Complete Map

Compared to other, more strictly realist, novels in our corpus the map for Mansfield Park is relatively easy to read. This is due to the novel’s simple spatial structure: place is seen through the eyes of the heroine, Fanny Price, and thus also limited by her restricted movement and horizon. These fields of action are also delimited, as seen in the clear segregation of space: Mansfield and its topoi populate the top half of the map, the Parsonage, Sotherton and Portsmouth the bottom. Likewise, the overall dominance of purple lines (full being 'direct', dotted 'indirect') around the places associated with Fanny suggests that the toporefs are self-referential or pragmatically connected.

Closer analysis displays the enlargement of Fanny’s (and therefore the narrative’s) horizons. In the 'little white attic' which Fanny first occupies at Mansfield, places are self-referential, suggesting its claustrophobia and subsequent introspection. The symbolism is rational and uncomplicated: thought occurs upstairs. The school-room, Fanny’s second space, brings a wider referential frame, expanding to include, for instance, Cumberland, Italy and China. This matches her widening horizon as she moves downstairs, and closer to the drawing room at Mansfield’s centre.

The journey from the idealism of nested Mansfield to realism of the encompassing world is marked by the indirect references to two real places – Newbury and Oxford. At Mansfield, very few toporefs concern Portsmouth (see the projected and impersonal Isle of Wight). Conversely, the Price’s house at Portsmouth is replete with references to Mansfield and its environs (see the subjective 'her uncle’s house', 'her aunt’s garden'). The Parsonage is the only place not explicitly linked to Fanny and is instead the site of rival heroine, Mary Crawford. Of all the key topoi, it also has the most orange lines – 'jump', 'interrupt', 'projection'. Much like at Mansfield, the connections here link people to place: the Crawfords are restless, gregarious and outward-looking.