#fanny price

[queen-paladin]

I love you "boring" female characters. I love you ingenues. I love you female characters who aren't "modern" enough. I love you female characters who aren't "badass" enough. iI love you female characters who aren't "empowering" enough. I love you quiet female characters. I love you unappreciated female characters. I love you polite female characters. I love you female characters who "can't appeal to modern audiences." I love you frightened female characters. I love you female characters labeled as not complex just for being nice. I love you female characters who get criticism just for not being their tomboy or femme fatale counterpart. I love you silk hiding steel trope.

[mellpenscorner]

A Ranking of Jane Austen Heroines, in Ascending Order of Culpability

Fanny (Mansfield Park): Has done nothing wrong ever in her life (but would never say this as she is far too humble).

Elinor (S&S): Must have scoliosis from carrying the whole weight of the Dashwood family at the ripe old age of 19. Should probably have asked for help by now, but who's she going to ask? Her mother? Unlikely.

Anne (Persuasion): Pros: is the only functioning member of her family. Cons: took some really bad advice when she was 17.

Elizabeth (P&P): So dead-set on hating Mr. Darcy that she falls hook-line-and-sinker for the lies Wickham tells her with no questions asked. Otherwise has good sense.

Marianne (S&S): Throws herself headlong into the Romantic Experience™️ and gets her heart broken by a playboy when Colonel Brandon is literally RIGHT THERE. 

Catherine (Northanger Abbey): Good-hearted, but easily led astray. So obsessed with Gothic novels that she kind of accuses Mr. Tilney's father of murdering his wife and burying her in the basement.

Emma (Emma): Tells Harriet to refuse the nice guy she likes, too prideful to see that Mr. Elton is pursuing her instead of Harriet, gossips about Jane Fairfax, feels like the rules don't apply to her, won't listen to Mr. Knightly. Is a menace.

[haaam-guuuurl]

[dubiousculturalartifact]

fanny price DOES get a great happy ending, fight me

like okay no, fanny does not successfully tame the Rake and reform him into a sexy sexy faithful husband. yes, we could argue all day about whether edmund bertram is underrated or a soggy biscuit of a man, but that fact is ultimately IRRELEVANT. HE is irrelevant except as like. a piece of the broader picture the ending of mansfield park only sucks if you're viewing it from the extremely narrow and shallow lens of like: the modern capital R romance, where the woman's happily-ever-after is defined by her attaining the Ideal/Most Desirable Man™. but that's not what the novel is about!

fanny price's happy ending is BEING PROVEN RIGHT AND HER WORTH ACKNOWLEDGED after putting up with YEARS of fucking bullshit despite CONSTANTLY being a better judge of character, of morals, of good sense, than literally ANYONE ELSE AROUND HER. fanny price's happy ending is her spending months going 'HMM I"M GETTING BAD VIBES' and everyone saying 'stfu fanny you don't know shit' and at the end of the novel she gets to watch everyone else either blows up their entire life as a result of ignoring The Vibes, or fall over her trying to apologize because HOLY SHIT FANNY WHY DID WE NOT LISTEN TO YOU ABOUT THOSE VIBES and people being like WE TOOK YOU SO FUCKING FOR GRANTED WE FUCKED UP'

and she is like: yes, I know this, and finally everyone else does too, and that is literally all i have ever wanted in life fanny price's happy ending is people apologizing and acknowledging her worth fanny price's happy ending is basically the equivalent of her sitting there smiling with genteel energy while her inner self is performing this dance

and honestly: i love that for her

[bethanydelleman]

Ranking Jane Austen heroines/women on how good of a mother they’d be?

As with the men, I think they would all be good mothers, though in different ways.

Elizabeth Bennet: Soccer mom, she wasn't given the opportunity to have a structured education herself, it will be different for her kids. She's hiring the best governess she can find (after Darcy does a full background check), she's encouraging her kids to do extracurriculars, they will speak six languages that she doesn't understand or else! Has a minor panic attack if she says anything that sounds even remotely like something either of her parents would say.

Jane Bennet: Gentle mom, she cannot imagine punishing her children, she just has a killer disappointed face (she is unaware of this). Encourages her children to always try to understand both sides of the story. Will eventually fall for a lie one of her children tells and be devastated when she figures out the truth.

Anne Elliot: Perfect mother, there is indeed no one so proper, so capable as Anne. She has also watched her sister do everything wrong and she knows exactly how to do it right.

Emma Woodhouse: Scatterbrained mom, makes a resolution to teach her daughter fancy work but then gets distracted and the sampler is left half finished. Promised to read with her son but they only make it halfway through the novel. Good thing she hired an excellent "Miss Taylor" to pick up the slack! And despite her occasional screw-ups, her kids love her to pieces. They just better be on guard when they hit 18 and she starts trying to marry them off.

Marianne Dashwood: Crunchy mom, or whatever the Regency period equivalent would be. She wants her kids to feel the dead leaves between their toes, she encourages them to write poetry and play moving ballads. Otherwise, a lot like her own mother (they have very similar personalities)

Elinor Dashwood: I-Say-I-Love-You-With-Food Mom, she may not be exactly emotionally available, but she orders her daughter's favourite meal when she's sad and there are tiny hearts in the stiches of her son's clothes. She makes sure her kids are provided for, educated, and healthy. When she asks if they are hungry, they know she's saying, "I love you."

Fanny Price: Nurturing mom, she will be everything for those children that Edmund and William were to her, but nothing like Sir Thomas, Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris or her own parents. She has a good deal of experience from nursing her own siblings so it's a pretty smooth beginning.

Catherine Morland: Overconfident mom, Catherine has been there and done that, she has six younger brothers and sisters after all, she's READY! This will be easy! All you have to do is make sure the baby is fed, washed, changed, and napped... oh... it's a lot harder to do this when you have only slept for 2.5 hours last night... (I know she would have servants, but still, being a new mother is tough!)

Bonus: Jane Fairfax tries to keep Frank from spoiling the kids, but it is literally impossible. He keeps buying them huge presents and then she would be the bad guy for saying no. Also, she knows that Frank lost their child in Kensington Gardens (twice), that's why she always insists he take a footman now.

Bonus bonus: Harriet Smith has a special box where she keeps all the 'treasures' her kids collect. It is her most precious possession.

[villetteulogy]

Fanny Price's wardrobe in MANSFIELD PARK (1999)

[comrade-heather]

just saw an Austen Fan™️ say that Mansfield Park has literary merit “”in spite of”” Fanny being a “somewhat unlikable protagonist” like what???? she’s literally just traumatized and introverted you don’t have to go after her like that

[lizzy-bonnet]

Muppet Mansfield Park. Fanny Price is the only human, everyone else is an absolute fucking muppet (derogatory).

[junewongapologia]

It is no secret that I hate the Fanny/Henry pairing, bc like...

How can you read that book, and how Henry acts, and the distress it causes Fanny while we're in her head the whole way through...

And want her to be wrong? And want her to be the one to have to admit she was wrong?

No! Terrible, awful ending. Henry Crawford is not a good person. He's not, like, evil. But he's selfish and self-centred and thinks he deserves Fanny because he's rich and charming and made the bare minimum effort to seem like a better person. I fully buy into the idea that he likes her because he likes a challenge, and that if finally faced with what she like every day (shy and retiring and quiet and uncomfortable around loads of ppl) he'd start to resent her sharpish.

This is a book about selfishness and selfish people, and even in this cast, he's near the top of the most selfish, the most careless with the feelings of others. At the centre is Fanny, who is maligned and mistreated, but despite all is selfless and good, though she struggles with jealousy and negative thoughts and feelings.

It's a book about how she - poor and dependent and not especially well educated or taken care of by her relatives - knows her own mind and deserves to be treated as a rational, intelligent person.

It is literally crucial to her arc and the arc of the story that she's right about Crawford!

[anotherclassicpretence]

Re-read Mansfield Park and remembered why I always thought it was her best-written work. It's unique in that the main romance is like the C-plot: the major thread is Fanny's outlook and coming of age; and the Crawfords are probably the most complex side characters of any of the six novels. Fanny thinks of Romantic love as something she cannot hope for, and this gives her, as the major POV, a wider scope to comment on manners and society. By not having as powerful a presence as the other heroines (due to both her passive nature and her relatively inferior position), she offers a perspective focused on the events and their contemplation independent of her own influence. Mary, Henry, Edmund, and Sir Thomas are also fleshed out as explicitly flawed in a way that brings a brilliant clarity to the dynamics of the Park. And Mrs. Norris- the way you hate her. The way you can see her meddlesome hypocritical, horribly insecure nature...

Idk I'm rambling but... this book is golden.

[wheelie-butch]

I'm in the Fanny Price Defence Squad but I am also very much in the Mary Crawford Defence Squad. Sorry I'm very powerful.

[quotes-and-recs]

Yknow I think it’s okay that Fanny & Edmund’s relationship only comes to fruition in the last chapter because Mansfield Park isn’t about their relationship. It’s about misconduct and morals and reputations and family. It’s not a love story like Pride and Prejudice, and readers who go into it thinking it is (like I did) will probably come out disappointed with a good story.

[eminent-victoriana]

Fanny Price: I can't fix him

[lavenderfables]

Fanny Price should have been allowed to violently murder everyone who ever wronged her actually.

[bethanydelleman]

If the Austen heroines lived today (and had to work outside of the home), what jobs do you think they would have?

If we look at the heroine's relative incomes, it's likely that Catherine Morland, Fanny Price, and the Dashwoods would require professions, as clergyman and naval marine don't pay that well today and the Dashwoods lost their inheritance. Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, and Anne Elliot are all trust fund babies, though Elizabeth and Anne would likely get jobs since their families are blowing all their money and they're not idiots. Emma is the only one who genuinely would not need to work, even in a modern context. I am not going to assign her a profession, I suspect if she existed in a similar context today she would manage her father's affairs, run the family company, and a charity, much like she does in the novel.

Catherine Morland - in university, is in a very general program and has no idea what to do with her life. Ends up in some sort of childcare career because she knows she's good at it but still scrolls through job pages imagining what else she could do. Writes very bad novels on the side.

Elinor Dashwood - public school art teacher, secure career path with a solid pay cheque, never even considered becoming an artist

Marianne Dashwood - concert pianist/piano instructor reluctantly, because piano playing doesn't pay well, failed lyricist. Has a very popular YouTube channel

Elizabeth Bennet - I see lawyer SO OFTEN in fan fiction, but I disagree. This observer of human nature is getting sucked into psychology and becoming a researcher. She'll realize how bad of a judge of character she can be pre-Darcy because now she has evidence. May become a therapist as well.

Anne Elliot - Anne is so intelligent, she can be whatever she wants. She's so good with kids too, maybe a pediatrician? She threw herself into education after the Wentworth thing.

Fanny Price - the Bertrams paid for her university education and she chose the most guaranteed source of income: accounting. Companies will always need accountants and she can help support her family.

Jane Bennet - I can see her also choosing a very practical career but then dropping out of the workforce to be a stay-at-home mom. Charles has enough money to make that work.

[villetteulogy]

...he had once seen Fanny dance; and it was equally true that he would now have answered for her gliding about with quiet, light elegance, and in admirable time. -Mansfield Park, Chapter 6, Vol. II / Mansfield Park 1999