I have been hesitating over how best to open up a long discussion of Austen, Mansfield Park and the abolition movement. Should I start with what I think Mansfield Park is really about, i.e. the mistakes made by a father in the education of his daughters? Or should I start with what I think Mansfield Park is not about, i.e. it is not primarily an anti-slavery, anti-Empire novel? Should I set the stage with a discussion about what people said and thought about slavery in Austen's time? This blog post will serve as an outline for the topics I intend to touch on, and as I publish each post, I'll come back and link to it here.
      It’s not just that I want to lay out my arguments clearly. I am worried -- as any sane person would be these days -- that in the current climate my remarks will be misconstrued. 
     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 am saying that if you read Mansfield Park for the anti-slavery, there just isn’t much to find there, compared to other books. If you want to read fiction and non-fiction books written in Georgian or Regency times that discuss slavery, I can point you to some books that do. If you want to read books written in Georgian or Regency times with Black characters in them, I can point you to a few. 
      This doesn't guarantee that the views of these 18th writers will be entirely in accord with your views. This doesn't guarantee you will be delighted with their portrayals of Black people. But the point is, these other authors did discuss the subject.

   For now, here's one example of some anti-slavery literature which was much more explicit than Austen:

   In addition, I have yet to find an example of a woman being sent to prison for seditious libel in the UK for anything that she wrote. I haven't found an example of anyone, male or female, going to prison for writing against slavery.
​    In fact, it was publishing forbidden opinions that was the crime, not the writing.  Some women were sent to prison for publishing. In 1822 a radical atheist named Richard Carlile was convicted of blasphemy and seditious libel. His wife continued publishing his newspaper, so she followed him to prison. Then his sister carried on publishing, and she was sent to prison.
    The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley had a poor servant, Dan Healey, who was arrested in August, 1812, for posting political handbills Shelley had written. That was considered publishing. Shelley didn't pay the £200 fine on behalf of his servant (who was an Irish orphan), so he, not Shelley, spent six months in prison.
     In other words, if Mansfield Park was seditious, it was Austen's publishers Thomas Egerton or John Murray who were in trouble. If either of them warned her, "Whoa lady, you'd better dial that anti-slavery stuff back a bit or I won't publish it," no such correspondence survives. Shelley, on the other hand, did have documented issues with his publishers over material he wrote that they refused to publish.

Bagni di Lucca, Tuscany, Italy, June 1818
   Madame Ciampi was busy setting out the breakfast platters in the dining room when she heard the tinkle of the bell in the lobby. She hurried to respond, hiding her irritation at the interruption. There, to her surprise, stood the English lady who had arrived late last night, looking as fresh as a flower, and attired in an elegant riding habit.
   “Madam Ciampi,” said her new tenant,“Did you arrange for a horse for me?”
   “Certainly, madam,” came the reply, and fortunately it was true—she had managed to make arrangements with the riding stable last night. “But—does madam intend to ride out so early? Or will you take some breakfast first, ma’am?”
   The lady stepped to the entrance to the dining room and looked about. Save for a housemaid and a waiter, the room was empty.
   “I shall take some coffee,” she said to Madam Ciampi.
   “And shall I arrange for a guide to escort madam?” Madam Ciampi followed her guest into the dining room.
   “I hardly think it necessary,” replied the lady, taking a seat by the front window which overlooked the river.     “There is only one road to the forest, is there not?”
   “But, madam—”
    “That will be all.”
    Madam Ciampi walked away, elaborately shaking her head. She relieved her feelings by tugging firmly on the wooden shutters which framed the windows facing eastward over the Appenine hills. The shutters closed with an emphatic bang and Madam Ciampi snapped the latch firmly into place. This was not Venice, thank the blessed saints—here in Tuscany people were sober and decent.
    Peculiar, arrogant, and demanding as the English were, she had to admit they had restored the prosperity of Bagni di Lucca. In the cafés, at the baths, in the casino, one only heard English spoken. At least this new lady spoke Italian—unlike the others, who believed anyone could understand them if they spoke loudly and slowly enough.
    A few more of Madame Ciampi’s lodgers were now drifting down from their apartments, calling for tea or coffee, exchanging greetings, and taking note of the fashionable newcomer seated by the window. But the beautiful stranger ignored everyone and everything, watching out the window until she saw a groomsman lead a small brown mare into the courtyard. Then she gracefully rose and collected her hat and riding crop.
   “I shall return for dinner,” she informed Madam Ciampi.
   “Very good, Madam Crawford.”

   Mary was briefly taken aback at hearing herself addressed by her maiden name, even though it was she who had impulsively signed the hotel register as “Mrs. Crawford” the previous evening. It was all right, she reassured herself; she was not assuming a disguise; she was throwing one off. She was no longer forced to play the part of the dutiful clergyman’s wife.
   Mary stroked her little brown mare’s nose, then expertly inspected the girth and the harness before climbing on the mounting block. Once she was settled on the saddle, she dismissed the groom and directed the mare out of the courtyard at a slow walk, getting to know her new mount and letting the horse get to know her. It felt so good to be on horseback again.​
   Bagni di Lucca, the Baths of Lucca, was a series of little settlements strung out along a narrow valley between forested hills. Mary rode out along the main road—indeed, the only road—toward the upper village, while taking note of the features of the resort which Madam Ciampi had described to her. Here was the casino, here were the baths and the steam grotto. Here was the villa of Napoleon’s sister, the Princess Borghese. The Princess had lived apart from her husband for years because royalty, even upstart Corsican royalty, could do as they pleased.
    Mary likewise intended to do as she pleased, for during her marriage she had often been unhappy, and if she was unhappy, it followed logically that it was Edmund’s fault. Or, if she must admit to one error, it was in marrying Edmund in the first place. “A clergyman is nothing,” she had told Edmund upon learning he intended to take orders. She was fitted by character and ability to be the partner of a great man, a man whose name and reputation outlived his death, someone whose bust adorned the halls of Parliament.
   Heaven knows she had tried to elevate Edmund out of obscurity. Once, she had collected and made fair copies of his sermons, intending to have them published. But Edmund’s formal style, so much like his father’s, was of a former age. She engaged a writer to revise his staid essays into passionate epistles, but her first candidate had taken her money and produced, after much delay, some very indifferent work, and another had rejected her overture so indignantly that she was too mortified to ask anyone else.
   That spring in Rome Mary had realized, with a sense of desperation amounting almost to panic, that her thirtieth birthday was approaching. Thirty! So little time left to fulfil her ambitions. Then came the letter from home, the unexpected stroke, the final rupture.
   Mary continued upward, passing more lodging-houses and villas, until she came across the path made by other wanderers over the years, a path which led into the chestnut forests which spilled across the hillside. Looking back, she could glimpse the river twisting down through the valley below her. Before her, the bridle path, lit by patches of dappled sunlight, beckoned her into the forest.
   It was fashionable, these days, to fall into raptures over a scenic prospect or a lightning-blasted oak, but Mary had never pretended to be an enthusiast for Nature. It was enough to have quiet and solitude to consider the past and plan for the future, and she was grateful to have arrived early in the season, when there were still few visitors in town. More tourists would arrive as June turned to July—old soldiers taking their ease after years of fighting Napoleon’s armies; nannies herding young children up and down the street, gout-ridden old men hobbling to the hot baths while the young ladies set up their easels by the river.
   Mary was so absorbed in her thoughts that at first the faint sound of rushing water did not obtrude upon her notice. Then she paused and looked about her. There was definitely a stream nearby. Hadn’t her landlady spoken of a little waterfall in the forest? Exploring the source of that sound would make as good a destination as any for her morning’s ride, and accordingly, Mary directed the mare off the path to a rougher track through the trees. She was not afraid of getting lost in the wood, for she need only travel downhill again to find her way back to the village.