Copy Book Archive

Fanny Comes Home Fanny Price, eight years after being adopted by her wealthy uncle and aunt, has gone back home for the first time, full of anticipation.
1814
Music: Muzio Clementi

© Colin Smith, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0. Source

About this picture …

Home, sweet home... Old Palace Lane in Richmond, London, dating from 1810 - just around the time Jane Austen was writing ‘Mansfield Park’.

Fanny Comes Home
At ten years of age, Fanny Price was taken by her wealthy uncle and aunt to live in Mansfield Park, a country house. Now eighteen, she has gone back home to Portsmouth for the first time, eager to meet her own family once more. They, however, do not seem quite as eager to meet her.
By Jane Austen (1775-1817)

FANNY was almost stunned. The smallness of the house and thinness of the walls brought everything so close to her, that, added to the fatigue of her journey, and all her recent agitation, she hardly knew how to bear it.

Within the room all was tranquil enough, for Susan having disappeared with the others, there were soon only her father and herself remaining; and he, taking out a newspaper, the accustomary loan of a neighbour, applied himself to studying it, without seeming to recollect her existence.

The solitary candle was held between himself and the paper, without any reference to her possible convenience; but she had nothing to do, and was glad to have the light screened from her aching head, as she sat in bewildered, broken, sorrowful contemplation.

Précis

Fanny returned home a young woman to the house and family she had left as a child eight years before, but instead of being the centre of attention she was mortifyingly neglected. Nonetheless, she was soon glad of the peace and quiet in which to nurse her aching head, and her disappointment. (52 / 60 words)

Source

From ‘Mansfield Park’, by Jane Austen.

Suggested Music

Sonata in G minor Op. 50 n. 3 ‘Didone abbandonata’

2: Adagio dolente; 3: Allegro agitato e con disperazione

Muzio Clementi (1752-1832)

Played by Pietro Spada.

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