Mansfield Park: Starring Hannah Gordon & Cast (BBC Classic Collection)
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Customer Reviews | Author: Jane Austen, Elizabeth Pound
List Price: £10.76
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Product Details:  Audio Cassette
Release Date: May 1997
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks Ltd
ISBN: 0563381132
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Sales Rank: 346053 | | Look for similar books by subject: | | Customers who bought this item also bought: | | Customer Reviews: Not the most exciting but worth a listen... (24 August 2008)
Mansfield park is definitely not Austen's most thrilling novel and this is not a particularly flamboyant adaptation but there is something relaxing and very charming about this radio adaptation. It makes the story very accessable and you can't help but like the endlessly hard done by herione Fanny Price. If you're looking for easy, relaxing and less known Austen this is for you. If you're looking for high drama or a lot of romance, in my opinion, this isn't for you.
An Enjoyable Listen, But A Deeply Flawed Adaptation (11 September 2000)
Mansfield Park is my favourite Jane Austen novel, and while I found this Radio 4 dramatisation to be an enjoyable way to pass the time, it is deeply flawed in that it misses out the very soul of the novel. In Mansfield Park, Jane Austen had the genius to write a gripping, atmospheric novel in which almost nothing happens, the main character is an inanimate object of bricks and mortar, and the main human character is only slightly more active. Every now & then something threatens to happen but this disaster is usually prevented, and the status quo lives to fight another day. Right at the end there is a brief burst of activity, but the protagonists of this either meet satisfyingly sticky ends or are redeemed by their awakening to their role as servants to tradition. The true hero of the story, which is the estate of Mansfield Park, lives happily ever after in a soft hush of people doing their duty by social and property values. I salute Austen for this work of genius and I would adore to hear a serious dramatisation of it. This, sadly, is not it, though it is good fun. What the scriptwriter seems to have done is to edit out all the parts where nothing is happening (at least 9/10ths of the book) and what we are left with is a sprightly Pride And Prejudice style satirical romp.
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