variations on Pride and Prejudice. Pride and Prejudice and
Poison, Four Months to Wed, Forced to Marry and The Rescue of Elizabeth Bennet.[73]

Helen Fielding's 1996 novel Bridget Jones's Diary is also based on Pride and Prejudice; the
feature film of Fielding's work, released in 2001, stars Colin Firth, who had played Mr Darcy in
the successful 1990s TV adaptation.

In March 2009, Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies takes Austen's work
and mashes it up with zombie hordes, cannibalism, ninja and ultraviolent mayhem.[74] In March
2010, Quirk Books published a prequel by Steve Hockensmith that deals with Elizabeth Bennet's
early days as a zombie hunter, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls.[75] The
2016 film of Grahame-Smith's adaptation was released starring Lily James, Sam Riley and Matt
Smith.

In 2011, author Mitzi Szereto expanded on the novel in Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts, a
historical sex parody that parallels the original plot and writing style of Jane Austen.

Marvel has also published their take on this classic by releasing a short comic series of five
issues that stays true to the original storyline. The first issue was published on 1 April 2009 and
was written by Nancy Hajeski.[76] It was published as a graphic novel in 2010 with artwork by
Hugo Petrus.

Pamela Aidan is the author of a trilogy of books telling the story of Pride and Prejudice from Mr
Darcy's point of view: Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman. The books are An Assembly Such as This,
[77]
Duty and Desire[78] and These Three Remain.[79]

Detective novel author P. D. James has written a book titled Death Comes to Pemberley, which
is a murder mystery set six years after Elizabeth and Darcy's marriage.[80]

Sandra Lerner's sequel to Pride and Prejudice, Second Impressions, develops the story and
imagined what might have happened to the original novel's characters. It is written in the style of
Austen after extensive research into the period and language and published in 2011 under the pen
name of Ava Farmer.[81]

Jo Baker's bestselling 2013 novel Longbourn imagines the lives of the servants of Pride and
Prejudice.[82] A cinematic adaptation of Longbourn was due to start filming in late 2018, directed
by Sharon Maguire, who also directed Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones's Baby,
screenplay by Jessica Swale, produced by Random House Films and StudioCanal.[83] The novel
was also adapted for radio, appearing on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime, abridged by Sara
Davies and read by Sophie Thompson. It was first broadcast in May 2014; and again on Radio 4
Extra in September 2018.[84]
In the novel Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld sets the characters of Pride and Prejudice in modern-day
Cincinnati, where the Bennet parents, erstwhile Cincinnati social climbers, have fallen on hard
times. Elizabeth, a successful and independent New York journalist, and her single older sister
Jane must intervene to salvage the family's financial situation and get their unemployed adult
sisters to move out of the house and onward in life. In the process they encounter Chip Bingley, a
young doctor and reluctant reality TV celebrity, and his medical school classmate, Fitzwilliam
Darcy, a cynical neurosurgeon.[85]

Pride and Prejudice has also inspired works of scientific writing. In 2010, scientists named a
pheromone identified in male mouse urine darcin,[86] after Mr Darcy, because it strongly attracted
females. In 2016, a scientific paper published in the Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease
speculated that Mrs Bennet may have been a carrier of a rare genetic disease, explaining why the
Bennets didn't have any sons, and why some of the Bennet sisters are so silly.[87]

In summer 2014, Udon Entertainment's Manga Classics line published a manga adaptation of
Pride and Prejudice.[88]
Mansfield Park
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For other uses, see Mansfield Park (disambiguation).
Mansfield Park

Title page of the first edition

Author Jane Austen
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Publisher Thomas Egerton
Publication date July 1814
Preceded by Pride and Prejudice 
Followed by Emma 

Mansfield Park is the third published novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1814 by Thomas
Egerton. A second edition was published in 1816 by John Murray, still within Austen's lifetime.
The novel did not receive any public reviews until 1821.
The novel tells the story of Fanny Price, starting when her overburdened family sends her at age
ten to live in the household of her wealthy aunt and uncle and following her development into
early adulthood. From early on critical interpretation has been diverse, differing particularly over
the character of the heroine, Austen's views about theatrical performance and the centrality or
otherwise of ordination and religion, and on the question of slavery. Some of these problems
have been highlighted in the several later adaptations of the story for stage and screen.

Contents
 1 Plot summary
 2 Characters
 3 Literary reception
 4 Development, themes and symbols
o 4.1 Background
o 4.2 Symbolic locations and events
 5 Opinions about Fanny Price
o 5.1 Priggish?
o 5.2 Fanny's inner world
o 5.3 Feminist irony
o 5.4 A woman of will
o 5.5 Fanny as a 'literary monster'
 6 Landscape planning
o 6.1 Rural morality
o 6.2 Humphry Repton and improvements
o 6.3 Political symbolism
o 6.4 Sotherton and moral symbolism
 7 Theatre at Mansfield Park
o 7.1 Antitheatricality
o 7.2 Impropriety
o 7.3 Acting
o 7.4 Regency politics
 8 Church and Mansfield Park
o 8.1 Set pieces
o 8.2 Decadent religion
o 8.3 Evangelical influence
o 8.4 Pulpit eloquence
o 8.5 An ideal clergyman
 9 Slavery and Mansfield Park
o 9.1 Does Mansfield Park endorse slavery?
o 9.2 English air
o 9.3 Anti-slavery allusions
  10 Propriety and morality
o 10.1 Moral dialogue
o 10.2 Conscience and consciousness
o 10.3 The Crawfords
 11 Adaptations
 12 References
 13 External links

Plot summary

The young Fanny and the "well meant condescensions of Sir Thomas Bertram" on her arrival at
Mansfield Park. A 1903 edition

Fanny Price, at age ten, is sent from her impoverished home in Portsmouth to live as one of the
family at Mansfield Park, the Northamptonshire country estate of her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram.
There she is mistreated by all but her elder cousin Edmund. Her aunt Norris, the wife of the
clergyman at the Mansfield parsonage, makes herself particularly unpleasant.

When Fanny is fifteen, Aunt Norris is widowed and the frequency of her visits to Mansfield Park
increases, as does her mistreatment of Fanny. A year later, Sir Thomas leaves to deal with
problems on his plantation in Antigua, taking his spendthrift eldest son Tom. Mrs Norris, looking
for a husband for Maria, finds Mr Rushworth, who is rich but weak-willed and considered stupid,
and Maria accepts his proposal.

The following year, Henry Crawford and his sister, Mary, arrive at the parsonage to stay with
their half-sister, the wife of the new incumbent, Dr Grant. With their fashionable London ways,
they enliven life in Mansfield. Edmund and Mary then start to show interest in one another.
On a visit to Mr Rushworth's estate, Henry flirts with both Maria and Julia. Maria believes Henry
is in love with her and so treats Mr Rushworth dismissively, provoking his jealousy, while Julia
struggles with jealousy and resentment towards her sister. Mary is disappointed to learn that
Edmund will be a clergyman and tries to undermine his vocation. Fanny fears that Mary's charms
are blinding Edmund to her flaws.

After Tom returns, he encourages the young people to begin rehearsals for an amateur
performance of the play Lovers' Vows. Edmund objects, believing Sir Thomas would disapprove
and feeling that the subject matter of the play is inappropriate for his sisters. But after much
pressure, he agrees to take on the role of the lover of the character played by Mary. The play
provides further opportunity for Henry and Maria to flirt. When Sir Thomas arrives home
unexpectedly, the play is still in rehearsal and is cancelled. Henry departs without explanation
and Maria goes ahead with marriage to Mr Rushworth. They then settle in London, taking Julia
with them. Sir Thomas sees many improvements in Fanny and Mary Crawford initiates a closer
relationship with her.

Fanny, led by Henry Crawford at her celebration ball.

When Henry returns, he decides to entertain himself by making Fanny fall in love with him.
Fanny's brother William visits Mansfield Park, and Sir Thomas holds what is effectively a
coming-out ball for her. Although Mary dances with Edmund, she tells him it will be the last
time as she will never dance with a clergyman. Edmund drops his plan to propose and leaves the
next day. So too do Henry and William.

When Henry next returns, he announces to Mary his intention to marry Fanny. To assist his plan,
he uses his family connections to help William achieve promotion. However, when Henry
proposes marriage, Fanny rejects him, disapproving of his past treatment of women. Sir Thomas
is astonished by her continuing refusal, but she does not explain, afraid of incriminating Maria.

To help Fanny appreciate Henry's offer, Sir Thomas sends her to visit her parents in Portsmouth,
where she is taken aback by the contrast between their chaotic household and the harmonious
environment at Mansfield. Henry visits, but although she still refuses him, she begins to
appreciate his good features.

Later, Fanny learns that Henry and Maria have had an affair that is reported in the newspapers.
Mr Rushworth sues Maria for divorce, and the Bertram family is devastated. Tom meanwhile
falls gravely ill as a result of a fall from his horse. Edmund takes Fanny back to Mansfield Park,
where she is a healing influence. Sir Thomas realises that Fanny was right to reject Henry's
proposal and now regards her as a daughter.

During a meeting with Mary Crawford, Edmund discovers that Mary only regrets that Henry's
adultery was discovered. Devastated, he breaks off the relationship and returns to Mansfield
Park, where he confides in Fanny. Eventually the two marry and move to Mansfield parsonage.
Meanwhile, those left at Mansfield Park have learned from their mistakes and life becomes
pleasanter there.

Characters

Perplexed Mr Rushworth contemplating the locked gate at the Sotherton ha-ha.

 Fanny Price, the niece of the family at Mansfield Park, with the status of a dependent
poor relation.
  Lady Bertram, Fanny's aunt. Married to the wealthy Sir Thomas Bertram, she is the
middle sister of three Wards, the others being Mrs Norris and Fanny's mother.
 Mrs Norris, elder sister of Lady Bertram, whose husband was the local parson until his
death.
 Sir Thomas Bertram, baronet and husband of Fanny's aunt, owner of the Mansfield Park
estate and one in Antigua.
 Thomas Bertram, elder son of Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, seven years older than
Fanny.
 Edmund Bertram, younger son of Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, who plans to become a
clergyman, six years older than Fanny.
 Maria Bertram, elder daughter of Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, three years older than
Fanny.
 Julia Bertram, younger daughter of Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, two years older than
Fanny.
 Dr Grant, incumbent of the Mansfield Park parsonage after Mr Norris dies.
 Mrs Grant, wife of Mr Grant, and half-sister of Henry and Mary Crawford.
 Henry Crawford, brother of Miss Crawford and half-brother of Mrs Grant.
 Mary Crawford, sister of Mr Crawford and half-sister of Mrs Grant.
 Mr. Rushworth, Maria Bertram's fiancé, then husband.
 The Hon. John Yates, friend of Tom Bertram.
 William Price, Fanny's older brother.
 Mr Price, Fanny's father, an officer in the Marines who lives in Portsmouth.
 Mrs Price, born Frances (Fanny) Ward, Fanny's mother.
 Susan Price, Fanny's younger sister.
 Lady Stornoway, a society woman, complicit in Mr Crawford and Maria's flirtation.
 Mrs Rushworth, Mr Rushworth's mother and Maria's mother-in-law.
 Baddeley, the butler at Mansfield Park.

Literary reception
Main article: Reception history of Jane Austen

Although Mansfield Park was initially ignored by reviewers, it was a great success with the
public. The first printing in 1814 sold out within six months. The second in 1816 also sold out.[1]
The first critical review in 1821 by Richard Whately was positive.[2]

Regency critics praised the novel's wholesome morality. The Victorian consensus treated
Austen's novels as social comedy. In 1911, A. C. Bradley restored the moral perspective,
praising Mansfield Park for being artistic while having "deeply at heart the importance of certain
truths about conduct". The influential Lionel Trilling (1954), and later Thomas Tanner (1968),
maintained emphasis on the novel's deep moral strength. Thomas Edwards (1965) argued that
there were more shades of grey in Mansfield Park than in her other novels, and that those who
craved a simple dualist worldview might find this off-putting.[3] In the 1970s, Alistair Duckworth
(1971) and Marilyn Butler (1975) laid the foundation for a more comprehensive understanding
of the novel's historical allusions and context.[1]
By the 1970s, Mansfield Park was considered Austen's most controversial novel. In 1974, the
American literary critic, Joel Weinsheimer, described Mansfield Park as perhaps the most
profound of her novels, certainly the most problematic.[4]

The American scholar, John Halperin (1975), was particularly negative, describing Mansfield
Park as the "most eccentric" of Austen's novels and her greatest failure. He attacked the novel
for its inane heroine, its pompous hero, a ponderous plot, and "viperish satire". He described the
Bertram family as appalling characters, full of self-righteousness, debauchery and greed,
personal financial advantage being their only interest.[5] He complained that the scenes set in
Portsmouth were far more interesting than those in Mansfield Park, and that having consistently
portrayed the Bertram family as greedy, selfish and materialistic, Austen, in the last chapters,
presented life at Mansfield Park in idealised terms.[6]

The latter part of the twentieth century saw the development of diverse readings, including
feminist and post-colonial criticism, the most influential of the latter being Edward Said's Jane
Austen and Empire (1983). While some continued to attack, and others to praise the novel's
conservative morality, yet others saw it as ultimately challenging formal conservative values in
favour of compassion and a deeper morality, and having an ongoing challenge to subsequent
generations. Isobel Armstrong (1988) argued for an open understanding of the text, that it should
be seen as an exploration of problems rather than a statement of final conclusions.[7]

To Susan Morgan (1987), Mansfield Park was the most difficult of Austen's novels, featuring the
weakest of all her heroines yet one who ends up the most beloved member of her family.[8]

Readings by the beginning of the 21st century commonly took for granted Mansfield Park as
Austen's most historically searching novel. Most engaged with her highly sophisticated
renderings of the character's psychological lives and with historical formations such as
Evangelicalism and the consolidation of British imperial power.[9]

Colleen Sheehan (2004) said:

Despite Austen's ultimate and clear condemnation of the Crawfords, much of contemporary
scholarship bemoans their literary fates. It is a common cant of critics that they would delight in
an evening with Henry and Mary Crawford and anticipate in horror having to spend one with
Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram. ... Like the Crawfords, they have rejected the orientation and
obscured the moral perspective that inspired Austen in her writing of Mansfield Park. This is the
affliction of our times. We are too easily charmed by the subversive.[10]

In 2014, celebrating 200 years since the novel's publication, Paula Byrne wrote: "Ignore its
uptight reputation, Mansfield Park ... seethes with sex and explores England's murkiest corners".
[11]
She called it pioneering for being about meritocracy.[12] In 2017, Corinne Fowler revisited
Said's thesis, reviewing its significance in the light of more recent critical developments in
imperial history.[13]

Development, themes and symbols

Background

The novel has many autobiographical associations; some of these are indicated in the following
sections about critical discussions of important themes. Austen drew considerably on her own
experience and the knowledge of her family and friends. Her acute observation of human
behaviour informs the development of all her characters. In Mansfield Park, she continues her
practice, like that of the portrait miniaturist, painting on ivory "with so fine a brush".[14] Apart
from a day's visit to Sotherton and three months' confinement in Portsmouth, the novel's action is
restricted to a single estate, yet its subtle allusions are global, touching on India, China and the
Caribbean.

HMS  Cleopatra, commanded by Jane Austen's brother Captain James Austen, 1810–1811, and
mentioned in ch. 38.

Austen knew Portsmouth from personal experience.[15] She records that Admiral Foote, then
Second-in-Command at Portsmouth, was "surprised that I had the power of drawing the
Portsmouth-Scenes so well".[16] Her brother, Charles Austen served as a Royal Navy officer
during the Napoleonic Wars. In the novel, Fanny's brother William joins the Royal Navy as an
officer, whose ship, HMS Thrush, is sited right next to HMS  Cleopatra at Spithead.[17] Captain
Austen commanded HMS Cleopatra during her cruise in North American waters to hunt French
ships from September 1810 to June 1811. If the novel refers to the ship in its historical context,
this would date the main events of the novel as 1810–1811.[17] William's tales of his life as a
midshipman recounted to the Bertrams would have indicated to early readers that he had sailed
with Nelson to the Caribbean. Lady Bertram requests two shawls if he goes to the East Indies.

William gives Fanny the gift of an amber cross. This echoes the gift of topaz crosses given by
Charles Austen to his sisters before he set sail to the Royal Navy's North America stations in
Halifax and Bermuda.[17] In Fanny's East room, Edmund speculates from her reading that she will
be 'taking a trip into China' in the footsteps of Lord Macartney's pioneering cultural mission.[18]

Symbolic locations and events

The first critic to draw attention to the novel's extensive use of symbolic representation was
Virginia Woolf in 1913.[19] Three overtly symbolic events are: the visit to neighbouring Sotherton
and the ha-ha with its locked gate (ch. 9–10), the extensive preparation for the theatricals and its
aftermath (ch. 13–20), and the game of Speculation (ch. 25) where, says David Selwyn, the card
game is a "metaphor for the game Mary Crawford is playing, with Edmund as stake".[20][21]
'Speculation' also references Sir Thomas's unpredictable investments in the West Indies and
Tom's gambling which causes financial embarrassment to Sir Thomas and reduced prospects for
Edmund, not to mention the speculative nature of the marriage market. Also to be found are
underlying allusions to great biblical themes of temptation, sin, judgement and redemption. The
'keys' to these are found at Sotherton. Felicia Bonaparte argues that in a striking post modern
way, Fanny Price is a realistic figure, but also a figure in a design. She sees Fanny as the 'pearl of
great price' in the parable of the Kingdom recorded in Matthew 13:45-46, the 'kingdom' relating
to both contemporary society and a kingdom yet to be revealed.[22]:49–50, 57

Opinions about Fanny Price

See also: Fanny Price

Nina Auerbach (1980), identifying with the ambivalence experienced by many readers, asks the
question, "how ought we to feel about Fanny Price?"[23]

Austen's mother thought Fanny insipid, though other unpublished private reviewers liked the
character (Austen collected comments by those in her social circle).[24][25] Many have seen Fanny
Price as a nineteenth century Cinderella.

A major debate concerns whether or not the character of Fanny is meant to be ironic, a parody of
the wholesome heroines so popular in Regency novels. Lionel Trilling (1957) maintained that
Austen created Fanny as "irony directed against irony itself".[4] William H. Magee (1966) wrote
that "irony pervades, if (it) does not dominate, the presentation of Fanny Price". By contrast,
Andrew Wright (1968) argued that Fanny "is presented straight-forwardly, without any
contradiction of any kind".

Thomas Edwards (1965) regarded Fanny as the most vulnerable of all the Austen heroines and
therefore the most human. He argued that even Fanny's limited morality had much to commend
it.[26] Austen biographer Claire Tomalin (1997) argues that Fanny rises to her moment of heroism
when she rejects the obedience that, as a woman, she has been schooled to accept and follows the
higher dictate of her own conscience.[27]

Priggish?

Clara Calvo (2005) says that many modern readers find it difficult to sympathise with Fanny's
timidity and her disapproval of the theatricals, finding her "priggish, passive, naive and hard to
like".[25] Priggishness has been a longstanding criticism of Austen's heroine. Wiltshire (2005)
challenges the negative judgement of Fanny suggesting that it is the apparent conservatism of
the novel that makes it confronting, and that "many readers cannot get past it".[28]
Portsmouth Point by Thomas Rowlandson, 1811. Popular with sailors on leave from ships
moored at Spithead; notorious for lewd behaviour

Tomalin sees Fanny as a complex personality who, despite her frailty, shows courage and grows
in self-esteem during the latter part of the story. Her faith, which gives her the courage to resist
what she thinks is wrong, sometimes makes her intolerant of the sinners.[27] Fanny, always self-
reflective, is intolerant of her own intolerance. Change in her character is most marked during
her three months exposure to Portsmouth life. Initially, shocked by the coarseness and
impropriety of her parental home and its neighbourhood, she condemns it. Her father's attitude is
one that modern readers might also condemn, given the tone of incestuous sexual harassment in a
man who scarcely notices her except "to make her the object of a coarse joke".[29] While now
recognising she can never be at home in Portsmouth, she gradually overcomes her acknowledged
prejudices, recognises the distinctive qualities of her siblings and works hard not to cause
offence. In the wider community, judgement is more even-handed; Fanny does not take to the
young ladies of the town and they, offended by the 'airs' of one who neither plays on the
pianoforte nor wears fine pelisses, do not take to her.[30] She comes to see that part of her
physical frailty stems from the debilitating effect of the internal arguments, conversations and
identifications that sap her energy.

Auerbach suggests that Fanny, as the quiet observer, adopts "the audience's withering power over
performance". She says, "our discomfort at Fanny is in part our discomfort at our own
voyeurism", and that we implicate ourselves as well as Fanny "in a community of compelling
English monsters".

Paula Byrne (2014) says, "At the centre of the book is a displaced child with an unshakeable
conscience. A true heroine."[12]

Fanny's inner world

Fanny is unique amongst the Austen heroines in that her story begins when she is ten and traces
her story up to age eighteen.[31] Byrne says, "Mansfield Park is perhaps the first novel in history
to depict the life of a little girl from within".[32] By the beginning of the 21st century, says John
Wiltshire, critics, appreciating Austen's highly sophisticated renderings of her character's
psychological lives, now understood Fanny, formerly seen as the principled pivot of moral right
(celebrated by some critics, berated by others) as "a trembling, unstable entity, [an] erotically
driven and conflicted figure, both victim and apostle of values inscribed within her by her history
of adoption".[9] Joan Klingel Ray suggests that Fanny is Austen's insightful study of "the
battered-child syndrome", a victim of emotional and material abuse in both households.[33] From
early on she is seen as mentally and physically fragile, a little girl with low self-esteem,
vulnerable and thin-skinned. The rock on which she stands, enabling her to survive, is the love of
her older brother William. At Mansfield, her cousin Edmund gradually takes on a similar role;
both young men fulfil the essential role of care-giver left vacant by the adults. The East room,
which Fanny gradually appropriates, becomes her safe place, her "nest of comforts" to which,
though unheated, she retreats in times of stress. Here she reflects on her sufferings; the
misunderstanding of her motives, her disregarded feelings, and her understanding undervalued.
She considers the pain of tyranny, ridicule and neglect, but concludes that nearly every incident
led to some benefit and the chief consolation had always been Edmund.[34]

The trauma of her dislocation at the age of ten is recalled by Fanny eight years later when she is
promised a visit to her birth family. "The remembrance of all her earliest pleasures, and of what
she had suffered in being torn from them, came over her with renewed strength, and it seemed as
if to be at home again would heal every pain that had since grown out of the separation."[35] The
pain of separation is as evident as is the idealisation of her former life at Portsmouth, an
idealisation that masks the deeper pain of an abandonment soon to be acknowledged. John
Wiltshire, returning to the theme in 2014, describes Fanny as "a heroine damaged early by her
upbringing, as well as by her quasi-adoption, who experiences intense conflict between gratitude
to her adoptive family and the deepest rebellion against them", a rebellion scarcely conscious.[36]

Feminist irony

Negative criticism of Fanny sometimes identifies with that voiced by characters in the novel. For
some early feminists, Fanny Price was close to being considered, as she was by Mrs Norris, "the
daemon of the piece". Many have despised her as "creepmouse", as her cousin Tom does.[9]

Mary Wollstonecraft, contemporary proto-feminist writer, and critic of Rousseau.

Margaret Kirkham (1983) in her essay "Feminist Irony and the Priceless Heroine of Mansfield
Park" argued that Austen was a feminist writer who liked complexity and humour and enjoyed
presenting puzzles for her readers. Many have missed the feminist irony of the character of
Fanny.[37] Austen was a feminist in the sense that she believed women were as equally endowed
with reason and common sense as men, and that the ideal marriage should be between two
people who love each other.[38] Ironically, the love match portrayed between Fanny's parents is
far from ideal.

Kirkham sees Mansfield Park as an attack on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's popular 1762 work,
Emile, or On Education, which depicted the ideal woman as fragile, submissive, and physically
weaker than men. Rousseau stated: "So far from being ashamed of their weakness, they glory in
it; their tender muscles make no resistance; they affect to be incapable of lifting the smallest
burdens, and would blush to be thought robust and strong."[39] The contemporary philosopher,
Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote at length against Rousseau's views in A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman. She also challenged followers of Rousseau like James Fordyce whose sermons had long
been a part of a young woman's library.[40]

At the beginning of the novel, Fanny, with her constant illnesses, timid disposition,
submissiveness and fragility, conforms outwardly to Rousseau's ideal woman.[41] Subversively,
her passivity is primarily that of a victim determined to survive, the result of the trauma of her
dislocation and the internal complexities of her mental well-being. The once beautiful aunt
Bertram, in her indolence and passivity, also satirises the stereotype.[42] In the end, Fanny
survives by unwittingly undermining prevailing attitudes to propriety as she finds the strength to
place conscience above obedience and love above duty. Fanny's refusal to capitulate to Sir
Thomas' wish that she marry Henry Crawford is seen by Kirkham as the moral climax of the
novel.[43] Through her deep-seated integrity and compassion, her reason and common sense, she
is able to triumph, thus challenging the prevailing ideal of femininity (and propriety) in Regency
England.[44]

A woman of will

The American literary critic Harold Bloom calls Fanny Price "a co-descendant, together with
Locke's association-menaced will, of the English Protestant emphasis upon the will's autonomy".

He draws attention to C. S. Lewis's observation that "into Fanny, Jane Austen, to counterbalance
her apparent insignificance, has put really nothing except rectitude of mind, neither passion, nor
physical courage, nor wit, nor resource". Bloom agrees with Lewis but argues that he misses the
importance of Fanny's "will to be herself" as a causal agent in the plot. Bloom argues that
paradoxically it is Fanny's lack of the "will to dominate" that enables her 'will' to succeed. Her
struggle just to be herself causes her to exercise moral influence, and this leads her to triumph in
the end.[45]

Fanny as a 'literary monster'

Frontispiece to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, 1831 edition (first published in 1818)

Nina Auerbach recognises an extraordinary tenacity in Fanny "with which she adheres to an
identity validated by none of the conventional female attributes of family, home, or love". By so
doing, Fanny "repudiates the vulnerability of the waif to the unlovable toughness of the authentic
transplant". Fanny emerges from the isolation of the outcast, becoming instead the conqueror,
thus "aligning herself rather with the Romantic hero than with the heroine of romance".

To Auerbach, Fanny is a genteel version of a popular archetype of the Romantic age, "the
monster", who by the sheer act of existing does not and cannot ever fit into society. In this
interpretation, Fanny has little in common with any other Austen heroine, being closer to the
brooding character of Hamlet, or even the monster of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (published
only four years later). Auerbach says there is "something horrible about her that deprives the
imagination of its appetite for ordinary life and compels it toward the deformed, the
dispossessed".

Auerbach argues that Fanny defines herself best in assertive negatives. Fanny's response to the
invitation to take part in Lovers' Vows is, "No, indeed, I cannot act." In life she rarely acts, only
counteracts, watching the world around her in silent judgement. Fanny is "a woman who belongs
only where she is not". Her solitude is her condition, not a state from which she can be rescued.
"Only in Mansfield Park does Jane Austen force us to experience the discomfort of a Romantic
universe presided over by the potent charm of a heroine who was not made to be loved."[23]
Auerbach's analysis seems to fall short when Fanny finally experiences the love of her adopted
family and, despite its traumas, achieves a sense of home.

Landscape planning
Alistair Duckworth noted that a recurring theme in Austen's novels is the way the condition of
the estates mirrors that of their owners.[46] The very private landscape (and house) of Mansfield
Park is only gradually revealed, unlike transparent Sotherton where the reader is given an
introduction to its environs by Maria, a tourist's introduction to the house by Mrs Rushworth and
finally, a tour of the estate guided by the serpentine wanderings of the young people.

Rural morality

The theme of country in conflict with city recurs throughout the novel. Symbolically, life-
renewing nature is under attack from the artificial and corrupting effects of city society.
Canadian scholar David Monaghan draws attention to the rural way of life which, with its careful
respect for the order and rhythm of times and seasons, reinforces and reflects the values of
"elegance, propriety, regularity, harmony". Sotherton with its carefully maintained avenue of
trees is Austen's reminder of the organic principles which form the basis of society.[47] Austen
portrays Mr Rushworth and Sir Thomas as landed gentry who are unable to appreciate the
principles that lie beneath received standards, consequently leaving "landed society ... ripe for
corruption".[48] Henry Crawford, as an absentee landlord, is portrayed as having no moral
appreciation at all.

On a visit to London in 1796, Austen wrote jokingly to her sister, "Here I am once more in this
Scene of Dissipation & vice, and I begin already to find my Morals corrupted."[49] Through the
Crawfords the reader is given glimpses of London society. They represent London's money-
grubbing, vulgar middle class, the opposite of Austen's rural ideal. They come from a world
where everything is to be got with money, and where impersonal crowds have replaced peace
and tranquillity as the social benchmarks.[50] Austen gives further glimpses of London society
when Maria is married and gains what Mary Crawford describes as "her pennyworth", a
fashionable London residence for the season. For Monaghan, it is Fanny alone who senses the
moral values that lie beneath the old unfashionable manners. It falls to her to defend the best
values of English society, despite in many ways being unequipped for the task.[51]

Humphry Repton and improvements

Landscape improvements – Humphry Repton's visiting card showing a typical design with
himself surveying the property.

At Sotherton, Mr. Rushworth considers employing popular landscape improver, Humphry

Repton, his rates being five guineas a day. Repton had coined the term "landscape gardener"[52]
and also popularised the title Park as the description of an estate. Austen is thought to have based
her fictional Sotherton partly on Stoneleigh Abbey which her uncle, Rev Thomas Leigh,
inherited in 1806. On his first visit to claim the estate, he took Austen, her mother and sister with
him. Leigh, who had already employed Repton at Adlestrop, now commissioned him to make
improvements at Stoneleigh where he redirected the River Avon, flooded a section of the land to
create a mirror lake, and added a bowling green lawn and cricket pitch.[53]

Over family dinner, Mr Rushworth declares that he will do away with the great oak avenue that
ascends half a mile from the west front. Mr Rushworth misunderstands Repton. In his book,
Repton writes cautiously of 'the fashion ... to destroy avenues', and he parodies fashion that is
merely doctrinaire. Rushworth's conversation follows closely that of Repton's parody.[54][55]
Fanny is disappointed and quotes Cowper, valuing what has emerged naturally over the
centuries.[56] David Monaghan (1980) contrasts Fanny's perspective with that of the others. The
materialist Mary Crawford, thinks only of the future, willing to accept any improvements money
can buy, providing she does not have to experience present inconvenience. Henry lives for the
present moment, only interested in playing the role of improver. Only the introverted and
reflective Fanny can hold in her mind the bigger picture of past, present and future.[57]

Henry Crawford is full of his own ideas for improvements when exploring Sotherton's landscape.
[58]
He is described as the first to go forward to examine the 'capabilities' of the walled garden
near the wilderness, hinting at ironic comparison with Repton's celebrated predecessor, Lancelot
"Capability" Brown.

Edmund Burke, political theorist, philosopher and member of parliament, widely considered to
be the father of modern Conservatism.

Political symbolism

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) are part of the novel's hidden background. Calvo, quoting
Roger Sales, says Mansfield Park can be read as a Condition-of-England novel that 'debates
topical issues such as the conduct of the war and the Regency crisis'.[59] Duckworth (1994)
believes that Austen took the landscaping symbol from Edmund Burke's influential book,
Reflections of the Revolution in France (1790).[60] Burke affirmed the beneficial "improvements"
which are part of conservation, but decried malign "innovations" and "alterations" to society
which led to the destruction of heritage.[61] Duckworth argues that Mansfield Park is pivotal to an
understanding of Austen's views. Estates, like society, might be in need of improvements, but the
changes allegedly advocated by Repton were unacceptable innovations, alterations to the estate
that, symbolically, would destroy the entire moral and social heritage. Austen, aware of the
fragility of a society uninformed by responsible individual behaviour, is committed to the
inherited values of a Christian humanist culture.[62]

The French Revolution was in Austen's view an entirely destructive force that sought to wipe out
the past.[63] Her sister-in-law, Eliza, was a French aristocrat whose first husband, the Comte de
Feullide, had been guillotined in Paris. She fled to Britain where, in 1797, she married Henry
Austen.[64] Eliza's account of the Comte's execution left Austen with an intense horror of the
French Revolution that lasted for the rest of her life.[64]

Warren Roberts (1979) interprets Austen's writings as affirming traditional English values and
religion over against the atheist values of the French Revolution.[65] The character of Mary
Crawford whose 'French' irreverence has alienated her from church is contrasted unfavourably
with that of Fanny Price whose 'English' sobriety and faith leads her to assert that "there is
something in a chapel and chaplain so much in character with a great house, with one's idea of
what such a household should be".[66][67] Edmund is depicted as presenting the church as a force
for stability that holds together family, customs and English traditions. This is contrasted with
Mary Crawford's attitude whose criticism of religious practice makes her an alien and disruptive
force in the English countryside.[66]

Sotherton and moral symbolism

Juliet McMaster argued that Austen often used understatement, and that her characters disguise
hidden powerful emotions behind apparently banal behaviour and dialogue.[68] This is evident
during the visit to Sotherton where Mary Crawford, Edmund Bertram and Fanny Price debate the
merits of an ecclesiastical career.[69] Though the exchanges are light-hearted, the issues are
serious. Edmund is asking Mary to love him for who he is, while Mary indicates she will only
marry him if he pursues a more lucrative career in the law.[70]

To subtly press her point, Austen has set the scene in the wilderness where their serpentine walk
provides echoes of Spencer's, The Faerie Queene, and the "sepentining" pathways of the
Wandering Wood.[71] Spencer's "Redcrosse Knight" (the novice knight who symbolises both
England and Christian faith) is lost within the dangerous and confusing Wandering Wood. The
knight nearly abandons Una, his true love, for Duessa, the seductive witch. So too, Edmund (the
would-be Church of England minister) is lost within the moral maze of Sotherton's wilderness.

Others have seen in this episode echoes of Shakespeare's As You Like It. Byrne sees a more direct
link with regency stage comedy with which Austen was very familiar, in particular George
Colman and David Garrick's highly successful play, The Clandestine Marriage (inspired by
Hogarth's series of satirical paintings, Marriage A-la-Mode), which had a similar theme and a
heroine called Fanny Sterling. (Sir Thomas later praises Fanny's sterling qualities.)[72]
Henry Crawford visits Thornton Lacey, Edmund Bertram's future estate.

Byrne suggests that the "serpentine path" leading to the ha-ha with its locked gate at Sotherton
Court has shades of Satan's tempting of Eve in the Garden of Eden.[12] The ha-ha with its deep
ditch represents a boundary which some, disobeying authority, will cross. It is a symbolic
forerunner of the future moral transgressions of Maria Bertram and Henry Crawford. Colleen
Sheehan compares the scenario to the Eden of Milton's Paradise Lost, where the locked iron
gates open onto a deep gulf separating Hell and Heaven.[10]

'Wilderness' was a term used by landscape developers to describe a wooded area, often set
between the formal area around the house and the pastures beyond the ha-ha. At Sotherton, it is
described as "a planted wood of about two acres ...[and] was darkness and shade, and natural
beauty, compared with the bowling-green and the terrace." The alternative meaning of
wilderness as a wild inhospitable place would have been known to Austen's readers from the
Biblical account of the testing of the Israelites through the wilderness. John chapter 3 links this
story ("as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness ...") with redemption through Jesus.

The characters themselves exploit Sotherton's allegorical potential.[73] When Henry, looking
across the ha-ha, says, "You have a very smiling scene before you", Maria responds, "Do you
mean literally or figuratively?"[74] Maria quotes from Sterne's novel A Sentimental Journey about
a starling that alludes to the Bastille. She complains of being trapped behind the gate that gives
her "a feeling of restraint and hardship". The dialogue is full of double meanings. Even Fanny's
warnings about spikes, a torn garment and a fall subtly suggest moral violence. Henry insinuates
to Maria that if she "really wished to be more at large" and could allow herself "to think it not
prohibited", then freedom was possible.[73] Shortly after, Edmund and Mary are also "tempted" to
leave the wilderness.

Later in the novel, when Henry Crawford suggests destroying the grounds of Thornton Lacy to
create something new, his plans are rejected by Edmund, who insists that although the estate
needs some improvements, he wishes to preserve what has been created over the centuries.[75] In
Austen's world, a man truly worth marrying enhances his estate while respecting its tradition:
Edmund's reformist conservatism marks him out as a hero.[76]
Theatre at Mansfield Park
See also: Antitheatricality § Literature and theatricality

Jocelyn Harris (2010) views Austen's main subject in Mansfield Park as the moral and social
status of theatricality, a controversy as old as the stage itself. Some critics have assumed that
Austen intended the novel to promote anti-theatrical views, possibly inspired by the Evangelical
movement. Harris says that, whereas in Pride and Prejudice Austen shows how theatricality
masks and deceives in daily life, in Mansfield Park "she interrogates more deeply the whole
remarkable phenomenon of plays and play-acting".[77]

Antitheatricality

Lovers' Vows, 1796 edition. The controversial play is rehearsed at Mansfield Park during Sir
Thomas Bertram's absence.

Returning unexpected from his plantations in Antigua, Sir Thomas Bertram discovers the young
people rehearsing an amateur production of Elizabeth Inchbald's Lovers' Vows (adapted from the
German August von Kotzebue). Scandalized, he halts the play and burns the rehearsal scripts.
Fanny Price is astonished that the play was ever thought appropriate, and considers the two
leading female roles as "totally improper for home representation—the situation of one, and the
language of the other so unfit to be expressed by any woman of modesty".

Claire Tomalin (1997) says that Mansfield Park, with its moralist theme and criticism of
corrupted standards, has polarised supporters and critics. It opposes a vulnerable young woman
with strong religious and moral principles against a group of worldly, cultivated, well-to-do
young people who pursue their pleasure and profit without principle.[78]

Jonas Barish, in his seminal work, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (1981), adopts the view that by
1814 Austen may have turned against theatre following a supposed recent embracing of
evangelicalism.[79] Austen certainly read and, to her surprise, enjoyed Thomas Gisborne's
Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex, which stated categorically that theatricals were sinful,
because of their opportunities for "unrestrained familiarity with persons of the other sex".[80] She
may well have read William Wilberforce's popular evangelical work that challenged the
decadence of the time and also expressed strong views about theatre and its negative influence
on morality.[81]
However, Tomalin argues that Austen is not known to have condemned plays outside Mansfield
Park.[78] Austen was an avid theatregoer and a critical admirer of the great actors. In childhood
her family had embraced the popular activity of home theatre. She had participated in full-length
popular plays (and several written by herself) performed in the family dining room at Steventon
(and later in the barn), supervised by her clergyman father.[82] Many elements observed by the
young Austen during family theatricals are reworked in the novel, including the temptation of
James, her recently ordained brother, by their flirtatious cousin Eliza.[80]

Paula Byrne (2017) records that only two years before writing Mansfield Park, Austen had
played with great aplomb the part of Mrs Candour in Sheridan's popular contemporary play The
School for Scandal.[83] Her correspondence shows that she and her family continued as
enthusiastic theatre-goers. Byrne also argues that Austen's novels, particularly Mansfield Park,
show considerable theatricality and dramatic structure which makes them particularly adaptable
for screen representation. Calvo sees the novel as a rewrite of Shakespeare's King Lear and his
three daughters, with Fanny as Sir Thomas's Regency Cordelia.[84]

Eight chapters discuss anti-theatrical prejudice from shifting points of view. Edmund and Fanny
find moral dilemmas, and even Mary is conflicted, insisting she will edit her script. However,
theatre as such is never challenged. The questions about theatrical impropriety include the
morality of the text, the effect of acting on vulnerable amateur players, and performance as an
indecorous disruption in a respectable home.[85] Fanny's anti-theatrical viewpoint goes back as far
as Plato, and continued to find expression into the 20th century.[86]

Impropriety

Austen's presentation of the intense debate about theatre tempts the reader to take sides and to
miss the ambiguities. Edmund, the most critical voice, is actually an enthusiastic theatre-goer.
Fanny, the moral conscience of the debate, "believed herself to derive as much innocent
enjoyment from the play as any of them". She thought Henry the best actor of them all.[87] She
also delighted in reading Shakespeare aloud to her aunt Bertram.

Stuart Tave, emphasises the challenge of the play as a test of the characters' commitment to
propriety.[88] The priggish Mrs. Norris sees herself as the guardian of propriety. She is trusted as
such by Sir Thomas when he leaves for Antigua, but fails completely by allowing the preparation
for Lovers' Vows.[89] Edmund objects to the play, believing it somehow improper, but fails to
articulate the problem convincingly.[90] His intense objection to an outsider being brought in to
share in the theatricals is not easy for the modern reader to understand. Mr Rushworth's view,
that "we are a great deal better employed, sitting comfortably here among ourselves, and doing
nothing", is affirmed only by Sir Thomas himself.[91]

Fanny alone understands the deepest propriety; she knows from her penetrating observations of
the household that the acting will dangerously inflame the emotions of the actors, but she lacks
the strength to persuade the others.[92] During rehearsals, Fanny observes the ongoing flirtation
between Henry and the about-to-be-married Maria, "Maria acted well, too well."[87] She also sees
the sexual tension and attraction between Edmund and Mary as they play the part of the two
lovers. This fills her with misery but also jealousy.[93] Later, Mary describes to Fanny her favorite
episode, playing the dominant role of Amelia with Edmund as Anhalt her besotted admirer. "I
never knew such exquisite happiness ... Oh! it was sweet beyond expression."[94]

Tave points out that, in shutting down Lovers' Vows, Sir Thomas is expressing his hidden
hypocrisy and myopia. His concern is with an external propriety, not the principles that motivate
moral behaviour. He is content to destroy the set and props without considering what had led his
children to put on such a play.[95] Only later does he come to understand his shortcomings as a
parent.

Acting

Another classical anti-theatrical theme is the need for sincerity in everyday life, avoiding
pretence and hypocrisy.[86] Fanny is often criticised because she 'does not act', but beneath her
timid surface is a solid core.

Henry Crawford, the life of any party, is constantly acting; he has many personas but no firm
character or stable principles. Thomas Edwards says that even when Henry tries to please Fanny
by denouncing acting during a discussion about Shakespeare, he is still performing. He measures
his every word and carefully watches the reaction on her face.[96] He is a man who constantly
reinvents himself in the pattern of those around him: he considers a career as a minister after
encountering Edmund, and as a sailor after meeting William.[97] At Sotherton, Henry acts the part
of a landscape improver, a role he later reprises for Thornton Lacey, though he lacks the
consistency to manage effectively his own Norfolk estate. At the first suggestion of a theatre at
Mansfield Park, Henry, for whom theatre was a new experience, declared he could undertake
"any character that ever was written". Later still, in reading Henry VIII aloud to Lady Bertram,
Henry impersonates one character after another,[98] even impressing the reluctant Fanny with his
skill.[99] When Henry unexpectedly falls in love with Fanny, he enthusiastically acts out the part
of devoted lover, but even the hopeful Sir Thomas recognises that the admirable Henry is
unlikely to sustain his performance for long.

Edwards suggests that the inherent danger of Lovers' Vows for the young actors is that they
cannot distinguish between acting and real life, a danger exposed when Mary says, "What
gentleman among you am I to have the pleasure of making love to?"[100]

Regency politics

David Selwyn argues that the rationale behind Austen's apparent anti-theatricality is not
evangelicalism but its symbolic allusion to regency political life. Mansfield Park is a book about
the identity of England. Tom, whose lifestyle has imperilled his inheritance, and the playboy
Henry are regency rakes, intent on turning the family estate into a playground during the master's
absence. If the Regent, during the King's incapacity, turns the country into a vast pleasure ground
modelled on Brighton, the foundations of prosperity will be imperilled. To indulge in otherwise
laudable activities like theatre at the expense of a virtuous and productive life leads only to
unhappiness and disaster.[101]

Church and Mansfield Park

Following the publication of Pride and Prejudice, Austen wrote to her sister, Cassandra,
mentioning her proposed Northamptonshire novel. "Now I will try to write of something else; it
shall be a complete change of subject: Ordination."[102] Trilling believed Austen was making
ordination the subject of Mansfield Park; Byrne argues (as do others) that although this is based
on a misreading of the letter, "there is no doubt that Edmund's vocation is at the centre of the
novel".[103] Decadence in the Georgian church had been seriously challenged over several
decades by the emerging Methodist movement that had only recently seceded from the mother
church, and also by the parallel Evangelical movement that stayed within it. Brodrick describes
the Georgian church as "strenuously preventing women from direct participation in doctrinal and
ecclesiastical affairs". However, disguised within the medium of the novel, Austen has
succeeded in freely discussing Christian doctrine and church order, another example of
subversive feminism.[104]

Set pieces

In several set pieces, Austen presents debates about significant challenges for the Georgian
church.[105] She discusses clerical corruption, the nature of the clerical office and the
responsibility of the clergyman to raise both spiritual awareness and doctrinal knowledge.[106]
Topics range from issues of personal piety and family prayers to problems of non-residence and
decadence amongst the clergy. Dr Grant who is given the living at Mansfield is portrayed as a
self-indulgent clergyman with very little sense of his pastoral duties. Edmund, the young, naive,
would-be ordinand, expresses high ideals, but needs Fanny's support both to fully understand and
to live up to them.

Locations for these set pieces include the visit to Sotherton and its chapel where Mary learns for
the first time (and to her horror) that Edmund is destined for the church; the game of cards where
the conversation turns to Edmund's intended profession, and conversations at Thornton Lacey,
Edmund's future 'living'.

Decadent religion

Austen often exposed clergy corruption through parody.[22]:54 Although Mary Crawford's
arguments with Edmund Bertram about the church are intended to undermine his vocation, hers
is the voice that constantly challenges the morality of the Regency church and clergy. Edmund
attempts its defence without justifying its failures. On the basis of close observations of her
brother-in-law, Dr Grant, Mary arrives at the jaundiced conclusion that a "clergyman has nothing
to do, but be slovenly and selfish, read the newspaper, watch the weather and quarrel with his
wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine."[107]

In the conversation at Sotherton, Mary applauds the late Mr Rushworth's decision to abandon the
twice daily family prayers, eloquently describing such practice as an imposition for both family
and servants. She derides the heads of households for hypocrisy in making excuses to absent
themselves from chapel. She pities the young ladies of the house, "starched up into seeming
piety, but with heads full of something very different—specially if the poor chaplain were not
worth looking at".[108] Edmund acknowledges that long services can be boring but maintains that
without self-discipline a private spirituality will be insufficient for moral development. Although
Mary's view is presented as a resistance to spiritual discipline, there were other positive streams
of spirituality that expressed similar sentiments.

Mary also challenges the widespread practice of patronage; she attacks Edmund's expectation for
being based on privilege rather than on merit. Although Sir Thomas has sold the more desirable
Mansfield living to pay off Tom's debts, he is still offering Edmund a guaranteed living at
Thornton Lacey where he can lead the life of a country gentleman.

In the final chapter, Sir Thomas recognises that he has been remiss in the spiritual upbringing of
his children; they have been instructed in religious knowledge but not in its practical application.
The reader's attention has already been drawn to the root of Julia's superficiality during the visit
to Sotherton when, abandoned by the others, she was left with the slow-paced Mrs Rushworth as
her only companion. "The politeness which she had been brought up to practise as a duty made it
impossible for her to escape." Julia's lack of self-control, of empathy, of self understanding and
of "that principle of right, which had not formed any essential part of her education, made her
miserable under it".[109] She was a prisoner of duty, lacking the ability to appreciate either duty's
humanity or its spiritual source.

Evangelical influence

Hannah More, schoolteacher, abolitionist, member of the Evangelical Clapham Sect and
philanthropist. Also a bestselling novelist, her writings, unlike Austen's, overtly promoted
Christian faith and values.

To what extent Austen's views were a response to Evangelical influences has been a matter of
debate since the 1940s. She would have been aware of the profound influence of Wilberforce's
widely read Practical Christianity, published in 1797, and its call to a renewed spirituality.[81]
Evangelical campaigning at this time was always linked to a project of national renewal. Austen
was deeply religious, her faith and spirituality very personal but, unlike contemporary writers
Mary Wollstonecraft and Hannah More, she neither lectured nor preached. Many of her family
were influenced by the Evangelical movement and in 1809 Cassandra recommended More's
'sermon novel', Coelebs in Search of a Wife. Austen responded, parodying her own ambivalence,
"I do not like the Evangelicals. Of course I shall be delighted when I read it, like other people,
but till I do, I dislike it." Five years later, writing to her niece Fanny, Austen's tone was different,
"I am by no means convinced that we ought not all to be Evangelicals, and am at least persuaded
that they who are so from Reason and Feeling, must be happiest and safest."[110] Jane Hodge
(1972) said, "where she herself stood in the matter remains open to question. The one thing that
is certain is that, as always, she was deeply aware of the change of feeling around her."[111]
Brodrick (2002) concludes after extensive discussion that "Austen's attitude to the clergy, though
complicated and full of seeming contradictions, is basically progressive and shows the influence
of Evangelical efforts to rejuvenate the clergy, but can hardly be called overtly Evangelical".[112]

Pulpit eloquence

In a scene in chapter 34 in which Henry Crawford reads Shakespeare aloud to Fanny, Edmund
and Lady Bertram, Austen slips in a discussion on sermon delivery. Henry shows that he has the
taste to recognise that the "redundancies and repetitions" of the liturgy require good reading (in
itself a telling criticism, comments Broderick). He offers the general (and possibly valid)
criticism that a "sermon well-delivered is more uncommon even than prayers well read". As
Henry continues, his shallowness and self-aggrandisement becomes apparent: "I never listened to
a distinguished preacher in my life without a sort of envy. But then, I must have a London
audience. I could not preach but to the educated, to those who were capable of estimating my
composition." He concludes, expressing the philosophy of many a lazy clergyman, maintaining
that he should not like to preach often, but "now and then, perhaps, once or twice in the spring".
Although Edmund laughs, it is clear that he does not share Henry's flippant, self-centred attitude.
Neither (it is implied) will Edmund succumb to the selfish gourmet tendencies of Dr Grant.
"Edmund promises to be the opposite: an assiduous, but genteel clergyman who maintains the
estate and air of a gentleman, without Puritanical self-denial and yet without corresponding self-
indulgence."[112]

Edmund recognises that there are some competent and influential preachers in the big cities like
London but maintains that their message can never be backed up by personal example or
ministry. Ironically, the Methodist movement, with its development of lay ministry through the
"class meeting", had provided a solution to this very issue.[113] There is only one reference to
Methodism in the novel, and there it is linked, as an insult, with the modern missionary society.
Mary in her angry response to Edmund as he finally leaves her, declares: "At this rate, you will
soon reform every body at Mansfield and Thornton Lacey; and when I hear of you next, it may
be as a celebrated preacher in some great society of Methodists, or as a missionary in foreign
parts."

An ideal clergyman

When Mary learns at Sotherton that Edmund has chosen to become a clergyman, she calls it
"nothing". Edmund responds, saying that he cannot consider as "nothing" an occupation that has
the guardianship of religion and morals, and that has implications for time and for eternity. He
adds that conduct stems from good principles and from the effect of those doctrines a clergyman
should teach. The nation's behaviour will reflect, for good or ill, the behaviour and teaching of
the clergy.

Rampant pluralism, where wealthy clerics drew income from several 'livings' without ever
setting foot in the parish, was a defining feature of the Georgian church. In chapter 25, Austen
presents a conversation during a card evening at Mansfield. Sir Thomas's whist table has broken
up and he draws up to watch the game of Speculation. Informal conversation leads into an
exposition of the country parson's role and duties. Sir Thomas argues against pluralism, stressing
the importance of residency in the parish,

"... and which no proxy can be capable of satisfying to the same extent. Edmund might, in the
common phrase, do the duty of Thornton, that is, he might read prayers and preach, without
giving up Mansfield Park; he might ride over, every Sunday, to a house nominally inhabited, and
go through divine service; he might be the clergyman of Thornton Lacey every seventh day, for
three or four hours, if that would content him. But it will not. He knows that human nature needs
more lessons than a weekly sermon can convey, and that if he does not live among his
parishioners, and prove himself by constant attention their well-wisher and friend, he does very
little either for their good or his own."

Sir Thomas conveniently overlooks his earlier plan, before he was forced to sell the Mansfield
living to pay off Tom's debts, that Edmund should draw the income from both parishes. This
tension is never resolved. Austen's own father had sustained two livings, itself an example of
mild pluralism.[114]

Slavery and Mansfield Park

The Wedgwood medallion inscribed "Am I not a man and a brother", widely distributed amongst
supporters of abolition.

It is generally assumed that Sir Thomas Bertram's home, Mansfield Park, being a newly built
Regency property, had been erected on the proceeds of the British slave trade. It was not an old
structure like Rushworth's Sotherton Court, or the estate homes described in Austen's other
novels, like Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice or Donwell Abbey in Emma.[12]

The Slave Trade Act had been passed in 1807, four years before Austen started to write
Mansfield Park, and was the culmination of a long campaign by abolitionists, notably William
Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson.[115] Though never legal in Britain, slavery was not abolished
in the British Empire until 1833.

In chapter 21, when Sir Thomas returns from his estates in Antigua, Fanny asks him about the
slave trade but receives no answer. The pregnant silence continues to perplex critics. Claire
Tomalin, following the literary critic, Brian Southam, argues that in questioning her uncle about
the slave trade, the usually timid Fanny shows that her vision of the trade's immorality is clearer
than his.[116] Sheehan believes that "just as Fanny tries to remain a bystander to the production of
Lovers' Vows but is drawn into the action, we the audience of bystanders are drawn into
participation in the drama of Mansfield Park ... Our judgement must be our own."[10]
It is widely assumed that Austen herself supported abolition. In a letter to her sister, Cassandra,
she compares a book she is reading with Clarkson's anti-slavery book, "I am as much in love
with the author as ever I was with Clarkson".[117] Austen's favourite poet, the Evangelical William
Cowper, was also a passionate abolitionist who often wrote poems on the subject, notably his
famous work, The Task, also favoured by Fanny Price.[118]

Does Mansfield Park endorse slavery?

In his 1993 book, Culture and Imperialism, the American literary critic Edward Said implicated
Mansfield Park in Western culture's casual acceptance of the material benefits of slavery and
imperialism. He cited Austen's failure to mention that the estate of Mansfield Park was made
possible only through slave labour. Said argued that Austen created the character of Sir Thomas
as the archetypal good master, just as competent at running his estate in the English countryside
as he was in exploiting his slaves in the West Indies.[119] He accepted that Austen does not talk
much about the plantation owned by Sir Thomas, but contended that Austen expected the reader
to assume that the Bertram family's wealth was due to profits produced by the sugar worked by
their African slaves. He further assumed that this reflected Austen's own assumption that this
was just the natural order of the world.[120]

Paradoxically, Said acknowledged that Austen disapproved of slavery:

All the evidence says that even the most routine aspects of holding slaves on a West Indian sugar
plantation were cruel stuff. And everything we know about Jane Austen and her values is at odds
with the cruelty of slavery. Fanny Price reminds her cousin that after asking Sir Thomas about
the slave trade, "there was such a dead silence" as to suggest that one world could not be
connected with the other since there simply is no common language for both. That is true.[121]

The Japanese scholar Hidetada Mukai understands the Bertrams as a nouveau riche family
whose income depends on the plantation in Antigua.[122] The abolition of the slave trade in 1807
had imposed a serious strain on the Caribbean plantations. Austen may have been referring to
this crisis when Sir Thomas leaves for Antigua to deal with unspecified problems on his
plantation.[122] Hidetada further argued that Austen made Sir Thomas a slave master as a feminist
attack on the patriarchal society of Regency England, noting that Sir Thomas, though a kindly
man, treats women, including his own daughters and his niece, as disposable commodities to be
traded and bartered for his own advantage, and that this would be parallelled by his treatment of
slaves who are exploited to support his lifestyle.[122]

Said's thesis that Austen was an apologist for slavery was again challenged in the 1999 film
based on Mansfield Park and Austen's letters. The Canadian director, Patricia Rozema, presented
the Bertram family as morally corrupt and degenerate, in complete contrast to the book. Rozema
made it clear that Sir Thomas owned slaves in the West Indies and by implication, so did the
entire British elite. The essence of the Triangular trade was that after the ships had transported
the slaves from Africa to the Caribbean, they would return to Britain loaded only with sugar and
tobacco. Then, leaving Britain, they would return to Africa, loaded with manufactured goods.
Gabrielle White also criticised Said's condemnation, maintaining that Austen and other writers
admired by Austen, including Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke, opposed slavery and helped
make its eventual abolition possible.[123] The Australian historian Keith Windschuttle argued that:
"The idea that, because Jane Austen presents one plantation-owning character, of whom heroine,
plot and author all plainly disapprove, she thereby becomes a handmaiden of imperialism and
slavery, is to misunderstand both the novel and the biography of its author, who was an ardent
opponent of the slave trade".[124] Likewise, the British author Ibn Warraq accused Said of a "most
egregious misreading" of Mansfield Park and condemned him for a "lazy and unwarranted
reading of Jane Austen", arguing that Said had completely distorted Mansfield Park to give
Austen views that she clearly did not hold.[125] However, the post-colonial perspective of Said has
continued to be influential.

English air

Margaret Kirkham points out that throughout the novel, Austen makes repeated references to the
refreshing, wholesome quality of English air. In the 1772 court case Somerset v Stewart, where
slavery was declared by the Lord Justice Mansfield to be illegal in the United Kingdom (though
not the British Empire), one of the lawyers for James Somerset, the slave demanding his
freedom, had said that "England was too pure an air for a slave to breathe in". He was citing a
ruling from a court case in 1569 freeing a Russian slave brought to England.[126] The phrase is
developed in Austen's favourite poem:

I had much rather be myself the slave

And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home – then why abroad?
And they themselves, once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free,
They touch our country and their shackles fall.

— William Cowper, "The Task", 1785

Austen's references to English air are considered by Kirkham to be a subtle attack upon Sir
Thomas, who owns slaves on his plantation in Antigua, yet enjoys the English air, oblivious of
the ironies involved. Austen would have read Clarkson and his account of Lord Mansfield's
ruling.[126]

Anti-slavery allusions

Austen's subtle hints about the world beyond her Regency families can be seen in her use of
names. The family estate's name clearly reflects that of Lord Mansfield, just as the name of the
bullying Aunt Norris is suggestive of Robert Norris, "an infamous slave trader and a byword for
pro-slavery sympathies".[12]
The newly married Maria, now with a greater income than that of her father, gains her London
home in fashionable Wimpole Street at the heart of London society, a region where many very
rich West Indian plantation owners had established their town houses.[127] This desirable
residence is the former home of Lady Henrietta Lascelles whose husband's family fortune came
from the notoriously irresponsible Henry Lascelles. Lascelles had enriched himself with the
Barbados slave trade and had been a central figure in the South Sea Bubble disaster. His wealth
had been used to build Harewood House in Yorkshire, landscaped by "Capability" Brown.[13]

When William Price is commissioned, Lady Bertram requests that he bring her back a shawl,
maybe two, from the East Indies and "anything else that is worth having". Edward Said interprets
this as showing that the novel supports, or is indifferent towards, colonial profiteering. Others
have pointed out that the indifference belongs to Lady Bertram and is in no sense the attitude of
the novel, the narrator or the author.[13]

Propriety and morality

Propriety is a major theme of the novel, says Tave.[88] Maggie Lane says it is hard to use words
like propriety seriously today, with its implication of deadening conformity and hypocrisy. She
believes that Austen's society put a high store on propriety (and decorum) because it had only
recently emerged from what was seen as a barbarous past. Propriety was believed essential in
preserving that degree of social harmony which enabled each person to lead a useful and happy
life.[128]

The novel puts propriety under the microscope, allowing readers to come to their own
conclusions about deadening conformity and hypocrisy. Tave points out that while Austen
affirms those like Fanny who come to understand propriety at its deeper and more humane
levels, she mocks mercilessly those like Mrs. Norris who cling to an outward propriety, often
self-righteously and without understanding.[88] Early in the novel when Sir Thomas leaves for
Antigua, Maria and Julia sigh with relief, released from their father's demands for propriety, even
though they have no particular rebellion in mind. Decline sets in at Sotherton with a symbolic
rebellion at the ha-ha. It is followed later by the morally ambiguous rebellion of play-acting with
Lovers' Vows, its impropriety unmasked by Sir Thomas's unexpected return. Both these events
are a precursor to Maria's later adultery and Julia's elopement.

'Propriety' can cover not only moral behaviour but also anything else a person does, thinks or
chooses.[129] What is 'proper' can extend to the way society governs and organises itself, and to
the natural world with its established order. Repton, the landscape gardener (1806), wrote
critically of those who follow fashion for fashion's sake "without inquiring into its
reasonableness or propriety". That failure is embodied in Mr Rushworth who, ironically, is eager
to employ the fashionable Repton for 'improvements' at Sotherton. Repton also expressed the
practical propriety of setting the vegetable garden close to the kitchen.[130]

The propriety of obedience and of privacy are significant features in the novel. The privacy of
Mansfield Park, intensely important to Sir Thomas, comes under threat during the theatricals and
is dramatically destroyed following the national exposure of Maria's adultery.
Disobedience is portrayed as a moral issue in virtually every crisis in the novel. Its significance
lies not only within the orderliness of an hierarchical society. It symbolically references an
understanding of personal freedom and of the human condition described by Milton as "man's
first disobedience".

Face to face; enigmatic portrayal. Based on a silhouette from a 2nd ed. held by the National
Portrait Gallery

Moral dialogue

Commentators have observed that Fanny and Mary Crawford represent conflicting aspects of
Austen's own personality, Fanny representing her seriousness, her objective observations and
sensitivity, Mary representing her wit, her charm and her wicked irony. Conversations between
Fanny and Mary seem at times to express Austen's own internal dialogue and, like her
correspondence, do not necessarily provide the reader with final conclusions. Responding in
1814 to her niece's request for help with a dilemma of love, she writes, "I really am impatient
myself to be writing something on so very interesting a subject, though I have no hope of writing
anything to the purpose ... I could lament in one sentence and laugh in the next."[131] Byrne takes
this as a reminder that readers should be very hesitant about extracting Austen's opinions and
advice, either from her novels or her letters. For Austen, it was not the business of writers to tell
people what to do.[132] Even Fanny, when Henry demands she advise him on managing his estate,
tells him to listen to his conscience: "We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend
to it, than any other person can be".[133] In Mansfield Park, Austen requires the reader to make
their own moral judgements. For some time after its publication, she collected readers' reactions
to the novel. The reader's response is part of the story. Says Sheehan, "The finale of Mansfield
Park is indeterminate, fully in the hands of the audience. Of all of Austen’s daring innovations in
her works, in Mansfield Park she takes the ultimate risk."[10]

Conscience and consciousness

Trilling took the view that uneasiness with the apparently simplistic moral framework of the
novel marks its prime virtue, and that its greatness is 'commensurate with its power to offend'.[134]
Edwards discusses the competing attraction of those with lively personalities over against those
with the more prosaic quality of integrity.[135]

The attractive Crawfords are appreciated by fashionable society, their neighbours and the reader,
yet they are marred by self-destructive flaws. Edmund and Fanny, essentially very ordinary
people who lack social charisma, are a disappointment to some readers but have moral integrity.
Edwards suggests that Austen could have easily entitled Mansfield Park, 'Conscience and
Consciousness', since the novel's main conflict is between conscience (the deep sensitivity in the
soul of Fanny and Edmund) and consciousness (the superficial self-centred sensations of Mary
and Henry).[136]

The Crawfords

See also: Henry Crawford and Mary Crawford (Mansfield Park)

Sheehan says that "the superficial Crawfords are driven to express strength by dominating others.
There is in fact nothing ordinary about them or their devices and desires. They are not only
themselves corrupted, but they are bent upon dominating the wills and corrupting the souls of
others. Rich, clever, and charming, they know how to captivate their audience and "take in" the
unsuspecting."[10]

The superficiality of the Crawfords can be demonstrated by their outward appearance of morality
which, together with their charm and elegance, disguises uneducated passions, and ultimately
victimizes others as well as themselves. Henry Crawford can be seen as the dissimulator par
excellence. He boasts of his ability to act and makes it clear that he takes being a clergyman to
consist in giving the appearance of being a clergyman. Self is almost dissolved into the
presentation of self, which in Austen's world is a symptom of the vices. MacIntyre identifies the
depiction of the Crawfords as Austen's preoccupation with counterfeits of the virtues within the
context of the moral climate of her times.[137]

Henry is first attracted to Fanny when he realises she does not like him. He is obsessed with
'knowing' her, with achieving the glory and happiness of forcing her to love him. He plans to
destroy her identity and remake her in an image of his own choosing.[138] Following his initial
failure, Henry finds himself unexpectedly in love with Fanny. The shallowness of Henry
Crawford's feelings are finally exposed when, having promised to take care of Fanny's welfare,
he is distracted by Mary's ploy to renew his contact in London with the newly married Maria.
Challenged to arouse Maria afresh, he inadvertently sabotages her marriage, her reputation and,
consequently, all hopes of winning Fanny. The likeable Henry, causing widespread damage, is
gradually revealed as the regency rake, callous, amoral and egoistical. Lane offers a more
sympathetic interpretation: "We applaud Jane Austen for showing us a flawed man morally
improving, struggling, growing, reaching for better things—even if he ultimately fails."[139]

Social perceptions of gender are such that, though Henry suffers, Maria suffers more. And by
taking Maria away from her community, he deprives the Bertrams of a family member. The
inevitable reporting of the scandal in the gossip-columns only adds further to family misery.[140]
Mary Crawford possesses many attractive qualities including kindness, charm, warmth and
vivacity. However, her strong competitive streak leads her to see love as a game where one party
conquers and controls the other, a view not dissimilar to that of the narrator when in ironic mode.
Mary's narcissism results in lack of empathy. She insists that Edmund abandon his clerical career
because it is not prestigious enough. With feminist cynicism, she tells Fanny to marry Henry to
'pay off the debts of one's sex' and to have a 'triumph' at the expense of her brother.[141]

Edwards concludes that Mansfield Park demonstrates how those who, like most people, lack a
superabundance of wit, charm and wisdom, get along in the world.[142] Those with superficial
strength are ultimately revealed as weak; it is the people considered as 'nothing' who quietly
triumph.