jane austen 简奥斯丁.ppt

Jane Austens Mansfield Park This image displays the novels rather unlikely and unlikable heroine Fanny Price doing ladylike things such as sewing! A Summary Ten-year-old Fanny Price is taken from her impoverished home to the estate of her wealthy aunt and uncle Bertram. There she is tormented by her aunt Norris, disliked by her cousins Tom, Maria, and Julia, and befriended only by her cousin Edmund. Her position is less than a daughter, more like a servant. Years pass. Fanny grows up shrinking and sickly (though very pretty). While Uncle Bertram is away on business, Henry and Mary Crawford come to stay at the nearby parsonage. The Crawfords, brother and sister, are lively and charming. Both Maria and Julia are taken with Henry. Edmund is equally smitten with Mary. Amateur theatricals are planned, then canceled by Uncle Bertrams return. But the rehearsals have already encouraged several damaging flirtations. Maria, humiliated by Henrys lack of real interest, marries Mr. Rushworth, a wealthy buffoon. A Summary continued Henry then falls in love with shy Fanny. She refuses the advantageous match and, as punishment, is sent back to her parents. Henry pursues her for a time, then has an affair with Maria that results in her disgrace. Edmunds eyes are opened by Marys casual response to this. Tom, the eldest Bertram cousin, nearly dies of vice and dissipation; Fanny is fetched back to Mansfield Park to help nurse him. At the end of the book, Edmund and Fanny marry. They seem well suited to each other, though not, as Kingsley Amis has pointed out, the sort of people you would like to have over for dinner. Mansfield Park, Love it or hate it? At the time she wrote Mansfield Park, Jane Austen was 36 and therefore a confirmed spinster. The book was her first attempt at writing after a pause of nearly 10 years when she lived in Bath, England. In regency England the book was praised for its wholesome morality however in the following years it became the least popular of all her