This was a thoughtful, beautiful, and thoroughly excellent post. You are to be commended for expressing so well, your thoughts and ideas regarding Fanny Price and her place in Mansfield Park: the novel and the estate.

I, too, love Fanny. Although my bent is psychology and the sciences of the mind, I agree that Fanny's early emotionally traumatic experiences shaped the woman she would grow up to be. I am continually in awe of Jane Austen's ability to delineate her characters so precisely that it is possible for present-day clinicians to determine excatly what ails them.

Yet, for all of this, cold science is not sufficient to explain the magickal power of a Fanny Price. She is her own woman and upholds certain truths to be self-evident despite the opposition of those she loves or those who would have power over her. She is not passive-agressive because there is not an agreesive bone in her body. She holds to her moral ground, but does this so gently that only Obnoxious Norris can complain---and her complaints stem not so much from Fanny's position on any given issue, but because it is Fanny that holds the position.

Thank you again BarbaraB. This post is a keeper. I shall print it out and insert it into my copy of "Mansfield Park" as a guide to future journeys through this story.