To Deny Mansfield Park Its Moral Power is Not Okay

Jane Austen wrote Mansfield Park to explore the desire to live morally. and there should be no question that she applauds Fanny Price for doing so. For readers like me, who might be called Fanny Price believers, the novel is inspiring. Yet because a great number of commentators degrade Fanny’s moral struggle, it is now a virtual rule that there will never be consensus on what Austen was getting at or even why Fanny exists. Related to this is the perpetual war over Fanny herself. I address this issue of whether Fanny is worth admiring or not because any analysis of a work acts as an introduction to the work, and the plethora of dismissive treatments of Fanny’s thinking have to skew understanding of the novel for many readers. But this is more than a literary issue. It makes us wonder if there is any consensus possible in our time on a concept of the right and the good