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Jane Austen and the reconsigned child: the true identity of Fanny Price. (Miscellany).(Mansfield Park)

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From: Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal
Date: 20010101
Author:Souter, Kay Torney

JANE AUSTEN IS THE ARTIST of the settled village and meticulously delineated family relations, but in this paper, I consider some of the ways that her novels represent and work through the ancient literary theme of child-stealing, an area of concern that seems the antithesis of these things. The association of Jane Austen and the representation of the stolen child is no mere act of scholarly eccentricity on my part. Child-stealing is an extremely common phenomenon, but seldom named as the ugly thing it is; instead, it is often disguised as something unavoidable and benign, if not ...

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