Many critics regard Mansfield Park as Austen's supreme achievement. It is a serious, even earnest work, but never dull, finding its comedy less in dialogue than in situation. It has wonderful set pieces including an outing to a grand house, aborted theatricals and a visit to a chaotic ménage. All Austen's novels are set during the French Wars, but Mansfield Park catches most clearly the anxious mood of a wartime nation unsure of its moral status. The heroine Fanny Price holds to principles against sophisticated laxness, but she is also self-deceiving as her principles jostle against her nature and youth. With the subtle irony that is her forte, Austen shows that integrity wins out but at a cost - and that virtue is neither easy nor always pleasurable to achieve. Prefaces and explanatory endnotes supplied by Janet Todd illuminate the cultural, historical and literary context, bringing Jane Austen's world to life.
