Read more Print length 400 pages Language English Publisher St. It was Mansfield Parsonage that she now finds ‘as dear to her heart’ as anything.24 Perhaps Jane treated these events lightly, almost mechanically, because she didn’t really believe that a man, on his own, could bring a happy ending. Illustrated with two sections of color plates, Lucy Worsleys Jane Austen at Home is a richly entertaining and illuminating new book about one of the worlds favorite novelists and one of the subjects she returned to over and over in her unforgettable novels: home. And in the very final paragraph of Mansfield Park, the object of Fanny’s affections, like Charlotte Lucas’s, is defined as a house. We don’t hear Emma Woodhouse accepting Mr Knightley’s proposal, we don’t see Edmund falling in love with Fanny Price. If you look at the exact moments where love is brought to a climax, and matches are made, you may find them a little abrupt, almost perfunctory. Yes, this is a highly contentious suggestion, but bear with me. And when Jane approaches the moment when her heroines must marry, it is possible to argue that something a little strange happens to her storytelling. Jane’s novels are celebrated for the new meanings you pick up each time you reread them. Of course their suitors come with material advantages, and no one chooses foolishly, but what it really comes down to, for Catherine Morland, Elinor Dashwood, Lizzy Bennet, Fanny Price, Emma Woodhouse and Anne Elliot, is finding the right man. “all of Jane’s heroines will marry for love and nothing else.
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