The role of women in the society during the early Nineteenth century and the opposition of Jane Austen to the role of women in Mansfield Park

Jane Austen is a writer focusing on the social problems of her era. She lived in the late-eighteenth century and the early-nineteenth century. There were some social points which she strongly opposed in her period. In her novel Mansfield Park, Jane Austen mainly opposed the social roles of women in the early-nineteenth century. In this century, it was not easy for women to take part in social life. Education and business life were terms far away for women. A woman who wanted to take a good education had to face with many struggles. However, Jane Austen mainly focused on this fact in her novel,using her character Fanny Price in order to show how women could be successful in social life. The aim of the present study is to demonstrate that Jane Austen uses Fanny in Mansfield Park in order to teach her society how women can become an active person in the society. Through examining Mansfield Park from this perspective, it is seen that Jane Austen made great effort to show that women could have a good education and have a good place in the society. Throughout Mansfield Park, Jane Austen shows her readers the human relationships especially within middle and upper-classes in the society. By creating Fanny in her novel, she wants to show women's strength and abilities and while doing it, Jane Austen uses a realist point of view in Mansfield Park .