Mansfield Park Revisited

Mansfield Park is Jane Austen’s most controversial novel. The heroine, Fanny Price, is meek and conventional. The hero, Edmund is a prig.

Yet a Jane Austen heroine had no choice but to obey certain rules. When Fanny is taken in by Sir Thomas Bertram’s family, she must behave as they want or risk losing her home. She is bullied by her aunt, her relations treat her as a skivvy, and her beloved cousin is in love with a much more glamorous young woman.

Her future looks grim.

Human nature hasn’t changed very much in two hundred years, but society has. This novel fast-forwards Jane Austen’s characters into the twenty-first century and shows them behaving in the same ways, but facing different futures.

The heroine, called Franny in this version, is a shy and unhappy teenager. After her cousin Tom trashes his father’s stately home, she goes back to her feckless mother, but that turns out badly. Two men are interested in her.

She has decisions to make.

Mansfield Park revisited should appeal to lovers of Jane Austen and also those who have not read Mansfield Park, especially, perhaps, teenagers.