At the end of Austen's Mansfield Park, Sir Thomas Bertram finds that his personal happiness and his family's fortunes are embodied in a most unexpected person: the poor niece he fostered from her childhood, Fanny Price, who will marry his second son, Edmund, and so secure the family's future. With both of his blood daughters compromised, one by scandal and divorce, the other by a less than salubrious marriage, and his elder son weakened by a gambling habit and physical illness, Sir Thomas learns that “Fanny was indeed the daughter that he wanted”:

Fanny's domestic services to the family as constant companion to Lady Bertram and general household assistant will now be supplied by Fanny's sister Susan, who becomes “the stationary niece” and in a short time “could never be spared” by their aunt (546). With three Price nieces and nephews provided for (though William's commission can only indirectly be attributed to Sir Thomas), and one of them married to his second son, Sir Thomas finds happiness in “[Susan's] usefulness, in Fanny's excellence, in William's continued good conduct, and rising fame, and in the general well- doing and success of the other members of the family, all assisting to advance each other, and doing credit to his countenance and aid” (547).

We recognize here the outlines of a corporate household partially restored: despite the elder Ward sisters’ initial hostility and later inattention to their poorer sister, sibling ties reestablish themselves through the uncle- bymarriage's provision of material and, eventually, emotional care to his niece.