Mansfield Park

This mature work of Jane Austen offers an entertaining study of the interplay between manners, ethics education and sex, enlivened by an amusing cast of busybodies, never-do-wells, and social climbers.

At the tender age of ten, Fanny Price leaves the poverty of her home to be brought up among the family of her wealthy uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, in the grandeur of Mansfield Park.

She accepts her lowly status, but gradually falls in love with her cousin Edmund. When the glittering and elegant Henry and Mary Crawford arrive on the scene, Fanny watches as her cousins become ensnared in rivalry and sexual jealousy.

Mansfield Park

by Jane Austen

Prepared and presented by Quality Solutions.

CHAPTER I

About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon,

with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck

to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park,

in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised

to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts

and consequences of an handsome house and large income.

All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match,

and her uncle, the lawyer, himself, allowed her to be at least

three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it.

She had two sisters to be benefited by her elevation;

and such of their acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and Miss

Frances quite as handsome as Miss Maria, did not scruple

to predict their marrying with almost equal advantage.

But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune

in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.

Miss Ward, at the end of half a dozen years, found

herself obliged to be attached to the Rev. Mr. Norris,

a friend of her brother-in-law, with scarcely any

private fortune, and Miss Frances fared yet worse.

Miss Ward's match, indeed, when it came to the point,

was not contemptible:  Sir Thomas being happily able

to give his friend an income in the living of Mansfield;

and Mr. and Mrs. Norris began their career of conjugal

felicity with very little less than a thousand a year.

But Miss Frances married, in the common phrase,

to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a lieutenant

of marines, without education, fortune, or connexions,

did it very thoroughly.  She could hardly have made

a more untoward choice.  Sir Thomas Bertram had interest,

which, from principle as well as pride, from a general

wish of doing right, and a desire of seeing all that were