" Jane Austen fans will hate me for this, and I understand, but I hated and loved this book. I loved the compassion the author has for her characters. She appreciates and likes everyone. Maria, Mary, Henry, even Mr. Yates. And i love that about her. She writes with such compassion and understanding. I also am impressed with the way the author can show men and women fall in love with people who are not right for them and be completely blind to what all of their friends and family see. But what i cannot forgive, no matter how i look at it, is Fanny Price. If there is a literary hell in the afterlife where authors are sent for completely misrepresenting their characters, and where no doubt Anna Karenina is shooting a hunting rifle at a cowering Tolstoy, Fanny and Jane are fighting and Fanny is choking Jane out. Despite being unfailingly polite, understanding, empathetic and loving, she is perhaps the most unlikeable character in all of literature, with the exception of the straight villains like Richard III and Iago. Fanny seems to have lost her way in a medieval mystery play and wound up in early nineteenth century England. She is cipher, a figure, meant to decode the way the ruling ideology should decide her fate. I hated her for her willing submission, for her unfailing loyalty to the people who so thoroughly downtrod her and tried to destroy whatever minimal self esteem she may have salvaged. When i read 19th century novels i like to update them in my imagination. A member of my book club said it best: Fanny would be strung out on prozac or some other anti depressant, probably a chain smoker, and hating her wealthy, meanspirited family. "
— Carmen, 2/4/2014