E212: British Literature since 1760

Jane Austen Study Questions

Al Drake. 520 Hum. T/Th. 7:30-8:30 | ajdrake@ajdrake.com

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Mansfield Park

1. Jane Austen seems to have considered Mansfield Park her best work, but many readers don't take kindly to Fanny Price as the heroine. Why might that be so? Do you feel that way about her, or do you find her an attractive and sympathetic character? Explain.

2. Our film, directed by Patricia Rozema and starring Frances O'Connor as Fanny, is best described as a modern interpretation rather than a detailed rendering of Austen's novel into a new medium. How do you think the film compares to the novel? Which do you prefer, and why?

3. Jane Austen, like Sir Walter Scott, is widely considered a conservative novelist who favors the interests and values of the landed gentry against the changes gathering in England during the Regency Period. On the whole that view is certainly correct, but how might a careful reading show Austen's work as something more than just an apology for all things old-fashioned and semi-aristocratic?

4. Why is the Crawford-led theatrical interlude such an important challenge to the value system operative in Mansfield Park itself and in the conduct of the Bertrams and Fanny Price? Which values win out in the end, and how do they win out?

5. How much of a role does the narrator of our story play in forming our perceptions of some of the characters aside from Fanny Price--how much access are we given to their "consciousness"? How much do we find out directly about what is supposedly going on inside the characters--their thoughts and feelings--and how much of what we find out seems to flow from the narrator's attitude towards them?  Choose an instance or two and discuss.

6. It's clear that there are major contrasts in life at Portsmouth (where Fanny's parents live and where she is sent when she refuses to marry Henry Crawford) and life at Mansfield Park. But what similarities in perspective can you find amongst the representatives of these very different worlds?

7. What makes Edmund and Fanny an appropriate couple, a love match? What qualities do they share, and how do they differ?

Edition. Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. Ed. Jane Stabler. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. 019280264X.