Through Fanny Price, the heroine of Mansfield Park, Jane
Austen views the social mores of her day and contemplates
human nature itself. A shy and sweet-tempered girl adopted
by wealthy relations, Fanny is an outsider looking in on an
unfamiliar, and often inhospitable, world. But Fanny
eventually wins the affection of her benefactors, endearing
herself to the Bertram family and the reader
alike.
In her Introduction, Carol Shields writes,
[Mansfield Park's] overriding theme is difficult to isolate,
since the novel is about everything it touches upon:
nurturing, steadfastness, belonging and not belonging, about
fine gradations of moral persuasion, about human noise and
silence, and about action and stillness.
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