A Jane Austen Re-read: Mansfield Park

I promise I’ll have more to write about than Austen here at some point soon, especially as I am temporarily out of work due to events out of my control. In the meantime, I do promise that Austen is worth re-reading! Why not pick up Pride and Prejudice, and start reading along with me?

The next book I will be reading is Emma, which is probably the second most popular Austen book, and is a very different flavor from Mansfield Park.

There are spoilers below. If you haven’t already read this book or watched one of the movies, this post likely isn’t going to make much sense anyway.

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Rereading The Book

I approached this book with trepidation. I remember it well, and while it isn’t my least favorite Jane Austen book (more on that later), I didn’t remember loving it as much as some of the others.

What I loved the most was that this book, more than most of her books, hinged not on romantic feelings but on marriage as an economic transaction, which is likely more realistic. I enjoyed Austen’s ability to tease out the nuance in these, from the Price’s marriage, which was an unwise marriage because it was based solely on the basis of feeling to the Rushworth’s marriage which was an equally unwise marriage because it was based solely on the basis of money.

I also want to plug this book for its focus on compatibility! I don’t know how modern it was at the time, but I thought the way that the more sensible characters in this book approached romance was really smart. I liked the way they took the time to think about whether or not their sensibilities matched, and I even liked that she made allowances for people in love to foolishly overlook obvious differences.

If I have one critique, it is that Fanny is too passive of a heroine to create a truly compelling narrative. She has no agency, and doesn’t take ANY actions throughout the book that move the plot forward in any way.

Written Adaptations

There are not a ton of written adaptations out there, but there are a few, especially Young Adult versions out there. Maybe its the play in the book, but many of them seem “theater camp” based!

• The Beresfords by Christina Dudley – Contemporary California
• The Trouble with Flirting: A Novel by Claire LaZebnik – Contemporary Young Adult with a theater twist
• Edmund Bertram’s Diary by Amanda Grange – the story from Edmund’s point of view
• Seeking Mansfield by Kate Watson – Contemporary Young Adult with a theater twist
• Solving for Ex by Leigh Ann Kopans – Contemporary Young Adult with a math twist
• Bellevere House by Sarah Scheele – Depression era
• Mount Hope: An Amish Retelling of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park by Sarah Price – An Amish version
• Mansfield Park and Mummies by Vera Nazarian – Mansfield Park and Mummies

Film Adaptations Worth Watching

There are the standard adaptations for Mansfield Park out there – a 1980s version and a couple from the last 1990s and early 2000s. There is one stand out exception though, so please take a look!

1.) From Mansfield with Love

Well, this is the first book where I have to say that the modern adaptation is better than the book. From Mansfield with Love is a YouTube series, and I highly encourage you to check it out, even if it doesn’t sound like your thing!

It sets the story in modern day England in Mansfield Park, a stately home turned hotel, and stars Frankie Price, a housekeeper who got the job thanks to the fact that Mrs Bertram and her mother were college friends, and is constantly hiding out from the head housekeeper, Mrs Norris.

The story unfolds as she interacts with the children of the owners, and with the consultants hired to refurbish the hotel, the Crawfords, and we get her story from “video letter” she send to her beloved brother Will, who is in the navy.

This story modernizes the plot absolutely brilliantly, and finds so much nuance in these relationships. I particularly appreciated their skill in finding modern analogues to some of the more problematic parts of the original novel. Frankie is a fabulous character, although the series takes a few episodes to hit its stride, and I absolutely stayed up until way to late (early?) watching it!

2.) Mansfield Park 1983

For some reason, this BBC series didn’t feel as hokey as some of the others, and I think that in part comes down to the fact that the actors playing Fanny and Edward were wonderful, and in part to the fact that this is a book that doesn’t hang quite as much on sexual tension and chemistry when it comes to its love stories.

I really appreciated the level of detail they were able to get into it, although it does mean that viewers have to cringe through one episode of terrible child actors before getting to the good parts. It takes a lot of skill to portray a character as passive as Fanny Price well, and this version manages that balance quite well.

This is available on Amazon Prime and if you watch one period version of this book, I recommend this one.

3.) Mansfield Park 1999

This was fine. The screenwriters and directors took a LOT of liberties here, and only some of them paid off. While the general story structure was in place, this was definitely not Mansfield Park as Jane Austen wrote it.

The introduction of a whole plot revolving around slavery made sense in a way, but it made some of the character arcs contradictory and nonsensical (Mr Bertram for one), and never actually reached a depth that made it feel meaningful.

I appreciated that Fanny was given more spirit, and loved the addition of her literary ambition, but Fanny with more spirit ends up making the eventual relationship between Edmund and Fanny feel less realistic because a Fanny with more spirit would not have been treated as a doormat, or would have caught Edmund’s notice earlier.

4.) Mansfield Park 2007

I love Billie Piper, and the ending of this was incredibly sweet, but in the end, this film itself suffered from being 90 minutes long and focusing on the wrong things.

The pacing was off (about 50% of the way through the film, we have covered about 75% of the book), and while Fannie is certainly closer to the Fannie Price of the books than the 1999 version or the YouTube version, the movie itself omitted completely weird things (no Portsmouth!) and there were a lot of shots of Fannie just running for no reason.

Also, and this is small, but I am going to mention it anyway, Billie Piper’s hair was NOT appropriate for a period film and it irked me.

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And now for something completely different, I can’t imagine a different heroine from Fanny than Emma!