] JA's novels tend to be gloomy about the prospects for women who marry down: Mrs Price springs to mind. Odd, when her mother seems to have a happy marriage, even with eight children and not much of an income.

After George Austen died in 1804, Mrs. Austen and her two daughters suffered privation. In Bath they had to move several times looking for cheaper lodgings. I remember being told in the Jane Austen Center that their last lodging was a set of rooms in a very poor and bad area of the town. It took her brother four years, until 1809, to come to their aid and provide them with a place to live (Chawton Cottage). Since Mansfield Park was published in 1814, Jane Austen may have had those hardships in mind when writing about Mrs. Price’s financial difficulty