Mansfield Park: Changes to the female protagonist in film

Patricia Rozema's film Mansfield Park is vastly different to its 19th Century literary counterpart, societal values expressed through the behaviour, speech and moral judgement of characters change over time and Rozema's film takes character's and re-invents them to be applicable to contemporary societal values and be engaging for a modern audience. The most obvious example is the changes made to the female protagonist of shy, frail, well mannered Fanny Price in Austen's novel to boisterous, …

…can easily be appreciated in modern eyes because they were indeed modern for their time, Fanny is very much a product of the age and the mindset of Austen at the time. Hence Rozema has effectively taken the old and transformed it to the new so that Austen's classic can be appreciated in cotemporary eyes. Bibliography Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park, Great Britain: Wordsworth Classics, 1992. Mansfield Park. DVD. Directed by Patricia Rozema. 1999; Great Britain: Roadshow entertainment.