In "Mansfield Park", Jane Austen explores the virtuous/vixen dichotomy through a variety of female characters, mainly Fanny Price, the protagonist, and Mary Crawford, the antagonist in the love triangle between Fanny, Edmund and Mary. "Mansfield Park" subverts the Cinderella story, in that Fanny, a poor young woman who is sent to live in a house where she is mistreated and ignored, has a companion in Edmund Bertram, who, unlike the Prince in Cinderella, falls …showed first 75 words of 402 total…

…showed last 75 words of 402 total…Attributes such as selfishness, coldness and falseness of character are given to the "vixen", while the "virtuous" one is gentle, shy, passive, and good at listening. Again we see the Victorian "Angel in the House" ideal through these characters. Mansfield Park ends with the virtuous woman being rewarded by marrying the man she loves, and the vixenish woman receives her just end by tiring of her fashionable friends and retiring to stay with an aunt.