Fanny Price: A Journey To Discover Home “They were a remarkably
fine family…and all of them well-grown and forward of their age,
which produced as striking a difference between the cousins in
person, as education had given to their address.” (Austen, 49)
Within the first few pages of Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
implants in the minds of her readers the idea that contrasting
and conflicting environments are the forces that will decide the
heroine’s fate. Austen’s own home and family influenced her
life, writing, and the creation of the homes in her novels, and
in turn, shaped her heroines. But Fanny Price is unique among
Jane Austen’s heroines, having much more with which to contend
than simply the influence of one family. In fact, it is the
differences between her two homes and families that cause Fanny
and the novel to turn out the way they do. Yet the heroine finds
herself in this situation only because of the influence of the
Austen family on the characters in Mansfield Park. Not only can
parallels easily b