JasonKoivu

"I can not but think good horsemanship has a great deal to do with the mind." Jane Austen always did a great job of planting ridiculous declarations in the mouths of characters she wished to discredit. Character was her strong suit and there's some good'uns here in.

Within Mansfield Park there are characterizations so delicate and actions of importance utterly unassuming. Some seem meaningless in their modesty. Excellent work by a diligent author. Dangerous pitfalls for the casual reader.

The whole novel overall moves along steadily with a dim flash of excitement here or a trying time there, never altering much above or below its middling pace. That's not a ringing endorsement, but nor is it condemnation. No, this is condemnation...

There is too much time taken up in mundane description: the planning of a play that never comes off, for one. Oh yes, certainly the play held importance in that it provided Austen a stage to showcase her principal players. But could that not have been accomplished with another scene, one that drives the narrative with more force?

Fanny Price, our heroine is too prudish to warm up to, and the main object of her - I'd say "desire," but that's putting it far stronger than Austen did - is a man setting himself up for a parson's life. They are both a couple of moral, goodie-two-shoes and you long for some mild vice to surface and show them to be human.

Heros and villains appear on the scene too obviously. Hovering halos and black hats are almost more than imaginary. Some 'gray area' is introduced in the main "villain," but it's slight and see-through. Intentionally so? Yes, but it could've been handled with more art and the skill Austen showed she possessed in other works.

The end is wrapped up all too quickly and with criminal simplicity tantamount to saying, "I don't like her after all, I like you, so let's get married!" An end which left this reader shrugging his shoulders at a pleasant enough diversion that he'd wished had more pride or even sensibility.