Jane Austen transposes Giandison into a more serious key in Mansfield Park. In Sense and Sensibility she had sometimes assimilated Richardson's work, sometimes not; in Pride and Prejudice she had questioned it, broken it up, redistributed it, and made it her own. Now, when for a third time she turns to Grandison, it seems part of her own self. I shall show how her re-creating mind modifies Richardson's marriage plot and its participating characters, and once the connection is established, speculate more freely on four matters vital to both.

‘And the Women but barely swim’

Fanny Price like Harriet Byron is ‘adopted’ into a Northamptonshire family, a compliment to Richardson with which Jane Austen persisted even though it meant dispensing with the useful dramatic device of hedgerows. Each heroine thus acquires two ‘sisters’, and a ‘brother’ with whom they rapidly and unilaterally fall in love. Both spend most of their books watching their men become bound to rivals, until the wonderful catastrophes arranged for them by the authors. Clementina della Porretta's sacrifice returns Sir Charles to Harriet, while Mary Crawford's mockery of Edmund Bertram allows him to appreciate Fanny.

Richardson's second heroine supplies further details for Fanny's story, for she too must hear proposals from a man agreeable only to others. The families appeal to grateful duty, persuading their daughters to marry where they cannot love. Sir Thomas Bertram like the Porretta family finally recommends ‘no farther attempts to influence or persuade’, leaving the event to Henry Crawford's ‘assiduities’ (356).