ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Austen's portrayal of notably reserved characters, understood as recoiling from the threat to integrity involved in self-performance. The key figures discussed are Jane Fairfax (in Emma), Elinor Dashwood as contrasted to Marianne (Sense and Sensibility) and above all Fanny Price, the protagonist of Mansfield Park whom many readers have found intensely problematic. If Fanny is hard to love, this arises not from some failing in the novel but from the gap which Austen here presents between the need for a vigilant self-possession and the risking of the self with and on another person - a gap which corresponds to the distinction between essentialist and relational views of character. In a new reading of Mansfield Park, Fanny's refusal to close this gap ('I cannot act') is seen as immensely consequential in effecting the outcome of the story - but the price paid is that love conspicuously fails to take place.
