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Mansfield Park (Penguin Popular Classics) | 
| Author: Jane Austen
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
Buy New: £2.00
New (32) Used (186) Collectible (2) from £0.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 9834
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 4.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0140620664
EAN: 9780140620665
ASIN: 0140620664
Publication Date: January 25, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 Darkly comic, a treatsie on human nature in the guise of a romantic novel April 8, 2007
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
I am not really a Jane Austen fan per-se but I have to admit Mansfield Park is a top ten classic read and this particular edition has pride of place on my bookshelf.
Welcome to the world of Fanny Price, the impoverished niece of a English Baronet, Sir Thomas Bertram who is taken from her squalid overcrowded family home in Portsmouth and raised in abject gentility amongst her four cousins, Tom the heir to his father's estate, Edwin the spare to the heir and the two girls, the spiteful but spirited Maria and the air headed Julia.
Add to this brood, their mother, the indolent Lady Bertram who can only sit on a sofa with her pugs and look pretty (how she had four children in the first place is beyond me!), her sister, the social climbing Mrs Norris who endeavors to put across a show of piety and and humility but is in fact and out and out snob who has no love for the gentle but surprisingly shrewd Fanny who fools everyone in the household and gets her man in the end.
This is what I love about Mansfield Park, on one level it is a love story in which the deserving heroine gets her man in the end after much trial and tribulation and even saves the day after a fashion. On another level it is darkly clever, with sharp portrayals of human nature in alls its prickly glory. The Crawfords are a brother and sister enjoying their personal fortunes by living recklessly and fashionably.
In turn another character Mr Rushworth is a buffoon who owns a manor house which turns a good income and with whom Julia marries not out of love but from avarice, her desire to "be someone" blinds her to her real passion, Mr Crawford who is happy to take what she offers him but not marry her even when they elope together, causing a terrible scandal in the family.
Comic distraction comes in the form of the aforesaid Mrs Norris who is wonderfully grotesque, she fawns over Lady Bertrams children, not one of them worth their salt, even Edwin who is likable but lets be honest he is just a milksop, puts Fanny down whenever she gets the chance, and sees her as the "lowest and the last" not even family really though she is her younger sister's daughter and also the niece of the indolent and worthless Lady Bertram.
All in all Mansfield Park is a very satisfying book, it has a few cliches but I would like to think that Austen has put these in her novel on purpose, deliciously witty, sparkling and full of intelligent humor, this is a book well worth its five stars and more.
Wonderful... February 15, 2007
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
I find this novel endlessly fascinating for many reasons, not least being its portrayal of the displaced psychotic Fanny Price. As she belongs in neither of the two places- and with neither of the two groups of people- where Austen places her, her responses are continuously overwheening and neurotic. She is surrounded by other brilliantly drawn characters, both in larger set pieces and smaller domestic scenes. It's a beautifully worked out novel. Read it.
Love it, Love it, Love it January 16, 2007
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I loved Pride and Prejudice and didn't think i would love another or Jane Austens books as much, but then I read this. It is completely different from P+P but that shouldn't put you off. It is a warm, gentle, engaging read. I liked Fanny Price and her "hero" Edmund. They had faults, Fanny being so retiring, and Edmund his blindness to Mary Crawfords real character. I dispute claims that Fanny Price is "wet". It took strength of character to stand up to the pressure placed upon her and I fully expected that she would yield, but she didn't. It made me laugh out loud, smile and shake my head at some of the antics. Please do read this gem.
The most disturbing of Austen's novels but still a pleasure from beginning to end November 22, 2006
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
Mansfield Park, although certainly regarded as a part of the canon of English literature, is often considered to be the weakest, least dazzling of Austen's novels. Without the witty sparkle of Pride and Prejudice or the gothic indulgence of Northanger Abbey, it has struggled at time to match the popularity of her other titles. But oh, what a treat those who pass over Mansfield Park are missing. Certainly, it is the most disturbing and perhaps the least superficially pleasing of Austen's output but it has rewards aplenty for the careful reader.
Mansfield Park, home of the affluent Bertram family, takes in a young poor relation with the overt intention of giving her the advantages of a good education and good connections while preserving her sense of gratitude and subservience. Fanny, the haplessly lucky chosen beneficiary of such benevolence is uprooted from friends, home, family and all that it familiar to take up residence in the grand house with her grand relations. Austen sets Fanny up as the heroine, designed to evoke the sympathy of the reader: this is a challenge for a modern audience, many of whom will find her weak and too self-deprecating to be genuinely engaging. And similarly, the sins and deficiencies in disposition and feeling with which Austen gifts brother and sister, Mary and Henry Crawford, may seem not so damning today as Austen intended. This however, does little to detract from the overall value of the novel itself. The relationship between the Bertram family and its colonial role (their wealth derives from sugar plantations in Antigua) is only hinted at overtly, but beautifully explored through the metaphorical position of Mansfield as the centre of all that is English. Similarly, contemporary values regarding manners, position, influence and identity are gently rolled out for the reader through the evolving relationship between the Bertrams and their acquaintances and within the family itself. And yet, with all this meat beneath the surface, there is still a gentle and touching domestic love story, which evolves over the course of the novel as the more passionate, less fatalistic engagements and attachments of side characters wax and wane.
Mansfield Park is a masterpiece of English manners, of Englishness and of empire. It is also a pleasure to read from beginning to end. Now, I'm off to start at the beginning again!
A True Woman February 24, 2005
12 out of 19 found this review helpful
This book illustrates the beauty of a woman who holds fast to principle even when the rest of the world (her world) thinks her a bit odd or, at times, dead wrong. As a result she is not weak or insipid, but is admirable and gracious. I found myself at times wondering why she didn't fire up and defend herself - but I also realised that it wasn't her nature to do so. And that made her gracious, and gentle, and beautiful. Surely we women will be inspired by Fanny's example to rejoice in hope, be patient in affliction, and continue steadfastly in prayer.
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