Mansfield Park

As a poor cousin sent to live amongst her more privileged relations, Fanny Price is a fairly meek and boring leading character, as far as Jane Austen books go. She's content to be a wallflower, and her poor self-esteem isn't helped by comments from her aunts like “remember, wherever you are, you must be the lowest and the last”. Yikes.

Even the dude she is pining for says “she is the only woman in the world whom I could ever think of as a wife” - and he's not talking about her! Ouch.

The romance all gets summarised in a “at some point in the future, this and this happens” which is fairly unsatisfying as an ending.