​    There are actually two duped guardians in this brisk two-volume tale. There are two heroines: both orphans, both heiresses, both controlled by guardians appointed by their late fathers’ wills. Both guardians want to keep the handsome inheritance and dispose of the girl quickly. There are two interlaced plots: one is all melodrama, the other is fairly comical (and in fact was "borrowed" from a comic play ).
​    Mrs. Cartwright orchestrates a story in which perils arise, and problems are resolved in a graceful and orderly fashion, like people dancing a minuet. Although there is drama, there is no great feeling of despair or tension, and this might be because the heroine, Harriot Pelham is intelligent and resourceful. She and her sidekick friend Lady Laura Antrim don't lose their heads or faint in a crisis, but rise to the occasion with female solidarity. There is a secondary heroine, Clara Aubry, a Harriet-Smith or Catherine Morland-like picture of ignorance, only fifteen years old, of whom one character says: “innocence, when it is accompanied by a naïve goodness of heart, has charms irresistible.” Given Clara's imbecility, Harriot needs an intelligent friend and confidante to write her letters to (since this is an epistolary novel), which is where Lady Laura comes in. She's the saucy sidekick of the story. They both look out for Clara. 
  ​  ​Harriot‘s guardian is her brother-in-law, Mr. Hoyle, with whom she lives, along with her older sister Caroline. Let’s plunge into the action: Thanks to a carelessly dropped letter, Harriot discovers that Mr. Hoyle is conspiring with a female panderer to abduct her, take her to a secluded mansion, rape her, and then stick her in a convent when he’s tired of her. Then he'll take her inheritance. She is determined to avoid distressing Caroline by revealing that her husband is a monster, so when she’s caught weeping, she pretends that she’s been crying over the pages of a tragedy. This brings a gentle rebuke from Caroline about indulging in “fictitious misery,” a reference to the common trope that novel-reading was harmful.
    After the initial horrible shock, Harriot pulls herself together... 

    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)

    So what would "Austen's contemporaries" have "understood that gesture" of putting the name "Mansfield" in her title to mean? Based on my survey of digital archives, Lord Mansfield's rulings in the Zong case (1783) and the Somerset case (1772) were not a significant part of his posthumous reputation in the first half of the 19th century. Mansfield Park was first published in 1814.

   Mansfield Park is recommended to modern audiences because it grapples with the topic of slavery and how upper-class English families like the Bertrams benefitted from the revenue from sugar plantations. Sir Thomas, the patriarch of the story is sorting out his business affairs in Antigua during crucial events, but what he is doing there is only vaguely alluded to. The novel in fact does not make any pronouncements about slavery, nor are there any consequences for the Bertram family for living off the avails of slavery--though modern critics believe it contains veiled anti-slavery allusions.
    Well, if anti-slavery messages are why we pick up Mansfield Park, we don't we toss it aside and read Alethea Lewis instead? Because she doesn't go with subtle veiled allusions. She doesn't hold back on her opinions of slave traders and plantation owners. We meet enslaved people in The Microcosm and we travel to Jamaica. Further, Lewis's novel was published before the slave trade (but not slavery) was outlawed, while Mansfield Park was published seven years after. Thus, Fanny Price asking her uncle a question about the slave trade, years after the trade was made illegal, is not exactly a daring thing to do. Regular readers of my blog will know this is something I've banged on about quite a lot, but I had to mention it again after discovering The Microcosm.  The title presumably means, "this novel is a microcosm of society today."... 
    And, Lewis uses the name "Mansfield" in her novel! I personally don't think she is intending a reference to Lord Mansfield, but others may disagree.
​​     If you've been told it was risky for Austen to speak out against slavery, and that she could only hint at it by speaking of "Moor Park Apricots," if you've been told she was brave for speaking out against slavery, check out what Lewis wrote, below (see "Editorial") 

    Continuing my discussion from my last post we turn from novels to obituaries, books of anecdotes, and one particular historical event he's associated with. Of all the topics that come to mind when people referenced Lord Mansfield, was slavery at the top of the list, or even near the top? It appears this wasn't the case until about the 1840's, but if I find any exceptions, I will add them.

Remembrances When He Died in 1793
   The European Magazine, London Review, the Scots Magazine, and Walker's Hibernian Magazine all printed a brief biography with a collection of anecdotes. It appears to be the same article. No mention of the Somerset case.
     The Annual Register, Or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature for the Year 1793 also describes the contents of his will, which mentions the now-famous Dido, as does the Edinburgh Magazine and the Gentleman's Magazine. Dido was referred to as a "free black," not as a family member.
   Other newspaper articles did not delve into Mansfield's legal accomplishments, but gave brief biographies, praised his public and private character, discussed his will and the size of his estate, and explained who would inherit his titles. Follow up articles gave details of his final illness and his funeral.