Volume One (Chapters 1–18)

About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of a handsome house and large income. All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match.

She had two sisters to be benefited by her elevation. Miss Ward, the eldest, married the Reverend Mr. Norris, a friend of Sir Thomas's, who gave him the living of Mansfield. Miss Frances, the youngest, married, in the common phrase, to disoblige her family: a Lieutenant of Marines, without education, fortune, or connections, who was disabled for active service and given to drink, and with whom she lived in Portsmouth in a small house, with a large and ever-growing family.

After eleven years, Mrs. Price, with eight children and a ninth expected, wrote to her sister for help. And Mrs. Norris, who loved to direct and to seem generous at no cost to herself, proposed that the Bertrams should take the eldest girl, Fanny, now nine years old, and bring her up at Mansfield. Sir Thomas hesitated: there were his own sons — cousins in love, and so on. "My dear Sir Thomas," cried Mrs. Norris, "breed her up with them from this time, and suppose her even to have the beauty of an angel, and she will never be more to either than a sister." Sir Thomas consented. Mrs. Norris, who had seemed to offer to take the child herself, made it clear that she could not possibly have her.

Fanny Price arrived at Mansfield, after a long journey, small for her age, with no glow of complexion, nor any other striking beauty; exceedingly timid and shy, and shrinking from notice. The house, the grand rooms, the stern Sir Thomas, the indolent Lady Bertram on her sofa with her pug, the two handsome cousins Maria and Julia, who looked at her with ill-concealed contempt — everything frightened her. She cried herself to sleep every night.

Her cousin Edmund, sixteen, found her one morning crying on the attic stairs. He sat down by her, and learned that she was homesick, and above all missed her brother William, a year older than she, her constant companion and friend at home, who was going to sea. Edmund got her paper, ruled the lines for her, and helped her to write to William, and franked the letter himself. From that day she loved him. He talked to her, encouraged her, recommended books, and became her guide and protector.

Her cousins Maria and Julia found her prodigiously stupid. "Dear mama, only think, my cousin cannot put the map of Europe together — or my cousin cannot tell the principal rivers in Russia — or she never heard of Asia Minor — or she does not know the difference between water-colours and crayons!" Mrs. Norris taught them that it was not in the least necessary that Fanny should be as accomplished as they; on the contrary, it was much more desirable that there should be a difference. They grew up, handsome, clever and admired, and entirely deficient in the less common acquirements of self-knowledge, generosity and humility.

The years passed. Fanny grew up at Mansfield, neither quite a daughter nor quite a servant: running errands for Lady Bertram, who was never cross and never interested; doing needlework for her; being scolded, managed and reminded of her dependence by Mrs. Norris, who could never forgive her for being at Mansfield and never forget that it had been her own idea. Mrs. Norris lived in the White House in the village after her husband's death, and was always at the Park, saving, contriving, ordering the servants, and carrying off whatever she could find. Fanny's comforts were Edmund, her books, and William's letters. When the old grey pony she rode for her health died, nobody thought of replacing it, until Edmund exchanged one of his own three horses for a mare that a woman could ride, and gave Fanny the use of it; and she loved him more than ever, with a love that was gratitude, and reverence, and something she did not yet dare to name.

Mr. Norris died; the living was given to a Dr. Grant, a gourmand, because the eldest son, Tom, an extravagant young man, had run up debts which had to be paid by selling the next presentation — which Sir Thomas had meant for Edmund, who was to be a clergyman. Sir Thomas, his West Indian estate doing badly, sailed to Antigua to see to it himself, taking Tom with him, and was gone two years. His daughters were relieved to be rid of him; Fanny felt that she ought to be sorry, and was ashamed that she could not.

Maria, at twenty-one, became engaged to Mr. Rushworth, a heavy young man of very large fortune and very little sense, owner of Sotherton Court, an old Elizabethan house ten miles off. "If this man had not twelve thousand a year," said Edmund, "he would be a very stupid fellow."

Then came the Crawfords. Mrs. Grant's half-brother and half-sister, Henry and Mary Crawford, young, rich, fashionable, from London, came to stay at the parsonage. Mary was remarkably pretty, lively and clever; Henry, though not handsome, had so much countenance, such teeth, and was so well made, that he was soon thought the most agreeable young man the sisters had ever known. Maria was engaged, and so, they decided, he was safe to flirt with; Julia thought him hers. Henry played with them both.

Mary Crawford was all wit. She talked of London society, of her uncle the Admiral, at whose house she had seen enough of admirals: "Of Rears and Vices I saw enough. Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat." Edmund was shocked, and fascinated. He found her charming. He lent her Fanny's horse — the quiet old mare he had found for Fanny's health — and Mary rode it day after day, and Fanny walked, and stayed at home, and was forgotten, and got a headache cutting roses in the sun for her aunts.

She had brought her harp from London, and had had a great deal of trouble getting it brought from Northampton, since, in the middle of the hay harvest, no farmer would hire out a cart for it — which astonished her, for in London everything was to be had with money. She played it in the parsonage window, with the doors open on the lawn, surrounded by shrubs in the rich foliage of summer; and a young woman, pretty, lively, with a harp as elegant as herself, both placed near a window, cut down to the ground, was enough to catch any man's heart. Edmund went to the parsonage every morning to hear her play.

She was frank about everything, especially money. She meant to marry well, and said so. She liked Tom, the eldest son, until she found herself liking Edmund better, and she could not understand why a man of his gifts would choose to be a mere clergyman, with a small income and nothing to do but preach once a week, and eat a good dinner. She laughed at the idea of a clergyman doing good: "A clergyman has nothing to do but to be slovenly and selfish — read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work, and the business of his own life is to dine." She was thinking of Dr. Grant. And Edmund, who should have been warned, only thought how sad it was that she had been brought up among such worldly people, and that she meant none of it.

A party went to Sotherton, so that Mr. Rushworth might ask their advice on improving his grounds — a fashionable gentleman, Mr. Repton, was laying out everybody's. They saw the house: room after room, all lofty, many large, and amply furnished in the taste of fifty years back; and the chapel, a mere spacious oblong room fitted up for the purpose of devotion, with mahogany and crimson velvet cushions. Fanny was disappointed: she had imagined banners, and arches. Prayers were no longer read there; family prayer had been given up. Mary Crawford said she was glad, and laughed at clergymen — and then learned, to her confusion, that Edmund was to be ordained. "A clergyman is nothing," she said. Edmund answered gravely that a clergyman had the charge of all that was of the first importance to mankind, individually or collectively considered, temporally and eternally.

On the way there, there was a quarrel over who should sit on the barouche-box beside Henry Crawford, who was driving; Mrs. Grant decided it, and Julia had the seat and was gay all the way, while Maria sat inside with Mrs. Norris and saw Henry turn and laugh with her sister, and was miserable. On the way home it was Maria who sat there. Fanny watched the country, and the hedges, and the soils, and was happy in her own thoughts, and noticed everything.

In the grounds there was a wilderness, a planted wood, and beyond it a park, divided off by an iron gate and a ha-ha. Fanny, tired, was left on a bench while Edmund and Mary walked on — "for a few minutes" — and were gone an hour. Maria, Henry and Mr. Rushworth came to the gate and found it locked. Mr. Rushworth went back to the house for the key. Maria, impatient, said the gate made her feel restrained: "I cannot get out, as the starling said." Henry said she might get round the edge of the gate, with his help, if she really wished to be more at large; and they did so, and disappeared into the park, Fanny protesting that she would hurt herself against the spikes, she would tear her gown, she would be in danger of slipping into the ha-ha. Mr. Rushworth came back with the key and found them gone, and was very angry, and went after them. Julia came and climbed the fence after them. Fanny was left alone with her thoughts. On the drive home Maria was silent, and Julia furious, and Mrs. Norris had sponged a cream cheese, some pheasant's eggs, and a heath plant from the housekeeper.

In the autumn Tom came home ahead of his father, bringing a friend, the Honourable John Yates, who had just come from a great house where private theatricals had been abandoned; and he caught the young people with the idea of acting a play. Tom was eager; Maria and Julia were eager; Henry Crawford declared that he could undertake any character that ever was written. Only Edmund objected — Sir Thomas, abroad and in danger, would never approve; Maria's situation, engaged, made it improper — and Fanny silently agreed with him.

The play chosen was Lovers' Vows, a German drama, adapted into English, about a seduced woman, her illegitimate son and the nobleman who had wronged her, with a forward young lady who does her own proposing to a clergyman. Maria took Agatha, the fallen mother, so that she might play scenes of embrace with Henry Crawford as Frederick, her son. Julia, passed over, refused to act at all. Mr. Rushworth was given the part of Count Cassel, and two-and-forty speeches. Mary Crawford was to play Amelia — the young lady who makes love to the clergyman Anhalt — and there was no one to play Anhalt.

Fanny read the play and was astonished that it could be thought of for a private theatre. The situation of one heroine and the language of the other seemed to her so totally improper for home representation by any woman of modesty. They wanted her to take a small part, the Cottager's wife; Tom pressed her, Maria pressed her, and Mrs. Norris attacked her in front of everyone: "I shall think her a very obstinate, ungrateful girl, if she does not do what her aunt and cousins wish her — very ungrateful indeed, considering who and what she is." Fanny, nearly crying, refused. "No, indeed, I cannot act." Mary Crawford, to her credit, came and sat by her and comforted her.

Edmund, to Fanny's grief, gave way. Rather than let them bring in a young man from outside to play love-scenes with Miss Crawford, he would play Anhalt himself. He came to Fanny's little room — the old schoolroom, the East room, which was hers now, cold and fireless, where she kept her plants and her books and her transparencies and the sketch of a ship William had sent from the Mediterranean — to explain himself, and hoped she would understand. She did not argue. But she could not think well of it; and after he had gone, she could not read.

Then Mary and Edmund both came to Fanny, separately, each asking her to hear them rehearse their great love-scene together, and she sat as the audience to it, which was very hard. She was useful to everyone: hearing them their parts, helping with costumes, prompting, listening to complaints. Maria and Henry rehearsed their scenes of embrace far more often than necessary; Mr. Rushworth sulked; Julia watched with jealousy; Mrs. Norris saved the green baize curtain material for herself. Fanny saw it all.

Mr. Rushworth, who could never learn his two-and-forty speeches, came to Fanny to hear him recite them, and stumbled through them again and again, and complained that Mr. Crawford was a very odd sort of man to be so much admired — "for my part I can see nothing in him" — and Fanny, out of pity, prompted him and said nothing. Mr. Yates ranted. Tom laughed at everyone. The house was full of carpenters, and the billiard-room was turned into a theatre, and Sir Thomas's own room was used for the green-room, his bookcase pushed aside to make a door.

On the evening of the first full rehearsal, when Fanny, at last persuaded, had agreed to read the Cottager's wife's part because the actress was ill, the door of the room was thrown open, and Julia, with a face aghast, exclaimed, "My father is come! He is in the hall at this moment."

How is the consternation of the party to be described? To the greater number it was a moment of absolute horror.