Improvement and cure are frequently on the minds of the characters in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. However, what happens when you introduce a chronically ill character like Fanny, who can’t ever be fully cured, into these curative plots? In order to better understand the ways Austen complicates curative discourse, this paper focuses on Fanny’s own perspective and embodied experience of chronic illness, in which she fatigues easily and experiences headaches and pain. Despite clear evidence in the novel of Fanny’s ill health, scholarship analyzing Fanny’s character has historically been fraught with ableist assumptions and subjective opinions. Ignoring the way Fanny’s perspective and the plot arc of the novel hinge on her ill health in favor of exclusively categorizing her as unappealing and lacking is a disservice to Fanny, Austen’s writing, and to the disabled community. This paper attends to Fanny as a distinctly disabled subject and analyzes how her ill health shapes her perspective and gives her a different sort of agency than the one typically expected of able-bodied characters, but that is agency nonetheless. Austen’s depiction of Fanny’s ill health also signals to later nineteenth-century invalid life writing that uses similar language, placing her work in a longer medical history.
","abstract_html":"<p>Improvement and cure are frequently on the minds of the characters in Jane Austen’s <em>Mansfield Park</em>. However, what happens when you introduce a chronically ill character like Fanny, who can’t ever be fully cured, into these curative plots? In order to better understand the ways Austen complicates curative discourse, this paper focuses on Fanny’s own perspective and embodied experience of chronic illness, in which she fatigues easily and experiences headaches and pain. Despite clear evidence in the novel of Fanny’s ill health, scholarship analyzing Fanny’s character has historically been fraught with ableist assumptions and subjective opinions. Ignoring the way Fanny’s perspective and the plot arc of the novel hinge on her ill health in favor of exclusively categorizing her as unappealing and lacking is a disservice to Fanny, Austen’s writing, and to the disabled community. This paper attends to Fanny as a distinctly disabled subject and analyzes how her ill health shapes her perspective and gives her a different sort of agency than the one typically expected of able-bodied characters, but that is agency nonetheless. Austen’s depiction of Fanny’s ill health also signals to later nineteenth-century invalid life writing that uses similar language, placing her work in a longer medical history. </p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Soriano, Aurora C"],"institution":null,"degree_name":"Master of Arts (M.A.)","degree_level":"Thesis","degree_discipline":"English","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Daniel Gustafson","Andras Kisery"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2023,"date_issued":"2023-01-01T08:00:00Z","date_published":"2023-01-01T08:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T01:57:59Z","subjects":["Jane Austen","chronic illness","disability studies","nineteenth century studies","ethics of care","Literature in English, British Isles"],"languages":[],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/1081","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Daniel Gustafson","Andras Kisery"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Soriano, Aurora C"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2023-05-07T07:00:00Z"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["English"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Master of Arts (M.A.)"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Jane Austen","chronic illness","disability studies","nineteenth century studies","ethics of care","Literature in English, British Isles"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/1081"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["Improvement and cure are frequently on the minds of the characters in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. However, what happens when you introduce a chronically ill character like Fanny, who can’t ever be fully cured, into these curative plots? In order to better understand the ways Austen complicates curative discourse, this paper focuses on Fanny’s own perspective and embodied experience of chronic illness, in which she fatigues easily and experiences headaches and pain. Despite clear evidence in the novel of Fanny’s ill health, scholarship analyzing Fanny’s character has historically been fraught with ableist assumptions and subjective opinions. Ignoring the way Fanny’s perspective and the plot arc of the novel hinge on her ill health in favor of exclusively categorizing her as unappealing and lacking is a disservice to Fanny, Austen’s writing, and to the disabled community. This paper attends to Fanny as a distinctly disabled subject and analyzes how her ill health shapes her perspective and gives her a different sort of agency than the one typically expected of able-bodied characters, but that is agency nonetheless. Austen’s depiction of Fanny’s ill health also signals to later nineteenth-century invalid life writing that uses similar language, placing her work in a longer medical history.
"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["The Incurable Fanny Price: Disabled Perspective and Resistance to the Cure Narrative in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Daniel Gustafson","Andras Kisery"],"dc:creator":["Soriano, Aurora C"],"dc:date.available":["2023-05-07T07:00:00Z"],"dc:description.abstract":["Improvement and cure are frequently on the minds of the characters in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. However, what happens when you introduce a chronically ill character like Fanny, who can’t ever be fully cured, into these curative plots? In order to better understand the ways Austen complicates curative discourse, this paper focuses on Fanny’s own perspective and embodied experience of chronic illness, in which she fatigues easily and experiences headaches and pain. Despite clear evidence in the novel of Fanny’s ill health, scholarship analyzing Fanny’s character has historically been fraught with ableist assumptions and subjective opinions. Ignoring the way Fanny’s perspective and the plot arc of the novel hinge on her ill health in favor of exclusively categorizing her as unappealing and lacking is a disservice to Fanny, Austen’s writing, and to the disabled community. This paper attends to Fanny as a distinctly disabled subject and analyzes how her ill health shapes her perspective and gives her a different sort of agency than the one typically expected of able-bodied characters, but that is agency nonetheless. Austen’s depiction of Fanny’s ill health also signals to later nineteenth-century invalid life writing that uses similar language, placing her work in a longer medical history.
"],"dc:identifier":["https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/1081"],"dc:subject":["Jane Austen","chronic illness","disability studies","nineteenth century studies","ethics of care","Literature in English, British Isles"],"dc:title":["The Incurable Fanny Price: Disabled Perspective and Resistance to the Cure Narrative in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["English"],"thesis:degree_level":["Thesis"],"thesis:degree_name":["Master of Arts (M.A.)"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T01:57:59Z"}