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CMP#38  Amelioration

4/14/2021

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Picture
​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.  

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 w
hat 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.
PictureIdealized view of life in the West Indies
     Experts generally agree that Mansfield Park is set in the years after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 (slavery itself was not abolished in British territories until 1833). When Fanny asked her question, the British Navy was patrolling the waters off Africa, attempting (with mixed success) to capture slave ships setting out across the Atlantic. Ending the slave trade, in other words, was official government policy when Mansfield Park was published. (For this reason, as I've mentioned before, the notion that it was risky or courageous for Austen to mention slavery in her novel is just not accurate).
    The abolitionists hoped that ending the slave trade would mean the planters would be compelled to treat their captives better. If pleas to humanity and natural justice didn't work, economic reality might. To be blunt, when you could no longer buy a fresh supply of slaves, you couldn't work your existing slaves to death.

PictureThomas Clarkson, abolitionist
  George Boulukos (2006) explains that there was a real distinction at that time between the “slave-trade” and “slavery,” a “distinction of guilt” in the public mind between shipping enslaved persons from the African coast, and owning slaves. So it is significant that Fanny’s question specified the “slave-trade,” not “slavery.” And it might also explain why Austen goes easier on Sir Thomas Bertram, a slave-owner, than she does on Mrs. Elton in Emma, whose Bristol relatives probably had connections to the slave trade. (Remember how Jane Fairfax speaks of the "governess-trade" and the guilt of those who carry it on?)
     As Boulukos explains, “The crucial distinction is between the guilt of the African slave trader and the possibility that planters, by contrast, will do good for their charges, particularly in the way of Christian instruction and amelioration."
    "This concept was put forward not only by the defenders of the planters," Boulukos points out, "but also by such abolitionists as William Wilberforce, the parliamentary leader of Abolition, and Thomas Clarkson, with whom Austen claimed to be ‘in love’ in an 1813 letter to Cassandra.”
     Jane Austen may well have been persuaded by Clarkson et al that amelioration was a pragmatic compromise until full abolition could be achieved. Boulukos again: “The one book about slavery and abolition that Austen is widely thought to have read—Clarkson’s History—supports the idea that outlawing the trade would inevitably improve the condition of slaves.”  
​    It also appears that abolitionists knew they could only get so far in arguing against slavery on the basis of its horrendous cruelty, not when they were up against powerful economic and geopolitical interests.  Abolitionist James Stephen won Parliamentary support for suppressing the slave trade by arguing that it would damage the economic interests of the French, with whom Britain was at war. Focusing first on eliminating the slave trade looks like a strategic decision on the part of the Abolitionist movement. 
​

PictureDancing in St. Domingo
    Amelioration is promoted in Maria Edgeworth's short story, The Grateful Negro. The hero of the story is a planter hates the institution of slavery. "He wished that there was no such thing as slavery in the world; but he was convinced, by the arguments of those who have the best means of obtaining information, that the sudden emancipation of the negroes would rather increase than diminish their miseries.”
     Another 18th-century reality to bear in mind is that if Austen was an ardent Churchwoman, as her brother says, or a secret evangelist, as Dr. Helena Kelly claims, she would have been in favour of proselytizing Christianity to the four corners of the earth and saving souls. So, in common with Hannah More and William Wilberforce, she would have thought it a good thing to Christianize and "civilize" the enslaved population, and that doing so would better equip them for eventual emancipation.
  I am not going to delve into 
the reasons that people feared "sudden emancipation" might be counter-productive. We should not be surprised to discover that the abolitionist movement, like all social movements, had internal disagreements and schisms, or that prediction and reality did not always align.

     In the novel, Fanny said she loved hearing her uncle talk about the West Indies, and she could listen to him for an hour together. Modern critics, as we have seen, have incorrectly turned Fanny's question about the "slave-trade" into an accusation which Sir Thomas suppresses. George Boulukos’s theory that the question was about amelioration does fit the clues in the text. Sir Thomas is explaining his hope and expectation that life will improve for enslaved persons, now that supply of fresh slaves has been cut off. He might have given details of his own efforts to improve the conditions on his own plantation. This would explain Fanny's "pleasure" at her uncle’s answer, and why it would have pleased Sir Thomas if Fanny or the others had asked him more about it.
    Boulukos thinks Austen is positioning Sir Thomas in the mold of benevolent slaveowners who featured in “grateful negro” fiction. But Austen wasn't explicit about it in Mansfield Park, as compared to Maria Edgeworth's story, so in the end, we can only speculate.
  To recap my previous posts, Mansfield Park has neither detail nor explicit opinions about slavery, though many have found symbolism in it. Many other novels of the period go into greater detail and express actual opinions, and I'll be discussing those. 
  What sets 
Mansfield Park apart from those other novels is that it was written by Jane Austen. As George Boulukos says, Mansfield Park is “canonical and aesthetically extraordinary." But that doesn't mean that it is "representative of its culture.”  
   My next posts discuss two issues arising out of this: If Mansfield Park is full of anti-slavery symbolism, does it make sense to write a novel about a wimpy heroine living with a bunch of horrible people and write a “happy ending” that isn’t actually happy at all? And I'll provide more detail about how other writers used the issue of slavery in their novels.

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Boulukos, George E. (2006). "The Politics of Silence: Mansfield Park and the Amelioration of Slavery." Novel : a Forum on Fiction, 39(3), 361–383. https://doi.org/10.1215/ddnov.039030361

​Edward Henry Columbine (1763-1811) appears in A Marriage of Attachment, the second book in my Mansfield Trilogy. He is William Price's commander in Africa. He was an abolitionist, a commander of the West African Squadron and briefly served as governor of Sierra Leone, a colony established in Africa for freed slaves, Click here for more about my novels.
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CMP#37   Reading into the Silence

4/11/2021

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Picture
​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)
​

  Reading into the Silence: The Trip to Antigua
PictureA 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.”  

PictureCreepy Sir Thomas and defiant Fanny in the 1999 movie adaptation
   What are we to read into the "dead silence"? What do you read into the silence when you're hoping for an answer to an important message? You try out various hypotheses, some technical, some benign, some ominous, depending on your turn of mind. Perhaps they didn't get the message. Perhaps they missed it. Perhaps you offended them somehow. Perhaps they're busy. Perhaps they're ill. Perhaps…. the thing is, you don’t know. But we all read into the silence.
​     Some scholars possess the ability to interpret the emotional colouring of the "dead silence" passage, yet they arrive at different interpretations. For one author, it’s “Fanny's timid question in Mansfield Park,” for another, it’s “Fanny Price's outburst about the treatment of slaves,” for another, Fanny "bravely makes her abolitionist sympathies clear." 
       Others have explained the Bertrams' silence as “ambivalence,” “guilt,” or resentment that Fanny would pick such as “ill-chosen topic” that is “too close to the bone.”  Some examples:

  • “the “dead silence” of Fanny’s Bertram cousins at her question about the slave trade illuminates the Bertrams’ familial ambivalence to the domestic implications of abolition.”
  • “[T]he Bertrams, acutely aware that they owe their elegant lifestyle in England to the exploitation of slaves in the sugar plantations of the West Indies, reveal their collective guilt in the ‘‘dead silence’’ that follows Fanny Price’s awkward question about the slave trade.”​
  • “An ill-chosen topic; she is not yet quite brash enough to pursue it: “there was such a dead silence!”’
  • The "dead silence" that follows Fanny's question about slavery on Sir Thomas's return from Antigua is, for Southam, full of meaning: in "the autumn of 1812, the 'slave trade' was still a topic too close to the bone for a plantation-owning family [such as the Bertrams] to discuss freely and openly."
Picture
Bernard Hepton as Sir Thomas in the 1983 adaptation
   The “dead silence” of the cousins could be indifference, inattention, or guilt. But as previously mentioned, the idea that the "dead silence" means slavery was too sensitive for the Bertrams to discuss is simply not historically accurate. Sir Thomas had been a Member of Parliament, where the topic had been debated during the proceeding decades. There was abundant public commentary and published writing on the slave trade, slavery, sugar, and the West Indies at this time, all presenting different aspects of the issue and different opinions. As we will see, there are many examples in novels of the period where planters do discuss (and defend) their ownership of persons.
       Therefore, Austen could have been more explicit  -- if she had chosen to be. 
PicturePlanting Sugar Cane, Antigua
      It is rather remarkable, but undeniable, that none of the references to Sir Thomas's trip to Antigua  mention slaves or betray any kind of self-consciousness about slavery. The references are focused on Sir Thomas -- his finances, his health, his safety and well-being. After his return, the few final references focus on the modes of living of the planter class, what Austen would call the "manners" of the West Indies. 
   Mrs. Norris talks about the "Antigua estate" making "poor returns." Sir Thomas's activities in the West Indies are only ever described as “his business” or “his affairs."  Austen describes the length of his absence and reminds us of the danger of the voyage there and back again. When he does return, we are told he regales the family with tales of the West Indies. But apart from a mention of balls and dancing, there are no details. 
       His oldest son Tom had nothing to say on the subject of Antigua, except for suggesting that the dangerous return sea voyage their father must make, was a good excuse for putting on a play to ease their mother's supposed anxiety -- a suggestion that comically backfires when Edmund and Tom turn to see her dozing on the sofa.
​      We are told that when Sir Thomas returns, Fanny looks at him with tender sympathy, because he is haggard and has obviously suffered under the West Indian climate.
 
   The focus throughout is the dangers and sacrifices that 
Sir Thomas undergoes, not the sufferings of the enslaved persons who, unlike their master, crossed the Atlantic stowed below decks in chains.    
      Overall, Austen gives us just enough detail to usher Sir Thomas off the stage when his 
absence is necessary for the plot, and to bring him back again when his presence is necessary for the plot.​  The word "sugar" does not appear in the book and "plantations" refers to the cultivated ground in Mansfield, not Antigua. ​

  ​      Apart from worry over Sir Thomas, the other emotion expressed in relation to Antigua is pleasure. Sir Thomas’s answer to the slave-trade question gave Fanny “pleasure,” while he ​would have been pleased if she'd asked him more questions. As well, Fanny says, “I love to hear my uncle talk of the West Indies, I could listen to him for an hour together.” Sir Thomas "is disposed to be pleased with [her] in every respect." 
       How to reconcile Austen's emphasis on pleasure with the assertion that there is a daring but long-overlooked anti-slavery message in the novel? There is no hint that Fanny is accusing or badgering her uncle when she asks him about the slave-trade, though modern critics have inserted that inference. She is not the Regency equivalent of the vegan granddaughter lecturing everybody at Thanksgiving. Clearly Fanny is not listening to his information with horror or disapproval. How to reconcile this with the idea that Fanny challenges Sir Thomas? 
        One interpretation that I find very plausible, neither condemns Austen as indifferent to slavery nor builds her up into an abolitionist Total Badass. It is a more nuanced interpretation based on the slavery debate as it was waged in Austen's time.
​         To be continued.

James Stephen (1758 - 1832), a lawyer, legislator, and abolitionist with a pretty amazing personal backstory, makes an appearance in My Mansfield Trilogy. Click here for more about my books.
   
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    About the author:

    I'm a writer and a teacher of English as a Second Language.  "Laowai" means foreigner. Check further down for tags for specific subjects. My earlier posts (prior to June 2017) are about my time in China, more recent posts focus on my writing. Welcome!


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