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The Schedule for July through Dec. 2025
By Lynn · 3 posts · 41 views
By Lynn · 3 posts · 41 views
last updated Jun 25, 2025 08:25PM
Palace of Desire — discussion with ✴spoilers✴
By spoko · 14 posts · 10 views
By spoko · 14 posts · 10 views
last updated 2 hours, 30 min ago
What Members Thought
Jane, I hate to give you anything less than a five, but Fanny is just not my girl. This story feels like it needs George Elliot's hand to elevate the pastoral from the banal and boring. I miss your wit, because without it your half page sentences and insane passive voice make me a little crazy. I suppose everything you write cannot be complete perfection, but the women who came after you seemed to understand women's domestic lives in brighter shades and broader strokes. Still, you must know that
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As much as this a novel of manners, it is also a study of character, and although some have found it too moralistic, it was not overly judgmental. In fact I found it quite realistic. Having read four other novels by Jane Austen, I was curious about this one. Her settings can sometimes be claustrophobic because there is not much action, however, there is character development - typically involving individuals from privileged upper class backgrounds, but sometimes briefly lower class as well. The
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Touted as the least of her novels with the least likable character in Fanny Price, I find Mansfield Park and Fanny as the understated gem in Austen's work. Perhaps I am peculiar but I find little relatable to Elizabeth Bennett and her confidence & wit and Emma is barely tolerable to me because of her blind beliefs & self absorption. Fanny while timid is an idealist. It has been said that this is not meant to be a romance novel which is probably why I like this over the others. A novel of ideals
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I liked the book for its own merits as well as its value and deserved place in the development of the English Novel. I think it really marks a transition from the earlier epistolary novels such as Samuel Richardson's "Pamela" to a fuller narrative and more developed character types. I think it also paints a relatively detailed portrait of the English class system of the time and shines a bit of a light into an area that was not as clearly depicted in prior literary works.
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The excessively preachy but equally perceptive Fanny Price is an odd sort of main character for Austen. She's balanced by the perfectly pleasant and perfectly venal Mary Crawford. The drippy Edmund has the evil...weakly evil, the worst sort...Harry Crawford as a foil. This isn't a bad book at all, but lacks a lot of the frothy fun of P. and P. and Emma.
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Jun 24, 2010
Elizabeth
rated it
really liked it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
1001-books-you-must-read-before-you,
classic
