{"id":27648,"date":"2025-08-20T12:42:29","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T11:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/?p=27648"},"modified":"2025-08-20T12:42:29","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T11:42:29","slug":"who-was-jane-austens-best-heroine-these-experts-think-they-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/arts-social-sciences\/who-was-jane-austens-best-heroine-these-experts-think-they-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Who was Jane Austen\u2019s best heroine? These experts think they know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>To mark the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen\u2019s birth, we\u2019re 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.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.riddle.com\/view\/r6gf6LB7\">Cast your vote in the poll<\/a>\u00a0at the end of the article, and let us know the reason for your choice in the comments. This is Jane Austen Fight Club \u2013 it\u2019s bonnets at dawn\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<h2>Fanny Price, Mansfield Park<\/h2>\n<p>Jane Austen\u2019s mother wrote off the heroine of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/uk.bookshop.org\/a\/15793\/9780099589280\">Mansfield Park<\/a>\u00a0as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/janeausten.ac.uk\/manuscripts\/blopinions\/2.html\">\u201cinsipid\u201d<\/a>, and she\u2019s been dismissed by countless readers since as mousy, unlovable and priggish, says <em>Emma Sweeney, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, The Open University<\/em>. Sure, Fanny Price has none of Emma Woodhouse\u2019s wit. She lacks Elizabeth Bennet\u2019s charm. And yet, I\u2019ve never rooted for any of Austen\u2019s heroines as much as I root for Fanny: the Cinderella figure, the frightened child, the poor relation.<\/p>\n<p>Fanny endures real cruelty and neglect. Her place in the Bertram household is genuinely precarious. Fanny cannot afford the jauntiness of life\u2019s Emmas and Elizabeths. Despite having been taught always to consider herself \u201cthe lowest and last\u201d, Fanny is the bravest and most subversive of all Austen\u2019s heroines. She resists intense pressure to marry a wealthy suitor and even dares to question her plantation-owning uncle about slavery.<\/p>\n<p>Fanny might have been deprived of a fire in her room, but she certainly has fire in her belly.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/who-was-jane-austens-best-heroine-these-experts-think-they-know-253085\">Read the full article on The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Picture credit: Leah Newhouse on Pexels<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To mark the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen\u2019s birth, we\u2019re 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.\u00a0Cast your vote in the poll\u00a0at the end of the article, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":27649,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[860,1525,1643],"class_list":["post-27648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-social-sciences","tag-faculty-of-fass","tag-news-home","tag-ou-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27650,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27648\/revisions\/27650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}