Lona Manning's blog

CMP#39 Symbolism in Mansfield Park?

4/18/2021

Clutching My Pearls is about Jane Austen and the times she lived in. Click here for the first in the series.

Disclaimer: To repeat something I mentioned at the beginning of this series of posts about Mansfield Park, "When I say I disagree that Mansfield Park is an anti-slavery novel, it does not mean I want to shut my eyes and ears and read my dear sweet Jane without troubling my conscience about the ugly underbelly of Regency England." I read Mansfield Park for its literary merit. I read about slavery in books that are actually about slavery.

Symbolism in Mansfield Park: Is the Novel Named after Lord Mansfield?

Most any discussion or presentation about Mansfield Park includes a mention of how the title is a shrewd allusion to Lord Mansfield:

"One of the first historicizations of Mansfield Park was Margaret Kirkham’s suggestion in 1983 that the name of the house, and village, was an allusion to the famous judge, Lord Mansfield."
"Rightly, some of these readings connect Mansfield Park to the important slave trial after which Austen named it: the 1772 case of Somerset against Stewart, heard in the King’s Bench before Lord Mansfield, which freed the enslaved black man, James Somerset,from his master, Charles Stewart."
Significantly, Lord Mansfield, the noted eighteenth-century jurist whose name is invoked by the title of Austen's novel, did more than lend his name to an important legal case on slavery..."
"She points out that the title of the novel alludes to Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, who stipulated in 1772 that slaves could not be forced to return from Britain to the Caribbean."
“Emancipation is the theme closest to the heart of Mansfield Park, and as might be expected from a title that enshrines the name of the judge who pronounced that there could be no slave on British soil, the novel examines domestic forms of subjection against the distant backdrop of the international trade.”

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CMP#38 Amelioration

4/14/2021

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Clutching My Pearls is my ongoing blog series about my take on Jane Austen’s beliefs and ideas, as based on her novels. Folks today who love Jane Austen are eager to acquit her of being a woman of the long 18th century. Further, for some people, reinventing Jane Austen appears to be part of a larger effort to jettison and disavow the past. Click here for the first in the series.

CMP#38 Amelioration: What Fanny asked and Sir Thomas answered

As discussed in my previous post, Sir Thomas Bertram was an educated man, and a member of Parliament. He would have been thoroughly familiar with the slavery debate as it played out in Parliament and the press in the decades leading up to the evening that Fanny Price asked her question about the slave trade, a question he answers. (Previous posts about this passage here and here).  He would have known the many arguments pro and con. He was also almost certainly a slaveowner.
We know that Fanny showed interest and pleasure in his answer to her question. So what could that question have been, and what was the answer?
   I think scholar George Boulukos gives a plausible answer: the question had to do with amelioration.
"Amelioration" means improving the living and working conditions of enslaved persons. Examples of benevolence include: not separating families, giving them their own little plots of land to cultivate in their spare hours, and converting them to Christianity.

Disclaimer: My motive in this post is to explain, not to excuse.
I am sharing what I have learned about the slavery debate.
However -- and it must be the contrarian in me -- I don't feel compelled to assure anyone that the views of 18th-century abolitionists are not nearly so enlightened as my own.

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CMP#37 Reading into the Silence

4/11/2021

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Clutching My Pearls is my ongoing blog series about my take on Jane Austen’s beliefs and ideas, as based on her novels. Many modern Austen fans are eager to acquit her of being a woman of the long 18th century. Further, for some people, reinventing Jane Austen appears to be part of a larger effort to jettison and disavow the past. Click here for the first in the series.

Why bring the slave trade into the novel at all? And then why, having done so, leave the topic hanging without resolution?
-- Tom Keymer, Jane Austen: Writing, Society, Politics (2020)

CMP#37 Reading into the Silence: The Trip to Antigua

A West Indian planter

In the previous post, we reviewed the “dead silence” passage in Mansfield Park, discussed the conversation it described, and listed numerous examples from scholars and writers who have described the conversation incorrectly.
Whether the critics (correctly) refer to the “dead silence” that falls after Fanny asks a question about the slave trade and her uncle replies, or whether they incorrectly relate that Fanny asked a question which her uncle didn’t answer, the conclusions vary wildly. The “dead silence” passage is used to prove that Austen didn’t care about slavery, or didn’t care enough about slavery, or cared passionately about slavery.
Today, we are more apt to read analyses of Mansfield Park which claim that far from ignoring slavery, the book is entirely about slavery, colonialism and empire. As Claire Harmon wrote in Jane's Fame, a history of Austen’s rise from moderately successful author to world icon, “Elements in the novel that hardly seemed to be noticed before by critics... have subsequently become, as Rajeswari Sunder Rajan has pointed out, the ‘locus of the novel’s meanings.’"
And as Tom Keymer writes in Jane Austen: Writing, Society, Politics, “It has become a novel about offstage episodes and unspoken themes; global rather than domestic.”

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CMP#36 The "Dead Silence"

4/7/2021

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Clutching My Pearls is about Jane Austen and the times she lived in. Click here for the first in the series.

The "Dead Silence"

Fanny, Lady Bertram and Edmund bid Sir Thomas farewell on his journey to Antigua, 1983 adaptation

In my last post, I ventured the opinion that Mansfield Park is not about slavery, despite the fact that it’s about a slave-owning family. Now, let's look at the passage in Mansfield Park which is “Exhibit A” in any discussion of Austen and abolition, the “dead silence” passage. It’s a crucial passage for many an essay, lecture, blog and vlog about Austen and Mansfield Park. However, many of these discussions misinterpret what is being described in this passage.
It's a conversation between Fanny Price and her cousin Edmund Bertram (whom she secretly loves). They discuss his father, her uncle, Sir Thomas, after his return from a lengthy journey to Antigua.
Fanny tells Edmund "I love to hear my uncle talk of the West Indies. I could listen to him for an hour together." Edmund tells her, "Your uncle thinks you very pretty.” Fanny turns away in embarrassment, and modern readers are cringing as well. Eeuw, an uncle notices that his young niece has filled out nicely while he’s been away and mentions it to his son. Austen makes it clear that Fanny’s discomfort also arises out of hearing Edmund praise her face and figure. “’Oh! don’t talk so, don’t talk so,’ cried Fanny, distressed by more feelings than he was aware of.” ...

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CMP#39 Symbolism in Mansfield Park?

CMP#38 Amelioration

CMP#37 Reading into the Silence

CMP#36 The "Dead Silence"

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