Fanny Price, the heroine of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, comes from an impoverished family in Portsmouth but becomes a ward at her Uncle Thomas Bertram’s estate at Mansfield Park. After she refuses the marriage proposal of the scheming and disreputable Henry Crawford, Sir Thomas attempts to force Fanny to revise her decision by sending her back to Portsmouth. The Portsmouth chapters of the novel repeatedly emphasise Fanny’s sense of the painful contrast between the aristocratic environment in which she had long resided and her family’s situation in Portsmouth, a city described as crampled, confined, uncultured, and unhealthy, but the principled and stubborn heroine nonetheless refuses to change her mind and is ultimately vindicated after Henry’s affair with Maria Bertram is discovered. The contrast between Mansfield Park and Portsmouth is immediately evident on her arrival at the family home near High St:

‘The next morning saw them off again at an early hour; and with no events, and no delays, they regularly advanced, and were in the environs of Portsmouth while there was yet daylight for Fanny to look around her, and wonder at the new buildings. They passed the drawbridge, and entered the town; and the light was only beginning to fail as, guided by William's powerful voice, they were rattled into a narrow street, leading from the High Street, and drawn up before the door of a small house now inhabited by Mr. Price.

Fanny was all agitation and flutter; all hope and apprehension. The moment they stopped, a trollopy-looking maidservant, seemingly in waiting for them at the door, stepped forward, […]

Another moment and Fanny was in the narrow entrance-passage of the house, and in her mother's arms, who met her there with looks of true kindness, and with features which Fanny loved the more, because they brought her aunt Bertram's before her, and there were her two sisters: Susan, a well-grown fine girl of fourteen, and Betsey, the youngest of the family, about five […]

She was then taken into a parlour, so small that her first conviction was of its being only a passage-room to something better, and she stood for a moment expecting to be invited on; but when she saw there was no other door, and that there were signs of habitation before her, she called back her thoughts, reproved herself, and grieved lest they should have been suspected’ (Chapter 25).

Fanny’s mother complains of the ‘shocking character of all the Portsmouth servants, of whom she believed her own two were the very worst’ (Chapter 38), while in Chapter 40 Fanny offers a broader condemnation of Portsmouth society:

‘As for any society in Portsmouth, that could at all make amends for deficiencies at home, there were none within the circle of her father's and mother's acquaintance to afford her the smallest satisfaction: she saw nobody in whose favour she could wish to overcome her own shyness and reserve. The men appeared to her all coarse, the women all pert, everybody underbred; and she gave as little contentment as she received from introductions either to old or new acquaintance. The young ladies who approached her at first with some respect, in consideration of her coming from a baronet's family, were soon offended by what they termed airs; for, as she neither played on the pianoforte nor wore fine pelisses, they could, on farther observation, admit no right of superiority’.

This appraisal very much accords with her brother William’s earlier in the novel:

‘“This is the assembly night,” said William. “If I were at Portsmouth I should be at it, perhaps.”

“But you do not wish yourself at Portsmouth, William?”

“No, Fanny, that I do not. I shall have enough of Portsmouth and of dancing too, when I cannot have you. And I do not know that there would be any good in going to the assembly, for I might not get a partner. The Portsmouth girls turn up their noses at anybody who has not a commission. One might as well be nothing as a midshipman. One is nothing, indeed. You remember the Gregorys; they are grown up amazing fine girls, but they will hardly speak to me, because Lucy is courted by a lieutenant.”’ (chapter 25).

In Chapter 39, Fanny’s reflections offer a pithy summary of her experiences: ‘In a review of the two houses, as they appeared to her before the end of a week, Fanny was tempted to apply to them Dr. Johnson's celebrated judgment as to matrimony and celibacy, and say, that though Mansfield Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures.’

Jane Austen (b. 16 Dec.1775, d. 18 July 1817) is now amongst the most famous of all British novelists, and achieved success during her lifetime. Four novels – Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815) – were published during her lifetime, while Northanger Abbey and Persuasion both appeared posthumously in 1818, while Lady Susan was published in 1871. Austen also wrote two unfinished works, Sanditon and The Watsons. Austen’s rising reputation began with renewed interest amongst Victorian readers and critics and has reached stellar heights in the twentieth century, leading to numerous TV and film adapations as well as a plethora of novels and fan fiction responding to or re-working Austen’s plots, characters, and themes. Her work has been particularly valuable to feminist readers and critics who value Austen’s often ironic, biting, and quietly satirical focus on gender relations, marriage, and family life in the Georgian period.

Austen was born and spent the first twenty-five years of her life in Steventon, Hants, where her father was the local vicar, and after his retirement they relocated to 4, Sydney Place, Bath. After his father’s death the Austen family lived for some time in Southampton, before moving to Chawton, Hampshire. Their home was near to Chawton House, and part of the estate of Austen’s brother Edward. During this period Jane frequently visited Portsmouth to see her other brothers, Francis and Charles, who were stationed with the Royal Navy in the city. Frank Austen entered the navy in 1786, his brother following five years later. Both went on to have illustrious naval careers. During this period Austen began a successful career as a novelist, initially finding favour amongst aristocratic readers, including the Prince Regent and gaining a much larger readership from Pride and Prejudice onwards. Early in 1816 Austen became unwell and died just over a year later of what is thought to be Addison’s Disease (although some claim that she was also suffering from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. She is buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Portsmouth is a significant location in Mansfield Park. It is the birthplace of the novel’s heroine, Fanny Price, while her brother William, like Austen’s brothers, works in the Royal Navy and is sometimes stationed in the city. It is from Portsmouth that Fanny relocates to Mansfield Park during childhood, living as a poor relative of her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram. When she refuses the marriage proposal of Henry Crawford Sir Thomas sends her back to Portsmouth, only for her to return when her suspicions of Crawford are proved correct. William Price, like Austen’s brothers, is in the navy and connected to Portsmouth. For the novel’s Portsmouth scenes, see chapters 1, 24–7, and 37–48. Although the novel depicts London as an unsalutary urban contrast to the rural Mansfield Park, Portsmouth is less unfavourably characterised: although poor and socially backward, the city is by its associations with Fanny during her period of resistance to her unfair treatment at the hands of the Bertrams a broadly positive location.

If you have any comments, corrections, or suggestions about the map entries please contact the Map Director Dr Mark Frost, English Literature Department, University of Portsmouth: mark.frost@port.ac.uk