Jane Austen's Fiction Art From Mansfield Park

As an English woman writer between 18th century and 19th century, Although the writing range of Jane Austen is not wide enough, she makes the structure of her novels delicate by the characteristic carefulness of the female. She knows the value of each character and plot in the novel world very clearly; and she is good at making use of them to help the building of the art integrity, which makes each piece of writings seem to be a perfect moral world. Mansfield Park is one of Jane Austen's famous works. In this thesis, We put emphasis on analyzing and evaluating six problems in Mansfield Park(hereafter M).I. Moral tendency of MWhat Jane Austen expressed in M is mainly about a good idea to an ideal family, that is, a harmonious and orderly family order. Family members should have a minimum responsibility and conscious moral sense, and the most important members in the family should love each other, but not be selfish and hypocritical.II. Characters' layout in MCharacters in M can be classified into following groups: each group stands for its moral force---Sir Thomas is the representative of the outside order and authority in M; Mrs Bertram is the representative of selfishness; Mrs Norris is the representative of snobbishness; Tom, Maria and Julia are the representative of anti-order force in; Fanny and Edmund are the representative of inside force of morality and love; and Henry and Mary Crawford are the representative of anti-order, anti-authority and anti-morality outside Mansfield Park.III. Plot and structure of M M, from the very beginning, begins with a compulsory order and selfish force controlled by Sir Thomas's authority, and inside love force is not strong. But during Sir Thomas's absence in the West Indies, the Crawfords come into M, arouse Tom and others to do silly things, and make the hidden peril in the Maria's marriage and Edmund's love. After Sir Thomas comes back, he tries to control the Crawfords' force. In the same time, with the help of Edmund and Fanny, the Crawfords' force begins to come close to the force of morality and love. However, with the love between Henry and Fanny public, the vanity of Sir Thomas is rising, his restraint power is weakening. Finally, the Crawfords' force which Henry stands for breaks Sir Thomas' order, and Henry fails because of his frivolity. M revives and gets to the perfect morality.IV. Integrity and perfection inside Mansfield ParkM mainly talks about the moral perfection in M which is around realizing Fanny's love. It begins with the malpractice in M, that is, the negative force(the Crawfords' force) comes into M, which makes M broken. Later, the Crawfords' force is wiped out, and M becomes complete again and comes to perfect state. In this process, M itself embodies the perfection of structure and layout.V. Delicate and intricate arrangementIncidents in M are not so many, which involve only several marriages, parties and travels. All these provide a stage for each force mentioned above. Several typical incidents includes, Sir Thomas' absence in the West Indies; the arrival of Henry and Mary Crawford; the practical joke in Sotherton Park; drama carnival; several parties after the arrival of Sir Thomas and Maria's broken marriage, which make different forces strengthening and weakening that becomes several keys to the moral perfection in M.VI. Austen's original artJane Austen makes full use of the conflict between different forces and the internal motive force given by each important chance in order to make the plot developing , embody the objectivity and maturity of the novel. In general, Jane Austen has the ability to exploit the potentialities in the art factors, build different perfect art worlds and make "the simplicity of art" come true.