Important Scenes on Patricia Rozema’s Movie "Mansfield Park"

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Review of Patricia Rozema’s film Mansfield Park
Among Jane Austen’s novels, Mansfield Park has proved to be the most controversial one since readers tend to disagree in their assessment of Fanny. By adapting the book to a film, Patricia Rozema finds herself in the midst of the debate. As Greenfield points out in her essay to which I am referring to besides the book and the film, she brings out a heroine who embarks on correcting the inadequacies that exist in the book by describing her as “an astute, moral observer who when compared with everyone else in her midst appears to be the superior reader of people and events” (Greenfield). Greenfield suggests that Fanny misreads herself in all ways. By describing her as a superior character contradicts her on opinions in a way. It will be difficult, in my view to review Rozema’s eccentric adaptation of Mansfield Park against Greenfield’s critique since she does not mention the film. However, since she only focuses on the play Lovers’ Vows, it somehow simplifies the analysis. A number of critics have argued that the major theme of Mansfield Park is slavery; very few have suggested that the novel is about sexuality. I intend to pursue Rozema’s Mansfield Park film not as an adaptation of Austen’s novel but as an independent work of art.
My analysis will consist of two separate but closely related scenes. First, I will prove that Rozema’s heroine is successful in carrying the major themes of the film. Secondly, I will demonstrate the Mansfield Park meets all the standards when judged from the film dimensions. In the perspective of many reviewers, Fanny is well known for her attitudes various societal issues such as gender, class and race. Rozema displays values which are important to the late twentieth century to her heroine from the nineteenth century. She does so because of her believe that those values will make her acceptable to the modern society than one who does not disapprove a sexist, and snob uncle who is also a slave owner.
Fanny is attacked from all dimensions and to save and preserve my argument about the character’s complexity, it is essential to understand how Rozema integrates humanism into her heroine who is struggling against the societal influences that devalues her based on her humble backgrounds and tries to compel her to conform the roles of women in patriarchy.
The first scene that I will consider is where Mary Crawford exudes so much sexuality towards Fanny both during the rehearsals for the play and after being rained on. Mary knew very well that Fanny was in love with Edmund and she had to do something to draw away her attention from Edmund. Therefore, I believe that Mary Crawford was trying to intimidate Fanny. Fanny is a representation of a virtuous and pure woman who has not ill motives from the lower class while Mary Crawford comes from a well-established family and as we can see from both the movie and...