My mother was like Fanny in a lot of ways. My best friend is like her, too. I aspire to be like Fanny, but I have a lot of work to do still! What you have described, BarbaraB, to my way of thinking, is what a Christian is SUPPOSED to be. Those who follow other religious traditions, including Judaism, Islam, and Buddism, to name a few, might say the same thing. I was able to identify it for myself when you wrote: Being useful gives her life a purpose, while she is unknowingly preparing herself for a life of service... Fanny and Edmund are destined to be the moral inheritors of Mansfield Park. What a writer Jane Austen was to get all this depth into a novel!