Mansfield Park: Jane Austen's Most Controversial Novel

From Laurie Viera Rigler, the author of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict (http://janeaustenaddict.com.)

Discuss Mansfield Park in your book club, and your friends, like most readers, will tend to differ over a variety of points. The most typical one is this: Is the heroine, Fanny Price, a model of moral integrity, or a self-righteous prude? Is the marriage that ends the story (and Austen's stories always end with a marriage) between the right two people? And what's up with that part about the play?

The story begins when nine-year-old Fanny Price is taken from the home of her impoverished parents and moved to the estate of Mansfield Park to be brought up by rich relatives. This is no clear-cut Cinderella story, however. Although there are a couple of mildly wicked stepsisters (Fanny's cousins Maria and Julia) and a stand-in for a wicked stepmother in the form of her Aunt Norris, Fanny's central nemesis--and rival in love--is the saucy, sassy anti-heroine Mary Crawford.

In Mansfield Park, Jane Austen is clearly at the height of her storytelling mastery, deftly playing with reader loyalties and expectations while serving up the delicious social satire and suspenseful plotting that keep us coming back for more.

Read more of this guest post, from Laurie Viera Rigler, the author of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict (http://janeaustenaddict.com.)