Syuzhet Map

Mansfield Park itself is clearly located in the middle of graph – and, unsurprisingly, the plot centres around it. Around Mansfield, there are three key sites: Sotherton, the Parsonage and the Prices’ house. The way that each location is then split into smaller units – particularly Mansfield, which dominates the whole of the right-hand side of the map – attests to the narrative’s structure. The novel is made up of self-contained scenes in self-contained settings. The petal-like loops, beginning and ending at Mansfield, represent the journeys out and back: locally to the Parsonage, further to Sotherton, and further still to Portsmouth. The purple edges (lines) that mark these journeys show how the story is told chronologically. Narrative structure and omissive technique are also disclosed by what is missing: because the story centres on Fanny, some of the places in the novel where events integral to the plot occur (e.g. London) are absent from the map.