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“Why Lovers’ Vows in Mansfield Park?” Studies in English Language & Literature. 36.4(2010): 17-35. The plan for Lovers’ Vows, along with series of events related to it, is of profound significance in Mansfield Park. Firstly, it foreshadows more serious and acute struggles and crises impending by making Sir Thomas’s return such a dramatic one. It also reveals the true nature of the relationship between the patriarchal, authoritative father and the oppressed children in earnest. Thirdly, this episode implies the changes in modes and ideas of love and marriage, and even the change of female images outside Mansfield Park. Most importantly, it creates changes in the dynamics of relationships among characters, which consequently give Fanny a crucial chance to enter into the center of the life of Mansfield Park and to be a real heroine of the work. While many critics grant that Fanny’s moral virtue is tested and proved through this event of private theatricals and her superior moral strength ultimately restores and maintains the value of Mansfield Park, this paper reinterprets and reevaluates Fanny’s morality through the whole episode of Lovers’ Vows. Then it proves that rather than moral virtue, this episode emphasizes Fanny's intellectual, judgemental growth. It also contends that Lovers’ Vows is chosen intentionally to show Austen’s views of female identity and feminist conceptions; it portrays Fanny eventually defying the stereotypical heroines of conduct books and de-constructing Agtha’s passive attitude towards herself and submissive way of life. (Ulsan University)