<p>Fanny Price, at age ten, is sent from her impoverished home in Portsmouth to live as one of the family at Mansfield Park, the Northamptonshire country estate of Sir Thomas Bertram. Lady Bertram is her aunt. The Bertrams have four children- Tom, Edmund, Maria and Julia, who are all older than Fanny. There she is mistreated by all but Edmund. Her other aunt, Mrs.Norris, the wife of the clergyman at the Mansfield parsonage, makes herself particularly unpleasant to Fanny.</p> <p>When Fanny is fifteen, Aunt Norris is widowed and the frequency of her visits to Mansfield Park increases, as does her mistreatment of Fanny. A year later, Sir Thomas leaves to deal with problems on his plantation in Antigua, taking his spendthrift eldest son Tom. Mrs Norris, looking for a husband for Maria, finds Mr Rushworth, who is rich but weak-willed and considered stupid, and Maria accepts his proposal.</p>