British Social Class in Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Mansfield Park is a complete socially oriented novel. In this novel Jane Austen closely describe the everyday life of rural middle class society, its gaieties and hardships, describing a distinct system of moral and social principles influencing people’s lives in that period, women status in the system and female life expectations. In the novel Austen shows the efforts of some trying to break the predetermined limitations in order to improve their social class and rank. Austen pointed out the social threats that might ruin the women’s lives permanently (Johnson, Jane Austen: women, politics, and the novel / Claudia L. Johnson 1988). Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park is a classic text. The text almost absolutory concentrated on a small section of society including, the upper middle class of rural England, to which Jane Austen was belonged to Jane Austen’s writing demonstrate beliefs, values and represent an ideology that accentuate devoting principles along with economic and social power, with little citation to the miseries of the working class.
The life of the British society influenced by three important revolutions that took place in the 18th and 19th century and as the result of these revolutions Georgian Britain had to face great social, cultural and political changes (Murphy 1968). In the cultural field these developments led to Romantic Movement, highlighting human emotions and feelings which appeared as a response to the affirm knowledge, age of reasons and realistic explanation.

However, in Mansfield Park except a slight quotation to slavery Jane Austen paid nearly no attention to political movements of the time. Jane Austen novels purely focused on the representing everyday life of middle class society living in the...

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...e he wrote about them in his novel Mansfield Park. The issue of social class is mostly represented in the Mansfield Parks. According to the McDowall, during the 18th century as the result of political change the middle class society enhanced its economic strength and started to merge more comfortably with the members of aristocracy and upper class. Though, regardless of upper and middle class being so near to each other as compare to the past relations, specific differences were still taken into review. The social ranking was based on the family background, mainly fortune, connections and reputation. The role of money in Jane Austen novel can be understand from the Woolf statement: “The social standards are almost entirely those of money and snobbery; it is remarkable to what an extent the plots and characters are dominated by questions of money” (Woolf, 1970, 51).