Many critics regard Mansfield Park as Austen's supreme achievement. It is a serious even
earnest work but never dull finding its comedy less in dialogue than in situation. It has
wonderful set pieces including an outing to a grand house aborted theatricals and a visit to a
chaotic ménage. All Austen's novels are set during the French Wars but Mansfield Park catches
most clearly the anxious mood of a wartime nation unsure of its moral status. The heroine Fanny
Price holds to principles against sophisticated laxness but she is also self-deceiving as her
principles jostle against her nature and youth. With the subtle irony that is her forte Austen
shows that integrity wins out but at a cost - and that virtue is neither easy nor always
pleasurable to achieve. Prefaces and explanatory endnotes supplied by Janet Todd illuminate the
cultural historical and literary context bringing Jane Austen's world to life.
