At the age of ten, shy, vulnerable Fanny Price leaves behind her impoverished
family in Portsmouth to go and live with her rich relatives at Mansfield Park.
Growing up with her cousins Tom, Edmund, Maria and Julia, she is aware that she
is different from them and that her place in society cannot be taken for
granted, although she is not treated unkindly. A dashing couple from London,
Mary Crawford and her brother Henry, enter this stable, rural world. They
succeed in dazzling everyone ant Mansfield Park, except for Fanny, who sees
through their shallow veneer. Throughout the dramatic events that follow it is
she who is able the bring back some stability to the ruptured lives of those
around her. One of the great novels of the nineteenth century, Mansfield Park
echoes Jane Austen's fears and awareness of the dawn of a modern age, which was
to bring about a complete break from the old country traditions and way of life.