Scan barcode
A review by booksonawednesday
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
I’ve read nearly all of Jane Austen’s novels now, and this one must be an unfortunate outlier.
Fanny Price is taken in by her mother’s sister and brother-in-law (Mr & Mrs Bertram) to live in Mansfield Park, who are more affluent and respectable. She falls in love with her cousin Edmund (which I appreciate was more normal for the time) and spends most of the novel pining after him (inexplicably, in my opinion). Henry and Mary Crawford, brother and sister, then enter the scene and bring some immorality to the Bertram family.
To me, this was not a romance book. While Fanny is in love with Edmund, he only loves her for the past five pages, which doesn’t make a great love story. Besides them being cousins, there’s also the fact that there’s a significant age gap, and that he knew Fanny from when she was 10 years old.
The characters were all unlikeable, and Fanny, as the protagonist, exceptionally weak and whiny. Edmund was also a boring love interest.
While we’re not supposed to like the Crawfords, I was glad that they bought a bit of drama to the table, which this book was sorely missing.
Of course, there were some beautiful sentences interspersed with the boring mundane dramas (does anyone care about what carriage to use, or what the necklace represents?).
There was also a lot of social commentary, which perhaps a historian could appreciate, but not me.
Fanny Price is taken in by her mother’s sister and brother-in-law (Mr & Mrs Bertram) to live in Mansfield Park, who are more affluent and respectable. She falls in love with her cousin Edmund (which I appreciate was more normal for the time) and spends most of the novel pining after him (inexplicably, in my opinion). Henry and Mary Crawford, brother and sister, then enter the scene and bring some immorality to the Bertram family.
To me, this was not a romance book. While Fanny is in love with Edmund, he only loves her for the past five pages, which doesn’t make a great love story. Besides them being cousins, there’s also the fact that there’s a significant age gap, and that he knew Fanny from when she was 10 years old.
The characters were all unlikeable, and Fanny, as the protagonist, exceptionally weak and whiny. Edmund was also a boring love interest.
While we’re not supposed to like the Crawfords, I was glad that they bought a bit of drama to the table, which this book was sorely missing.
Of course, there were some beautiful sentences interspersed with the boring mundane dramas (does anyone care about what carriage to use, or what the necklace represents?).
There was also a lot of social commentary, which perhaps a historian could appreciate, but not me.