Mary Crawford (Mansfield Park)
Mary Crawford is a major character in Jane Austen's 1814 novel, Mansfield Park. Mary is depicted as attractive, caring and charismatic. The reader is gradually shown, often through the eyes of Fanny Price, a hidden, darker side to Mary's personality. Her wit disguises her superficiality and her charisma disguises her self-centredness. Edmund Bertram, an earnest young man and destined for the clergy falls deeply in love with her. Only at the end of the novel does reality overcome his romantic fantasies and he leaves her with deep regret.
Mary Crawford plays the harp for Edmund Bertram (Brock, 1909)
Mansfield Park is the third published novel by the English author Jane Austen, first published in 1814 by Thomas Egerton. A second edition was published in 1816 by John Murray, still within Austen's lifetime. The novel did not receive any public reviews until 1821.
Title page of the first edition, 1814
The young Fanny and the "well meant condescensions of Sir Thomas Bertram" on her arrival at Mansfield Park. A 1903 edition
Fanny, led by Henry Crawford at her celebration ball
Perplexed Mr Rushworth contemplating the locked gate at the Sotherton ha-ha.