As I finished reading Mandfield Park last night (to myself, not aloud), I have one final observation, before happily returning to the year 2008. Fanny is a delightful character. While, sometimes you want her to grow up a little and get a harder skin, she is amazingly gentle and thinks nothing of herself. Our main problem in life isn't that we think too poorly of ourselves, but that we think too much of ourselves. Infact, that's pretty much what Bro. Buddy preached on a few weeks ago. Reading of how Fanny never thinks enough of herself to be offended reminds me of a verse, Philippians 2:3, "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves."

(This is found in Chapter 2, or Volume I, Chapter II)
Fanny, with all her faults of ignorance and timidity, was fixed at Mansfield Park, and learning to transfer in its favour much of her attachment to her former home, grew up there not unhappily among her cousins. There was no positive ill–nature in Maria or Julia; and though Fanny was often mortified by their treatment of her, she thought too lowly of her own claims to feel injured by it.

(This is found in Chapter 28 or Volume II, Chapter X)
She had hoped to have William all to herself the last morning. It would have been an unspeakable indulgence. But though her wishes were overthrown, there was no spirit of murmuring within her. On the contrary, she was so totally unused to have her pleasure consulted, or to have anything take place at all in the way she could desire, that she was more disposed to wonder and rejoice in having carried her point so far, than to repine at the counteraction which followed.