Fanny Price is sent as a child to live among wealthy relatives who never quite decide whether she is family or a dependant, and she spends the novel watching them closely.
Jane Austen makes her quietest heroine the moral centre of the book, and the plot turns on judgement rather than wit: an amateur theatrical that oversteps, two charming newcomers whose charm is the problem, and a marriage proposal Fanny refuses at real cost. Questions of property, absence and the sources of the estate's income sit behind the drawing-room scenes.
Reasons it keeps its readers:
• A reserved heroine whose judgement drives the novel's moral argument
• The theatricals episode, one of Austen's most discussed set pieces
• Class and dependence examined from inside a wealthy household
• Penguin Selected Classic edition of the unabridged novel
For readers of nineteenth-century fiction and anyone exploring Austen's full range, published by Penguin and available at Boipoka.
নতুন-1% ছাড়
