| "I would suggest that [Austen] was quite deliberately gesturing at the cultural discourse that [Mansfield] represents, at his name’s indexical link to a particularly charged national moment... It is worth contemplating what Austen’s contemporaries would have understood that gesture to mean, given the reputational baggage of the name “Mansfield” in Regency zeitgeist and politics. -- Danielle Christmas, "Lord Mansfield and the Slave Ship Zong," Persuasions online Vol 1, number 2, 2021 |
CMP#155 Lord Mansfield and the Cultural Discourse
Granville Sharp helped the enslaved James Somerset bring his master to court I've been delving into digital archives to contemplate what "the reputational baggage of the name 'Mansfield'” in "Regency zeitgeist and politics," might have been. Austen scholar Paula Byrne assumed that readers of Austen's time would automatically think of Mansfield's ruling in Somerset v. Stewart. "Anyone reading Mansfield Park is going to think of Lord Mansfield and his role in the abolition of the slave trade." Do we know that's the first thing they'd think of, or the second, third, fourth, or fifth thing they associated with the name "Mansfield"? What was the "cultural discourse" around the name "Mansfield"? Yes, Lord Mansfield's rulings in Somerset and the Zong case might be a big part of our zeitgeist in this age of racial reckoning, but as I have learned:
- Many novelists used the name "Mansfield" without any indication that it carried cultural baggage. It was just a solid English name.
- People referenced Lord Mansfield (1756–1788) in relation to many legal issues, including investments, insurance, libel, religious freedom, and so on, and made mention of his probity and patience. But it's not easy to find references to Somerset v. Stewart before 1840 in the popular literature. They probably exist, but I haven't found any. (I am not speaking of law books which are not read by a general public)
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