Rediscovering Mansfield Park

[reposting from wordpress]

I’m re-reading Mansfield Park. It’s the best of the Austen novels, IMO, but I haven’t really read it for awhile. I’d forgotten that it’s enjoyable as well as admirable.

Of course, even more than all the others, it isn’t a love story. I think if you try to read it like that, you’re inevitably going to be disappointed. Mansfield Park is just — people. People being people. That’s what makes it so great, really. It all fits together and makes sense and is also a good story. And it’s almost painfully true to life. A girl like Fanny was never going to be a spirited young thing. And why should she be? It’s difficult and complex and dark, and yet I think far superior to Sense and Sensibility, where a similar tone is never satisfyingly resolved.

 

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