Mansfield Park Trivia

1. Who is the oldest of the three Ward sisters?

From Quiz "Mansfield Park" - the Basics

Answer: Mrs Norris

In the first chapter, the two younger sisters are referred to by their first names, Miss Maria (who became Lady Bertram) and Miss Frances (who married Mr Price). Mrs Norris is referred to as Miss Ward. This follows the contemporary convention of referring to the eldest (or elder) brother or sister by their surname, and the others by their first names. In the same way, during the party's journey to Sotherton, Maria is referred to as "Miss Bertram", as opposed to Julia, the younger sister, and elsewhere "Mr Bertram" is understood to refer to Tom, not the younger Edmund. Likewise, in "Pride and Prejudice", Miss Bennet would refer to Jane, Miss Elliot to Elizabeth (Anne's elder sister in "Persuasion") and Miss Dashwood to Elinor in "Sense and Sensibility". The end of the last-named novel in fact centres around this very convention. When the Dashwoods' manservant Thomas announces to them that "Mr Ferrars is married", he means the younger brother Robert. However, because he ignores the custom, Mrs Dashwood and her two daughters all assume that he means Edward, the elder, and Elinor's sweetheart. (If this needed confirming, he does so virtually in his next breath by saying that his new bride is Lucy Steele, the one to whom Elinor knows Edward secretly proposed in an idle moment some time ago, an engagement he is honour-bound to keep - thus illustrating another convention that only the lady can break the engagement.) This results in Elinor's question near the end of the book about the health and whereabouts of Mrs [Edward] Ferrars, and his confused reply concerning his mother, before the whole misunderstanding is so beautifully cleared up. Does this episode, however, raise the same question in your mind as it does in mine: that Jane Austen for once had to contrive an unlikely circumstance in order to make the plot work out the way she needed it to? Just how probable is it that the servant would not know, or would forget, this common convention? It would be the equivalent of someone today accidentally calling a "Miss" a "Mrs", or even of them not knowing the difference. I can't remember another instance of this convention being ignored anywhere else in Jane Austen's whole oeuvre.

From Quiz "Mansfield Park" Challenge

Answer: Northampton

A good two day journey from Fanny's hometown of Portsmouth.

From Quiz 'Mansfield Park' Memory Test

Answer: Mrs. Norris

Mrs. Norris was the initiator of the idea and she managed to convince both Mr. Bertram and Mrs. Bertram. At first, they expected childless Mrs. Norris to take Fanny herself, but Mrs. Norris came up with excuses and Fanny was placed with the Bertrams. However, it was Edmund who became Fanny's best friend in the house by talking with her about her fears and helping her to feel as comfortable as possible.

From Quiz RR's 'Mansfield Park' Quiz

Answer: Tom, Edmund, Maria, Julia

Tom, as the eldest brother, is slated to become the new Sir Thomas when the old one dies.

From Quiz Jane Austen's 'Mansfield Park'

Answer: 10

From Quiz Mansfield Park

Answer: Sisters

The three sisters had very different fortunes in marriage. While the middle sister made a brilliant match with the wealthy and titled Sir Thomas Bertram and became mistress of Mansfield Park, the elder was forced to settle for marrying Sir Thomas' clergyman Mr Norris and the younger was virtually disowned after falling in love with a marine lieutenant named Mr Price. Mrs Price eventually reconnected with her sisters when she wrote to beg them for assistance with the upbringing of her large family of children. Her sisters' solution was for her eldest daughter, Fanny, to be brought to live with her rich relations at Mansfield Park.

From Quiz "Mansfield Park" Challenge

Answer: Miss Maria Ward

The opening line of the book is; "About 30 years ago, Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a Baronet's Lady..."

From Quiz 'Mansfield Park' Memory Test

Answer: Her ignorance

They found out that she did not know history and could not speak French, and immediately drew a conclusion of her being dimwitted. However, Fanny showed herself to be diligent at studies and learned everything that was needed. As for myself, I was suprised that at the time girls were expected to know ancient history so fluently at the age of ten.

From Quiz RR's 'Mansfield Park' Quiz

Answer: She's the Bertrams' poor relation.

Fanny's mother is Lady Bertram's sister. The Prices are poor and have many mouths to feed, so the Bertrams take Fanny in.

From Quiz Jane Austen's 'Mansfield Park'

Answer: Henry Crawford's

She REJECTED him, unlike in the dreadful 'movie of the book' that is currently out.

From Quiz Mansfield Park

Answer: William

William is one year older than Fanny and the eldest of the Price children. When ten-year-old Fanny was uprooted from her family and sent to live at Mansfield Park, it was William that Fanny missed most as he had been her closest playmate and her "advocate with her mother" since he was very much the favourite child. He later went on to join the navy and gained the patronage of the Crawford family as a result of Henry Crawford's campaign to gain Fanny's love and respect. The rest of the Price children were John, Richard, Susan, Mary, Sam, Tom, Charles and Betsey. John, Richard and Sam all joined William in the navy before the end of the events of the novel; Susan eventually joined her sister at Mansfield; Tom and Charles were still at school, and little Betsey was the only daughter who her mother really paid any attention to and as a result was quite spoiled. Mary had died a few years after Fanny left home.

From Quiz "Mansfield Park" - the Basics

Answer: The White House

She takes this house because it is "the smallest habitation which could rank as genteel among the buildings of Mansfield parish", specifically in order to avoid being asked to take Fanny once the Bertrams have finished doing their stint at looking after her - which is what they think the arrangement was, as originally suggested by the odious Mrs Norris, who is expert at getting other people to do the right thing and is equally efficient at getting out of the same obligation herself. Wadda prize cow!

From Quiz "Mansfield Park" Challenge

Answer: Antigua

He was gone for almost two years and his household became very relaxed in his absence.

From Quiz 'Mansfield Park' Memory Test

Answer: They waited for Mr. Bertram to return from Antigua

Even after the return, it took some time for the actual wedding to occur, so in a whole they were engaged quite a long time. Mr. Rushworth was, however, a very foolish man and Maria did not really love him, but rather decided to marry him for stability and money.

From Quiz RR's 'Mansfield Park' Quiz

Answer: Fanny Price

Fanny thinks Henry's just toying with her, but he's actually in love.

From Quiz Jane Austen's 'Mansfield Park'

Answer: Anhalt

Much to Fanny's displeasure.

From Quiz Mansfield Park

Answer: Pug

Lady Bertram was very attached to her pet pug and its welfare was her first concern after it was decided that her niece Fanny Price would be brought to live at Mansfield Park: "'I hope she will not tease my poor pug,' said Lady Bertram; 'I have but just got Julia [her youngest daughter] to leave it alone.'" Throughout the novel Jane Austen often referenced the pug when mentioning Lady Bertram, it was regularly described as sitting alongside her on the sofa or being held in her arms. When she believed that Fanny would be marrying Henry Crawford, her first thought for a potential wedding gift was to let have Fanny have one of her precious pug's puppies!

From Quiz "Mansfield Park" - the Basics

Answer: James

His mother identifies him thus during the party's visit to Sotherton. The first names of several of Jane Austen's characters remain elusive. To me, the most delightful evasion is Mr Knightley, whom Emma says she will only call once by his first name, George, on their wedding day.

From Quiz "Mansfield Park" Challenge

Answer: Miss Lee

Fanny had the benefit of a teacher that she never would have had in Portsmouth. When Miss Lee left, Fanny got the use of her room.

From Quiz 'Mansfield Park' Memory Test

Answer: Fanny

It was the idea of Mr. Yates to have a small theater in Mansfield Park. Even though Edmund was initially against the idea because it did not seem proper to him, he eventually had to give in and took part in the play. Another person who did not participate was Julia Bertram, but that was not for lack of desire, but because the part she wanted was given to Mary Crawford by Tom. The young people called their theater 'The Theater'.

From Quiz RR's 'Mansfield Park' Quiz

Answer: Both are spoilt and vain, but Julia is a little less so.

Both sisters are pretty and self-centered, but Julia, the younger sister, is a shade nicer.

From Quiz Jane Austen's 'Mansfield Park'

Answer: Henry Crawford

But she would rather it had been Edmund

From Quiz Mansfield Park

Answer: Half-brother and half-sister

Following the death of Mr Norris, the new incumbents of the Mansfield parsonage were a Dr Grant and his wife. The couple had no children, but her younger half-siblings Henry and Mary Crawford came to stay with them. The pair had been brought up by their father's immoral brother, Admiral Crawford, and the death of the admiral's wife led Mary to seek a new home. Henry and Mary spent a lot of time with the younger members of the Bertram family. Henry flirted with both Maria and Julia Bertram before deciding to propose to Fanny instead, while Mary fell in love with Edmund despite the upbringing that educated her to believe she should target his richer, older brother instead.

From Quiz "Mansfield Park" - the Basics

Answer: prison

Mr Rushworth is evidently a man of impulse. His recent mania for improvement will no doubt be supplanted by an even more recent passion for something else - acting, maybe? Improvements to properties were all the rage in the century leading up to Jane Austen's time. In the early eighteenth century, the taste for formal, symmetrical Baroque gardens began to be replaced by a desire for something felt to be more natural. Charles Bridgeman (d.1738) (inventor of among other things the ha-ha, or sunken fence, referred to in "Mansfield Park") and William Kent (d.1748) developed this trend, which culminated in the work of Lancelot "Capability" Brown (d.1783). He swept away what he saw as the artificial designs of the seventeenth century and replaced them with "nature perfected", something that looked as if it had always been there without human intervention, although the effect was as carefully planned as that of any formal garden. His "improvements" were certainly controversial. Some contemporaries marvelled at his achievements, while others wondered (given that the result was supposed to look quite "natural") why he just didn't leave things as they were, or even decried the destruction of the great gardens and their replacement with "mere" lawns. Yet others, advocates of the "picturesque" style, criticised his "bland", "unnatural" curves and demanded more in the way of rugged character. This paralleled the contemporary growth of interest in wild landscapes. Humphry Repton (d.1818) was Brown's successor, and reintroduced some of the formal features discarded by Brown. In particular, he separated the house from the garden by such devices as terraces and flower gardens. One thing that both would have frowned on would have been avenues of trees, which they would have considered as being too "artificial" (in the modern sense of "contrived", as opposed to the 18th-century one of "well-constructed"). It is for such an avenue at Sotherton that Fanny mourns when it is threatened by the "improver's" axe. In particular, Repton advocated chopping holes in the middles of avenues of trees in order to reveal the vistas beyond. Mr Rushworth certainly thinks that Repton would have the avenue down in order to open up the view.

From Quiz "Mansfield Park" Challenge

Answer: Cottager's Wife

Mrs. Grant took the role that Fanny would not.

From Quiz RR's 'Mansfield Park' Quiz

Answer: Mrs. N likes to be in charge of projects.

Mrs. Norris is extremely officious--but she doesn't like Fanny at all.

From Quiz Jane Austen's 'Mansfield Park'

Answer: The Harp

From Quiz Mansfield Park

Answer: Clergyman

Edmund Bertram attended Eton before going up to Oxford University to study to take orders and become a clergyman. He already had a head start in this career as his father was holding two livings for him - the parishes of Mansfield (which had been held by Mrs Norris' husband) and Thornton Lacey (a village around eight miles away). However, things didn't entirely go to plan. Firstly, Sir Thomas was forced to give the living of Mansfield to Dr Grant to pay for his eldest son's extravagant lifestyle and secondly, Edmund's love interest, Mary Crawford, turned out to be extremely reluctant to marry a clergyman.

From Quiz "Mansfield Park" - the Basics

Answer: During the reign of James II

The house was originally built during Elizabeth's time, the chapel only being added later. Fanny is disenchanted by the plain and modern look of the chapel, and within its sacred precincts Mary lampoons the profession of clergyman - before discovering that her beloved Edmund is destined for that very profession. Oops!

From Quiz "Mansfield Park" Challenge

Answer: Reynolds

Wilcox was the coachman, Baddeley was the Butler, and Chapman was Lady Bertram's maid. Mrs. Reynolds was the housekeeper at Pemberley.

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