<p>When ten-year-old Fanny Price is plucked from squalor to be raised in comfort at elegant Mansfield Park, home of her well-off relatives the Bertrams, only her teenage cousin Edmund notices her homesickness and distress. He comforts her, instructs her, and helps her to become a competent, self-possessed young woman. Fanny thrives as a useful and happy member of the household, while her natural feelings of gratitude and respect for Edmund grow into something deeper—but then trouble arrives at Mansfield Park.<br></p><p>Rich, sophisticated Londoners Henry and Mary Crawford are a brother-and-sister act to be reckoned with. Mary sets her romantic sights on Edmund, and Fanny is faced not only with a powerful rival, but also with Edmund's need to talk endlessly about his infatuation with the dark-eyed beauty. Forced to hide her abiding love for Edmund, Fanny must soon fend off amorous advances from a most unwelcome source—advances that Edmund encourages her to accept. With further help from Henry and Mary, even a bad situation can become much worse.<br></p><p>Mansfield Park features some of Jane Austen's most acute satire. An extended exploration of the interplay between manners, sexuality, and character in what Austen depicts as a moral decline of the English upper classes, it is arguably her most complex and socially aware novel, as well as the one with the widest canvas.<br></p>