The modest Fanny Price, eldest daughter of a large and improvident family, is brought up at Mansfield Park in the care of Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, and there becomes an indispensable part of the household. When Sir Bertram is away attending to business in the West Indies, his daughters Maria and Julia enjoy a high time with Henry and Mary Crawford and other friends. Maria, engaged to be married, flirts with Henry, while Mary turns the head of the upright Edmund Bertram. Fanny, herself in love with her cousin Edmund, is left cold by the theatricals about her; but the screw is turned tighter when Henry Crawford decides to go in pursuit of her.

The third of Jane Austen`s novel to be published in her lifetime, „Manfield Park”, which Tonny Tanner has described as „one of the most profound novels of the nineteenth century” moves in quieter registers, and to a sterner music, than the author`s other works.