Synopsis

Sent from her impoverished family to live with wealthy relatives at Mansfield Park, Fanny Price grows up as an outsider in an elegant but morally compromised household. Her intelligence and imagination set her apart as romances, social ambitions, and family secrets unfold around her. As the estate's connections to slavery become impossible to ignore, Fanny must find the courage to resist the values of those who control her future.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film is based not only on Jane Austen's novel, but also on her letters, journals, and teenage writings. This approach accounts for many of its significant departures from the book.

• Several pieces written by Fanny are drawn from Austen's juvenilia, including material from The History of England.

• Patricia Rozema's adaptation makes the Bertram family's involvement in slavery and the Antigua plantations far more explicit than Austen's novel does. The film uses the subject to connect the household's wealth with the moral issues surrounding its way of life.

• Most of the production was filmed at Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire, which represents Mansfield Park. Charlestown in Cornwall doubles for Portsmouth, while Eton College supplied the library setting.

• The glass armonica played by Maria and Julia was invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761.

• Hannah Taylor Gordon, who plays the young Fanny, and Talya Gordon, who plays the young Susan, are sisters in real life.

• Jonny Lee Miller had already appeared in the 1983 BBC adaptation of Mansfield Park, playing Fanny's younger brother Charles Price. In the 1999 film, he plays Edmund Bertram.