Mansfield Park - Jane Austen

Written by Jane Austen
Read by Wanda McCaddon
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Length: 14 hours and 30 mins
Release Date:03-04-200
Publisher: Tantor Audio

From its sharply satiric opening sentence, Mansfield Park deals with money, marriage, and how strongly they affect each other.

Shy, fragile Fanny Price one of a dozen children is the consummate “poor relation”. Born into a family that can ill afford so many she is sent to live with her wealthy uncle Thomas, she clashes with his spoiled, selfish daughters and falls in love with his son. Their lives are further complicated by the arrival of a pair of witty, sophisticated Londoners, whose flair for flirtation collides with the quiet, conservative country ways of Mansfield Park.

Written several years after the early manuscripts that eventually became Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park retains Jane Austen’s familiar compassion and humor but offers a far more complex exploration of moral choices and their emotional consequences.

Wanda McCaddon is the ideal choice to present this classic. Her impeccable elocution fits Austen’s persnickety style. McCaddon gives a soft, sweet cadence to Fanny’s thoughts and words while conveying all the author’s derision toward the story’s shallow characters. Both story and performance deliver a nineteenth-century “tell-all” just as impossible to resist as the tabloids in the checkout line.