| This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. The introductory post is here. My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. I'm currently doing a series about the significance, if any, in Austen's choice of the name "Mansfield" for her novel Mansfield Park. |
CMP#154 If we read Mansfield Park for its "brave" stance against slavery, (as opposed to its literary merits) why haven't we heard of Alethea Lewis and The Microcosm?
Graphic by Nathan Gelgud (detail) 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")
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")
Jane Seymour in titillating Voodoo Peril, in James Bond movie "Live and Let Die" 1973 The Microcosm (1801) by Alethea Lewis
In this elaborately plotted and didactic five volume novel, heroine Harriet Montagu is relentlessly pursued by Captain Millemont, a scoundrel with an extensive East Indian fortune. I don't know if "East" is an error on the author's part, because Millemont abducts Harriet and takes her to the West Indies, that is, to his plantation in Jamaica. She is in his power for months but he does not attempt any assault on her virtue, because he is pressuring her to marry him.
Harriet eventually escapes from Millemont's plantation and runs through the jungle. This part of the story slightly resembles Charlotte Smith's The Story of Henrietta (1800), but Lewis scoops her heroine out of danger right away, without the titillating perils faced by Henrietta when she is captured by a group of runaway slaves, if you get my drift. In both these novels, the threat to the heroine's virtue was the inducement to keep turning the pages.
Harriet is rescued by Mr. and Mrs. Cumberland, two kind strangers who luckily are passing by in their carriage. They take her home and give her shelter. “Mr. Cumberland, who was a wise and good man, further proposed that Miss Montague should assume the name of his maternal family, which was Mansfield, and pass for his relation during her residence in Jamaica. The proposal was acceded to, and the servants instructed in what answers to give to any inquiries which might possibly be made relative to the lady.”
Harriet eventually returns with the Cumberlands to London, still using the name Mansfield, which proves an impediment to her reunion with the hero. He also sports a different name (because he’s a nobleman now). Eventually, however, the lovers find each other and Harriet is recognized as the rightful heiress to a substantial fortune.
If “Mansfield” was intended by Lewis as an allusion to the chief justice, she made no overt use of the fact. And believe me, subtlety is not what Alethea Lewis is about. When explaining why Harriet fails to behave as a fashionable, heartless young lady, she writes sarcastically: "AND--dire disgrace--She was a CHRISTIAN !!!" Despite pushing slavery to the background and foregrounding female peril, Lewis does not confine herself to veiled allusions against slavery. The following editorial should pique the interest of those studying the topic of representations of slavery in novels of the long 18th century:
In this elaborately plotted and didactic five volume novel, heroine Harriet Montagu is relentlessly pursued by Captain Millemont, a scoundrel with an extensive East Indian fortune. I don't know if "East" is an error on the author's part, because Millemont abducts Harriet and takes her to the West Indies, that is, to his plantation in Jamaica. She is in his power for months but he does not attempt any assault on her virtue, because he is pressuring her to marry him.
Harriet eventually escapes from Millemont's plantation and runs through the jungle. This part of the story slightly resembles Charlotte Smith's The Story of Henrietta (1800), but Lewis scoops her heroine out of danger right away, without the titillating perils faced by Henrietta when she is captured by a group of runaway slaves, if you get my drift. In both these novels, the threat to the heroine's virtue was the inducement to keep turning the pages.
Harriet is rescued by Mr. and Mrs. Cumberland, two kind strangers who luckily are passing by in their carriage. They take her home and give her shelter. “Mr. Cumberland, who was a wise and good man, further proposed that Miss Montague should assume the name of his maternal family, which was Mansfield, and pass for his relation during her residence in Jamaica. The proposal was acceded to, and the servants instructed in what answers to give to any inquiries which might possibly be made relative to the lady.”
Harriet eventually returns with the Cumberlands to London, still using the name Mansfield, which proves an impediment to her reunion with the hero. He also sports a different name (because he’s a nobleman now). Eventually, however, the lovers find each other and Harriet is recognized as the rightful heiress to a substantial fortune.
If “Mansfield” was intended by Lewis as an allusion to the chief justice, she made no overt use of the fact. And believe me, subtlety is not what Alethea Lewis is about. When explaining why Harriet fails to behave as a fashionable, heartless young lady, she writes sarcastically: "AND--dire disgrace--She was a CHRISTIAN !!!" Despite pushing slavery to the background and foregrounding female peril, Lewis does not confine herself to veiled allusions against slavery. The following editorial should pique the interest of those studying the topic of representations of slavery in novels of the long 18th century:
Editorial in The Microcosm
In Volume 3 of The Microcosm, the authoress breaks away from the narrative and takes up thee/thou language as she compares the seduction of women to slave-trading, and argues that the seduction of women is worse because enslaved people are innocent and will go to heaven, but women who are seduced will go to hell along with their paramours, thus the crime of seduction sends more people to hell than slavery. Though her opinions might jar a modern reader, Lewis is unquestionably outspoken about slavery, and actually defies her readers to object to it.
In Volume 3 of The Microcosm, the authoress breaks away from the narrative and takes up thee/thou language as she compares the seduction of women to slave-trading, and argues that the seduction of women is worse because enslaved people are innocent and will go to heaven, but women who are seduced will go to hell along with their paramours, thus the crime of seduction sends more people to hell than slavery. Though her opinions might jar a modern reader, Lewis is unquestionably outspoken about slavery, and actually defies her readers to object to it.
 Ye Millemonts of the Age! Draw near, hear, with detestation, the recital of your enormities, and avoid a recommission of crimes which mark, with infamy, the name of MAN! Ye advocates for the iniquitous traffic of your fellow-creatures! rejoice; for while destroying libertines exist ye shall not be deemed the most atrocious of your species; for ye only ruin the worldly felicity of thousands—only lay waste united families and happy countries—only tear children from parents; parents from helpless children; husbands and wives from each other’s fond embraces, and divide the dearest friends for their remaining term of years in this state of existence, after which, in that blest region where “No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold,” [a quote from a poem by Alexander Pope] they shall be reunited in never ending joy, whist ye, sinking under accusation, shall be doomed to perpetual slavery in the only place calculated for the punishment of your crimes: but the libertine, who often gives death to both the body and soul of those whom he has ensnared, shall have the additional torment of being continually goaded by the wretches who were, by him, conducted to the horrid scene of their mutual punishment! Yet vaunt not too much O ye sordid purchasers of human flesh! That there are in the Creation sinners of a still blacker hue than yourselves; for deadly dark must be the corners of your flinty hearts. Your advocates—what cause is so bad as to be destitute of a pleader?—your advocates advance the necessity of slaves to cultivate the Western Lands; but we deny that such necessity exists; and we deny it logically. Nothing can be necessary that is evil; and that this practise is evil, may be very easily proved; therefore, it cannot be necessary. If your lordship and Sir Judas are so hardy as to refuse your assent to our assertion that the sale of human creatures is an evil, the first question which we will ask you, is, whether an African be naturally inferior to an European in point of uncultivated intellect? To this we conclude, as we suppose you to be possessed of common sense, that you will answer—No.—Say, then what would be your sensations on seeing a hundred Englishmen dragged from their native shore—(whether without, or with, the authority of their king)—chained, and confined on board a trading vessel, and knowing that they were torne from their distracted friends for the purpose of performing the work of horses and oxen! What would be your sentiments of their purchasers? And what your tortures, were any of your own children to be seized by the ravagers! Gracious Heaven, that any man who calls himself a Christian, can give his voice in favor of such execrable proceedings—such tolerated barbarity!!! That any nation which professes to believe the Gospel of Christ, can hesitate to abolish a traffic so diametrically opposite to its divine injunctions!!! |
 It has been urged that these Africans, till employed by Europeans, are a set of people entirely useless, and that we, kindly, endeavor to render them beneficial to the endeavor to render them beneficial to the universe! Blind! Ignorant! Stupid! Sordid wretches! To suppose that the Almighty Father created thousands of rational beings for no end—no purpose! And that we have been very meritorious in discovering a method to make these supernumerary people of service to the rest of their species, by employing them in business for which, GOD and Nature omitted to qualify them! If the work of brutes was to be their work, we could teach the Great Omniscient to do much than He has done; we could instruct him to send this part of the human race into this world without the reason with which it is requisite that we should be endured; and by taking care to blunt the edge of their sensibility; by preventing their having any sentiments of affection for their own species, AND by rendering them inaccessible to torture—to prepare them for the condition which is allotted to them. Will our readers excuse the above digression upon the miseries of thousands of their brethren now slaves in Christian territories? Will they heave the sight of pity and drop the tear of sympathy upon human woes? Or will they, indignantly shut the book and descant upon the absurdity of mixing such a subject with the incidents of a novel? But again let us remind our censurers that we are not amendable to their judicature. We are sovereigns in our own province, and consider ourselves as superior to every petty critic who shall presume to display his unripened judgment upon our performance. (volume 3 pps 90 to 95) |
About the author:
The Microcosm is one of several novels by Alethea Lewis (1749--1827), who published anonymously and also under the name Eugenia de Acton. She wrote this scathing editorial against slavery before the slave trade was abolished. Mansfield Park came out after the slave trade was abolished, but some contend today that it was an act of bravery on Austen's part to include references to Moor Park apricots and Severus and Mansfield in her novel, and that she even kept the title "Mansfield" under wraps so as not to create difficulties for herself.
The Microcosm received three reviews, two mostly favourable, one unfavorable. While the critics faulted the work for being discursive, with a too-complicated plot, no-one faulted her stand against slavery.
The Microcosm is one of several novels by Alethea Lewis (1749--1827), who published anonymously and also under the name Eugenia de Acton. She wrote this scathing editorial against slavery before the slave trade was abolished. Mansfield Park came out after the slave trade was abolished, but some contend today that it was an act of bravery on Austen's part to include references to Moor Park apricots and Severus and Mansfield in her novel, and that she even kept the title "Mansfield" under wraps so as not to create difficulties for herself.
The Microcosm received three reviews, two mostly favourable, one unfavorable. While the critics faulted the work for being discursive, with a too-complicated plot, no-one faulted her stand against slavery.
Alethea Lewis also wrote Vicissitudes in Genteel Life. The title is a pretty good description of what it was that sold novels at this time.
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 Moor Park, the stately home of Lord Anson “Sir, it is a Moor Park" Why apricots as an allusion to slavery, you ask? Because Mrs. Norris and Dr. Grant argue over a Moor Park apricot tree, and the word "Moor" can signify a Moorish person, like Othello. However, in this case it doesn't. I also made an erroneous assumption that "Moor" referred to a windswept heath, but it turns out it's just a variant on the spelling of 'More." Moor Park was the name of an English estate where the apricot was cultivated, which is located on the estate of an older English mansion called the Manor of More. And why does Mrs. Norris insist that the apricot tree is a Moor Park? Because Moor Park apricots were the most popular variety. “This apricot is considered decidedly the best in cultivation; it is a very great bearer, the fruit is very fine, and deserves to be recommended before any other," says The Fruit-Grower's Instructor, 1825. And a 1998 book about Thomas Jefferson's Monticello estate says that the Moor Park is “the most popular apricot variety of the last two centuries.” (The fruits and fruit trees of Monticello. 1998.) Insisting that the word "Moor," separate from the name "Moor Park," ought to make us think of Moors, then think of Shakespeare's Othello, then think of black people, then think of slavery, then think of the apricot standing in as a symbol of complicity, is a bit of a stretch, I contend. And an entirely unnecessary one, as we have seen. |
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