Who was Jane Austen’s best heroine? These experts think they know

Posted on 20 August 2025 • Arts and social sciences

To mark the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, we’re pitting her much-loved heroines against each other in a battle of wit, charm and sass. Seven leading Austen experts have made their case for her ultimate heroine, but the winner is down to you. Cast your vote in the poll at the end of the article, and let us know the reason for your choice in the comments. This is Jane Austen Fight Club – it’s bonnets at dawn…

Fanny Price, Mansfield Park

Jane Austen’s mother wrote off the heroine of Mansfield Park as “insipid”, and she’s been dismissed by countless readers since as mousy, unlovable and priggish, says Emma Sweeney, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, The Open University. Sure, Fanny Price has none of Emma Woodhouse’s wit. She lacks Elizabeth Bennet’s charm. And yet, I’ve never rooted for any of Austen’s heroines as much as I root for Fanny: the Cinderella figure, the frightened child, the poor relation.

Fanny endures real cruelty and neglect. Her place in the Bertram household is genuinely precarious. Fanny cannot afford the jauntiness of life’s Emmas and Elizabeths. Despite having been taught always to consider herself “the lowest and last”, Fanny is the bravest and most subversive of all Austen’s heroines. She resists intense pressure to marry a wealthy suitor and even dares to question her plantation-owning uncle about slavery.

Fanny might have been deprived of a fire in her room, but she certainly has fire in her belly.

Read the full article on The Conversation

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