Like all of Jane Austen’s novels, Mansfield Park can be considered a novel of manners, meaning it is a book that focuses primarily on its characters’ subtle behaviors that signal their particular positions within a social hierarchy. Much of the novel focuses on Fanny’s obsession with behaving in a way that is well-mannered, and how she is simultaneously chastised for being too well-behaved and not well-behaved enough by the people around her. She is easy for other characters to mock because she is typically the only lower-middle-class person in a scene (surrounded, as she normally is, by the more well-off Bertrams and Crawfords) and, as such, has to accept other people’s criticisms of her without pushing back.
Mansfield Park is also a social comedy in that it uses irony, satire, and humor to highlight some of the contradictions and absurdities of this rigid social hierarchy. Austen intentionally satirizes different types of wealthy people in order to show how Fanny may be poor but she is also morally superior. For example, when compared with Tom Bertram (who is a selfish and drunken gambling addict), Lady Bertram (whose primary focus in the novel is spoiling her tiny dog), and Dr. Grant (who cares more about lavish meals than being an effective clergyman), Fanny seems quite moral, and even angelic. In Mansfield Park, Austen also highlights the irony of young people claiming that they only want to marry people whom they love and then, most of the time, marrying in order to secure financial stability or to please their families (or, most often, both).
Despite the social commentary woven into it, Mansfield Park is also a romance novel. This is apparent from the “happily ever after” ending that Austen gives her readers—Fanny and Edmund end up together, and all of the other characters who exhibited more selfish and immoral behavior end up unhappy or alone. While the ending is a joyful and romantic one in some respects, critics have noted that the ending seemingly comes out of nowhere and reads a bit false given Austen’s clear criticism of marriage as an institution.
