#Fanny Price

[bethanydelleman]

When it comes to Fanny Price, the difference between me and the general public (at least online) is that they are all, "She's so weak and pretentious and annoying, why can't she just stand up for herself?" and I'm like, "She's so scared and beaten down and sad. I want to stand in front of her as a shield and wrap her in blankets. Is six enough to make her feel sufficiently snuggled and warm?"

And honestly, I can barely even understand the other side. How did you read Mansfield Park all the way through and decide that Fanny Price was the character to hate? There are so many other choices!

[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.

[haaam-guuuurl]

[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.

[cogentranting]

The critic who wrote the introduction to my copy of Mansfield Park- "No one is able to like the heroine".

Sounds like a skill issue. Not me and the girlies on Tumblr.com though. We get it.

[farosdaughter]

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

[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

[besotted-with-austen]

Elizabeth Bennet: *trying really hard not to be impolite and show how much she dislikes Mr Darcy*

Fitzwilliam Darcy: *to himself* she is exchanging good-natured banter with me-she truly likes me! I must up my game!

Fanny Price: *trying really hard not to be impolite and show how much she dislikes Mr Crawford*

Henry Crawford: *to himself* she is not even exchanging good-natured banter with me-she truly dislikes me! I must up my game!

[bethanydelleman]

Also when it comes to Henry Crawford's promotion of William in Mansfield Park vs. Darcy's saving of Lydia in Pride & Prejudice, people praise Darcy to high heavens for doing it in secret and shame Henry for doing it in the open. Except they are totally different circumstances!

Darcy knew, 100%, that Elizabeth disliked him and did not want to marry him. If he had saved Lydia in the open, it would have been a total dick move because it would create obligation and it would be on someone who rejected him. So he does it in secret and good on him.

Henry Crawford has not been refused, he thinks Fanny likes him, "For—for very little more than opportunity. Mary, she is not like her cousins; but I think I shall not ask in vain.” And he's not crazy to think this, we know from the narrator that Fanny's behaviour towards him has changed, "She had by no means forgotten the past, and she thought as ill of him as ever; but she felt his powers: he was entertaining; and his manners were so improved, so polite, so seriously and blamelessly polite, that it was impossible not to be civil to him in return." Sure, he overestimates this civility, but it is there.

So he's giving a gift to a woman he's proposing to, with absolutely no idea that she will refuse him. It's overly presumptuous for sure, but it's not as evil as people want to make it out to be.

Now Willoughby and his freaking HORSE...

[bellatrixnightshade]

Is it just me or do people tend to dislike characters that they actually are similar to/relate to, and then end up loving them much later?

[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!

[jewellery-box]

Illustrations for Jane Austen's 'Mansfield Park'

Entry for Folio Society competition

2016

By Emily Yendle

[whenthegoldrays]

Mansfield Park + text posts

[farosdaughter]

You don't knock anymore And I always knew it.