Fanny Price - Enigma?

[cgdtaylor]

I have just finished Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and still find the character of Fanny Price a bit enigmatic. Can anyone define her in a few words?

[kev67]

I have just been reading Volume 2 Chapter 12, in which Fanny is described as being beautiful, modest, caring, loving, docile, etc. I was thinking Charles Dickens gets kicked around the park for writing heroines like that. Charlotte Brontë criticized Dickens for Esther Summerson in Bleak House, saying she was too angelic to be true, when she's not nearly so nice. I did think Fanny Price was the sort of woman who would be a very good mother. I was a bit surprised about her level of affection for her brother William. I can't say I was as loving to my own brother; I used to bully him most the time.