Austen's most controversial heroine — quiet, physically frail, morally unyielding, and dependent on others for everything except her principles. Fanny has been called a prig, a doormat, and the conscience of the novel. She is all three. Raised as the inferior relation at Mansfield Park, she develops a moral perception sharpened by her marginal position: she sees what the comfortable cannot see because she cannot afford to look away. Her refusal of Henry Crawford is the novel's bravest act, performed from a position of total vulnerability.