Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
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Pride and Prejudice by
Jane Austen
Mr. Bennett – Mrs. Bennett
Mr. Gardiner - Mrs. Gardiner
Elizabeth Bennett – Fitzwilliam Darcy
Jane – Bingley
Wickham – Lydia
Charlotte – Mr. Collins
"Darcy was clever. He was at the same time haughty, reserved, and
fastidious, and his manners, though well bred, were not inviting" (12)What is Pride? "I certainly saw Mr. Darcy speaking to her." "Aye -- because she asked him at last how he liked Netherfield, and he could not help answering her; -- but she said he seemed very angry at being spoke to." "Miss Bingley told me," said Jane, "that he never speaks much unless among his intimate acquaintance. With them he is remarkably agreeable." "I do not believe a word of it, my dear. If he had been so very agreeable he would have talked to Mrs. Long. But I can guess how it was; every body says that he is ate up with pride, and I dare say he had heard somehow that Mrs. Long does not keep a carriage, and had come to the ball in a hack chaise." "I do not mind his not talking to Mrs. Long," said Miss Lucas, "but I wish he had danced with Eliza." "Another time, Lizzy," said her mother, "I would not dance with him, if I were you." "I believe, Ma'am, I may safely promise you never to dance with him." "His pride," said Miss Lucas, "does not offend me so much as pride often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, every thing in his favour, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be proud." "That is very true," replied Elizabeth, "and I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine." "Pride," observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, "is a very common failing I believe. By all that I have ever read," I am convinced that it is very common indeed, that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride' are different things, though the words are often used synonimously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us." "If I were as rich as Mr. Darcy," cried a young Lucas who came with his sisters, "I should not care how proud I was. I would keep a pack of foxhounds, and drink a bottle of wine every day."
Mr. Collins’ marriage proposal to Elizabeth [B]efore I am run away with [by] my feelings on the subject, perhaps it will be advisable for me to state my reasons for marrying and moreover for coming into Hertfordshire with the design of selecting a wife, as I certainly did. . . . My reasons for marrying are: first, that I think it a right thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example of matrimony in his parish. Secondly, that I am convinced it will add very greatly to my happiness; and thirdly--which perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling patroness . . . Illt was but the very Saturday night before I left Hunsford . . . that she said, 'Mr. Collins, you must marry. A clergyman like you must marry.--clause properly, clause a gentlewoman for my sake; and for your own, let her be an active, useful sort of person, not brought up high, but able to make a small income go a good way. This is my advice. Find such a woman as soon as you can, bring her to Hunsford, and I will visit her.' . . . [T]he fact is, that being, as I am to inherit this estate after the death of your honoured father . . . I could not satisfy myself without resolving to clause a wife from among his daughters, that the loss to them might be as little as possible, when the melancholy event takes place. ( 91 )
Lizzy rejects Darcy (I,10) "Do not you feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize such an opportunity of dancing a reel?" She smiled, but made no answer. He repeated the question, with some surprise at her silence "Oh!" said she, "I heard you before; but I could not immedi ately determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say ""Yes,"' that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste; but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and cheating a person of their premeditated con- tempt. I have therefore made up my mind to tell you, that I do not want to dance a reel at all -- and now despise me if you dare." "Indeed I do not dare." Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry; but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody; and Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her.
Lydia – Wickham vs. Mr. Bennet – Darcy Thus, the fact that Wickham elopes with Lydia from Brighton, intending to enjoy her favors without the benefit of marriage (though she seems to expect to be married--as did the Prince Regent's mistress), would inevitably remind Austen's initial readers of what many perceived to be the accelerated moral decline of the leaders of Great Britain, as well as convey Mr. Bennet's ineffectiveness as a father. If Elizabeth can perceive the danger that Brighton poses to Lydia, her father should be able to perceive it as well. But he chooses instead to retreat to his library and allow Lydia and her mother to have their way. Had he done his duty . . . Lydia need not have been indebted to her uncle, for whatever of honour or credit could now be purchased for her. The satisfaction of prevailing on one of the most worthless young men in Great Britain to be her husband, might then have rested on its proper place. (263) Mr. Bennet deeply regrets his need to rely on his brother-in-law to resolve the Lydia/ Wickham affair, but at least, he believes, the problem has remained within the family, and therefore some degree of propriety has been maintained. In fact, his assumptions are false. Mr. Darcy, a man with no familial attachment to the Bennets (despite his once having proposed to Elizabeth, a fact unknown to the family), has provided Mr. Gardiner with the money necessary to buy Wickham off.
INTERPRETERS OF JANE AUSTEN'S SOCIAL WORLD Literary Critics and Historians by David Spring (1983) The world of Austen’s “novels is real, a part of the real England.But they have had trouble in agreeing on what to call it, on how to characterize it. In the course of more than a century and a half, Jane Austen interpretation has boxed the compass of social respectability. It began by describing her as the annalist of the "middle classes," of "ordinary and middle life." Later she was said to be the aristocracy's annalist, or more commonly the gentry's. Most recently interpretation seems to have turned back to its beginnings and plumped for a bourgeois Jane Austen. High on the list of reasons for calling Jane Austen's society bourgeois, it would seem, is the ubiquity of money in her novels.” (56)
The hybrid world of the rural elite
Strictly speaking, then, Jane Austen belonged to neither of the first two groups
[gentry and aristocracy] in that hybrid world of the rural elite-neither to the
aristocracy nor to the gentry-but to a third group, so far unnamed. This group
comprised the nonlanded […]
This third group, the nonlanded, is the one most likely to be described by Jane
Austen interpreters as bourgeois-although some (as we have seen) have also
described the entire world of neighborhood as bourgeois. The word, however,
ill suits both the smaller as well as the larger social unit. For bourgeois evokes
an urban-or at least an actively trading- milieu. It also evokes a degree of social
hostility-of class antagonism. [...] Alan Everitt invented the word pseudo-
gentry as a helpful substitute for the word bourgeois, having in mind the
latter's misleading overtones. He used it first for seventeenth-century English
society, later for a time more appropriate to Jane Austen's society. [...]
Of this positional competition, central to the lifestyle of the world of
neighborhood, no one knew more than Jane Austen.Her novels are full of it.
She saw its range and idiosyncrasies and absurdities as someone might who
among other things combined the gifts of an estate agent, family lawyer, and
auctioneer.Eighteenth-Century Society in England
In fact, as historians are only now coming to agree, eighteenth-century
English society was not, like the French, an ancien régime society.
Eighteenth-century English landowners were thus neither effete nor
reactionary; instead, they were strong and progressive. They were, first
and foremost, a political class, predominant in the localities and at
Westminster, in effect England's governing class. They were to remain in
this position of strength, in spite of an occasional faltering, throughout the
nineteenth century. As a political class, unlike contemporary European
landed elites, they were libertarian rather than repressive: the state they
governed was not a police state. Finally, they were a businesslike,
capitalist class. This last, perhaps, is central to the removal of
misunderstandings among Jane Austen interpreters. Although English
landowners were not commercial or industrial capitalists, they were
agrarian capitalists. In their own sphere, they were economic modernizersThe first goes as follows: At the close of the 18th century, the gentry were beginning to experience the financial decline that would gather force through the century. The increase in population, particularly an urban population, threatened the traditions of the relatively small gentry. In Mansfield Park we witness the gentry's resistance to urban values. The historical suggestiveness of the social picture of Mansfield Park seems to me to be tolerably profound for a supposedly ahistorical novelist. All of these changes in the economic and social life of the nation are registered in the personal lives of the characters. From its economic to its spiritual condition, the world of Mansfield Park is a world in transition and decline.
It needs therefore to be said again that the world of the rural elite was neither going bankrupt in the early nineteenth century nor disintegrating spiritually and socially. No group within it was casting out the others. There were no simple winners or losers. Moreover, those virtues ascribed exclusively to the bourgeoisie, or, as I have called them, the pseudo- gentry (if I may list them again)-confidence, aggressiveness, daring, an eye for money and the main chance-were far from being unknown to landowners.
subgenres The Picaresque The Gothic Novel The Epistolary Novel The Novel of Sensibility The Women‘s Rights Novel The Domestic Novel The Courtship Novel The Conduct Book
Hester Chapone On the Improvement of the Mind (1770?),
Jane West Letters to a Young Lady (1806), and
Catherine Macaulay Graham's Letters on Education (1790)
Chapone:
Economy is so important a part of a women's character, so necessary to her own
happiness, and so essential to her performing properly the duties of a wife and
of a mother, that it ought to have the precedence of all other
accomplishments, and take its rank next to the first duties of life. It is,
moreover, an art as well as a virtue; and many well-meaning persons, from
ignorance, or from inconsideration are strangely deficient in it. (88)
the chief of these is a competent share of reading, well chosen and properly
regulated. . . . Dancing, and the knowledge of the French tongue, are now so
universal, that they cannot be dispensed with in the education of a
gentlewoman; and indeed, they are both useful as well as ornamental: the first
by forming and strengthening the body, and improving the carriage; the
second, by opening a large field of entertainment and improvement for the
mind. . . .
To write a free and legible hand, and to understand common arithmetic, are
indispensable requisites.
As to music and drawing, I would only wish you to follow as genious [innate
ability] leads. (109-111)FROM JANE WEST, LETTERS TO A YOUNG LADY, IN WHICH
THE DUTIES AND CHARACTER OF WOMEN ARE CONSIDERED
(London, 1806, 2nd ed., 3 vols.)
It is a false and dangerous assertion, that single women must at best pass their lives in a
dull mediocrity, removed indeed from lively griefs, but unacquainted with real
enjoyment. Spinsters may be daughters, sisters, aunts, and friends, though they are not
wives and mothers. Every one's experience can supply instances, wherein as much
warmth of attachment and solicitude of attention have accompanied the fraternal, as
ever hallowed the conjugal tie. How many helpless orphans have found maternal
tenderness supplied by the attachment of an aunt! How many parents have perceived the
joyless portion of extreme old age turned into the downy pillow of repose, by the
assiduous watchfulness of an unconnected daughter! Friendship, too, may reign in the
heart of the single woman with unrivalled influence; and the absolute power that she
possesses over her time and property gives an extensive range to her patriotic and
charitable exertions. Ladies who are thus circumstanced are the properest patronesses of
public undertakings; they are the natural protectors of the friendless, and the proprietors
of those funds to which genius and indigence have a right to apply.Where is the real world of Jane Austen‘s novels located
It would be fair to say that the bulk of Jane Austen
interpreters have had no trouble in agreeing that the world
of her novels is real, a part of the real England.But they
have had trouble in agreeing on what to call it, on how to
characterize it. In the course of more than a century and a
half, Jane Austen interpretation has boxed the compass of
social respectability. It began by describing her as the
annalist of the "middle classes," of "ordinary and middle
life." Later she was said to be the aristocracy's annalist, or
more commonly the gentry's. Most recently interpretation
seems to have turned back to its beginnings and plumped
for a bourgeois Jane Austen (Spring 56).Northanger Abbey Catherine Morland - experiences threats to her safety as well as her innocence due to her acquaintance with the Tilney family - is not the typical heroine - threats to her innocence occur right in the heart of England in Austen's present time Why? – because she confuses reality and fiction after having read too many gothic novels
Henry Tilney and Catherine Morland He [Henry Tilney] smiled, and said, "You have formed a very favourable idea of the abbey." "To be sure I have. Is not it a fine old place, just like what one reads about?" "And are you prepared to encounter all the horrors that a building such as ""what one reads about"" may produce? -- Have you a stout heart? -- Nerves fit for sliding pannels and tapestry?" "Oh! yes -- I do not think I should be easily frightened, because there would be so many people in the house -- and besides, it has never been uninhabited and left deserted for years, and then the family come back to it unawares, without giving any notice, as generally happens."
To raise your spirits, moreover, she gives you reason to suppose that the part of the abbey you inhabit is undoubtedly haunted, and informs you that you will not have a single domestic within call. With this parting cordial she curtseys off -- you listen to the sound of her receding footsteps as long as the last echo can reach you -- and when, with fainting spirits, you attempt to fasten your door, you discover, with increased alarm, that it has no lock." "Oh! Mr. Tilney, how frightful! -- This is just like a book! -- But it cannot really happen to me. I am sure your housekeeper is not really Dorothy. -- Well, what then?" "Nothing further to alarm perhaps may occur the first night. After surmounting your unconquerable horror of the bed, you will retire to rest, and get a few hours' unquiet slumber. But on the second, or at farthest the third night after your arrival, you will probably have a violent storm. Peals of thunder so loud as to seem to shake the edifice to its foundation will roll round the neighbouring mountains
Fictitious motives – real terrors "What! not when Dorothy has given you to understand that there is a secret subterraneous communication between your apartment and the chapel of St. Anthony, scarcely two miles off -- Could you shrink from so simple an adventure? No, no, you will proceed into this small vaulted room, and through this into several others, without perceiving any thing very remarkable in either. In one perhaps there may be a dagger, in another a few drops of blood, and in a third the remains of some instrument of torture; but there being nothing in all this out of the common way, and your lamp being nearly exhausted, you will return towards your own apartment. In repassing through the small vaulted room, however, your eyes will be attracted towards a large, old-fashioned cabinet of ebony and gold, which, though narrowly examining the furniture before, you had passed unnoticed.
Catherine develops an aversion to General Tilney Catherine attempted no longer to hide from herself the nature of the feelings which, in spite of all his attentions, he had previously excited; and what had been terror and dislike before, was now absolute aversion. Yes, aversion! His cruelty to such a charming woman made him odious to her. She had often read of such characters; characters, which Mr. Allen had been used to call unnatural and overdrawn;
Mansfield Park (1811; 3rd novel) Mansfield Park, therefore, is the first novel both conceived and entirely written by the mature Jane Austen. discussions of serious issues such as - Ordination - Adultery - the effects of environmental influences on the individual. - behavior of the Crawfords, and Maria and Tom Bertram reflect the behavior of the Royal Princes, Princess, and their companions => moral decadence of the time
Characters and Families
Bertrams, Norrises, and Prices
Lady Bertram, Mrs. Price, and Mrs. Norris are sisters (Mrs. Norris is the eldest of the three, and
Lady Bertram the youngest). The names of characters who have died before the period of the
main action of Mansfield Park are put in parentheses.
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| | |
Sir Thomas === Maria, Lady Bertram (Rev. Norris) === Mrs. Norris |
Bertram, Baronet | née Ward |
| |
+--------+--------+------+------+ |
| | | | |
Tom Edmund Maria Julia |
ELDEST |
SON Lieut. Price === Mrs. Price
née Frances Ward
+-------+------+------+-------+-------+------+------+-----+-+-------+
William FANNY John Richard Susan (Mary) Sam Tom Charles Betsy
!_______________!
These three born after Fanny went to MansfieldCrawfords and Grants
We are told that Admiral Crawford was the uncle of Mary and Henry, and that Mrs. Grant
was the half-sister of Mary and Henry. (From the following passage from Chapter 3 it
seems that they have a common mother, since Mrs. Grant "knows nothing" of Henry and
Mary's father's brother: "As children, their sister had been always very fond of them; but,
as her own marriage had been soon followed by the death of their common parent, which
left them to the care of a brother of their father, of whom Mrs. Grant knew nothing, she
had scarcely seen them since.") In the chart, "(M)" stands for a deceased male, and "(F)"
for a deceased female.
+---------------------------------+
| |
(M) === (F) === (M) (Mrs. Crawford) === Admiral Crawford ~ mistress
| |
+---------------------+------------------+
| | |
Mrs. Grant === Dr. Grant Mary Crawford Henry CrawfordMansfield Park functions as a microcosm of England
Sir Thomas, owner of the estate and holder of immense wealth, is the leader. His demands are always met. No one challenges him
Lady Bertram is an insubstantial and ineffective woman who enjoys the luxuries of life as the wife of a baronet without having to take
responsibility for anything. Lady Bertram is so passive as to seem almost invisible, the embodiment of feme covert, the hidden or
invisible woman under law.
Mrs. Norris is nothing like her sister, the baronet's wife. In fact, of the two members of the Norris couple, the reader meets only the wife.
That Mrs. Norris is an active force in the novel is appropriate to her social position. Clergymen of the lower gentry level of society
in late eighteenth-century England tended to have sufficient money to keep the rectory in good operating condition and to support a
small family, but unless he had also inherited substantial wealth, he rarely had extra for luxuries.
The third sister, Mrs. Price, finds herself in need of the energy that Mrs. Norris has. As the mother of nine children living in working-
class accommodations in a port town, Mrs. Price has no time or energy to do anything other than take care of her home, her
husband, and her children.
Among the younger generation at Mansfield Park, Tom represents that portion of the generation who is destined to inherit the wealth of
England. Just as the Royal Princes of England enjoy a carefree lifestyle in which they obey few rules and show respect for even
fewer, so does Tom Bertram refuse to live by the rules of propriety and decorum that his father expects him to follow. Instead, Tom
rules over the house in his father's absence, almost as though he already owns it.
Maria and Julia Bertram hold very similar positions in the society of which Mansfield Park is a part. Both are daughters of a wealthy and
well-respected landowner. Both have expectations of marrying wealthy men and becoming mistresses over lavish estates. And both,
as women of the landed classes, have no lifestyle options beyond marriage or life as a dependent sister or aunt.
But if Julia must give way to Maria, Fanny, in her position as the dependent cousin who has been saved from a life of poverty by the
goodness of her uncle's heart, must give way to everyone in the household. She must be willing to keep Lady Bertram company and
run errands for Mrs. Norris with never a complaint. Such is the life of a dependent female relative in Jane Austen's England.
Fanny is fortunate in many ways. She receives an excellent education for a girl of her time, something she could not have acquired had
she remained at Portsmouth with her parents. Being raised at Mansfield Park prepares her well for the role of wife to the future
clergyman, Edmund Bertram.
Edmund, as the younger son in the Bertram family, has more in common with Fanny than with any of his siblings. While they are being
raised with the expectations of being taken care of for life (Tom by his inheritance of Mansfield Park, his sisters by marriage to
wealthy men), Edmund is raised knowing that he will have to support himself. Therefore Edmund, like Fanny, has to consider a less
affluent adulthood than his childhood might otherwise lead him to expect.
Social status in the England of Austen's time determined much about a person's upbringing, expectations, and possibilities. The social
status of the characters at Mansfield Park itself is stable, representing the way things have been for generations. One character in
the novel, however, represents a future in which social status can be earned by merit as well as birth. William Price, Fanny's
beloved brother, joins the Navy.Moral standards personified in Fanny and Edmund In her biography of Austen, Claire Tomalin details the family reaction: Austen’s her mother found the virtuous heroine "insipid." Anna [Austen's niece] also declared that she "could not bear Fanny." Edward's son George [Austen's nephew] disliked Fanny too, and much preferred Mary Crawford. . . . as for Cassandra [Austen's sister], although she was "fond of Fanny," she also, according to one of her nieces, tried to persuade Jane to let her marry Henry Crawford; which suggests that the "moral tendency' so much admired by other readers did not impress her much. (225-226)
"We must rather adopt Mr. Crawford's views, and make the
performance, not the theatre, our object. Many parts of our
Theatre play
best plays are independent of scenery."
"Nay," said Edmund, who began to listen with alarm. "Let us do nothing by halves. If we
are to act, let it be in a theatre completely fitted up with pit, boxes, and gallery, and let us
have a play entire from beginning to end; so as it be a German play, …" […]
After a short pause, however, the subject still continued, and was discussed with unabated
eagerness, […] He [Edmund] was determined to prevent it, if possible, though his
mother, who equally heard the conversation which passed at table, did not evince the
least disapprobation.
The same evening afforded him an opportunity of trying his strength. […] “… by merely
moving the bookcase in my father's room, is the very thing we could have desired, if we
had sat down to wish for it; and my father's room will be an excellent greenroom. It
seems to join the billiard-room on purpose."
"You are not serious, Tom, in meaning to act?" said Edmund, in a low voice, as his brother
approached the fire.
"Not serious! never more so, I assure you. What is there to surprise you in it?"
“[…] It would shew great want of feeling on my father's account, absent as he is, and in
some degree of constant danger; and it would be imprudent, I think, with regard to Maria,
whose situation is a very delicate one, considering everything, extremely delicate."
"You take up a thing so seriously! as if we were going to act three times a week till my
father's return, and invite all the country. But it is not to be a display of that sort. We
mean nothing but a little amusement among ourselves, just to vary the scene, and exercise
our powers in something new. We want no audience, no publicity.”Fanny is sent to her parents‘ home to Portsmouth by Sir Thomas after having rejected Henry‘s proposal to marry her Fanny was almost stunned. The smallness of the house, and thinness of the walls, brought every thing so close to her, that, added to the fatigue of her journey, and all her recent agitation, she hardly knew how to bear it. Within the room all was tranquil enough, for Susan having disappeared with the others, there were soon only her father and herself remaining; and he taking out a newspaper—the accustomary loan of a neighbour, applied himself to studying it, without seeming to recollect her existence. The solitary candle was held between himself and the paper, without any reference to her possible convenience; but she had nothing to do, and was glad to have the light screened from her aching head, as she sat in bewildered, broken, sorrow-ful contemplation. She was at home. But alas! it was not such a home, she had not such a welcome, as—she checked herself; she was unreasonable ... A day or two might shew the difference. She only was to blame. Yet she thought it would not have been so at Mansfield. No, in her uncle's house there would have been a consideration of times and seasons, a regulation of subject, a propriety, an attention towards every body which there was not here.
Sir Thomas’ Return
How is the consternation of the party to be described? To the greater number it was a
moment of absolute horror. Sir Thomas in the house! All felt the instantaneous
conviction. Not a hope of imposition or mistake was harboured anywhere. Julia's looks
were an evidence of the fact that made it indisputable; and after the first starts and
exclamations, not a word was spoken for half a minute: each with an altered
countenance was looking at some other, and almost each was feeling it a stroke the
most unwelcome, most ill-timed, most appalling!
[…]
"What will become of us? what is to be done now?" It was a terrible pause; and terrible to
every ear were the corroborating sounds of opening doors and passing footsteps.
[…]
Sir Thomas was at that moment looking round him, and saying, "But where is Fanny? Why
do not I see my little Fanny?"--and on perceiving her, came forward with a kindness
which astonished and penetrated her, calling her his dear Fanny, kissing her
affectionately, and observing with decided pleasure how much she was grown! Fanny
knew not how to feel, nor where to look. She was quite oppressed. He had never been
so kind, so _very_ kind to her in his life. His manner seemed changed, his voice was
quick from the agitation of joy; and all that had been awful in his dignity seemed lost in
tenderness.Sir Thomas returning from Antigua His business in Antigua had latterly been prosperously rapid, and he came directly from Liverpool, having had an opportunity of making his passage thither in a private vessel, instead of waiting for the packet; and all the little particulars of his proceedings and events, his arrivals and departures, were most promptly delivered, as he sat by Lady Bertram and looked with heartfelt satisfaction on the faces around him- -interrupting himself more than once, however, to remark on his good fortune in finding them all at home--coming unexpectedly as he did-- all collected together exactly as he could have wished, but dared not depend on
slave plantations in Antigua
A slave
plantation
in Antigua
in the early
19th
century.
The
windmills
were used
to crush
sugar cane.
According to Austen we are to conclude that no matter how isolated and insulated the English place
(e.g. Mansfield Park), it requires overseas sustenance. Sir Thomas's property in the Caribbean would
have had to be a sugar plantation maintained by slave labour (not abolished until the 18305): these
are not dead historical facts but, as Austen certainly knew, evident historical realities. (Said 107)Centre and Margins of the Empire The second more complex matter about which Austen speaks, albeit indirectly, raises an interesting theoretical issue. Austen's awareness of empire is obviously very different, alluded to very much more casually, than Conrad's or Kipling's. In her time the British were extremely active in the Caribbean and in South America, notably Brazil and Argentina. Austen seems only vaguely aware of the details of these activities, although the sense that extensive West Indian plantations were important was fairly wide-spread in metropolitan England. Antigua and Sir Thomas's trip there have a definitive function in Mansfield Park, which, I have been saying, is both incidental, referred to only in passing, and absolutely crucial to the action. How are we to assess Austen's few references to Antigua, and what are we to make of them interpretatively? (Said, 106)
reestablishment of Sir Thomas's local rule
on his return from Antigua
It was a busy morning with him. Conversation with any of them occupied but
a small part of it. He had to reinstate himself in all the wonted concerns of his
Mansfield life, to see his steward and his bailiff—to examine and compute—
and, in the intervals of business, to walk into his stables and his gardens, and
nearest plantations; but active and methodical, he had not only done all this
before he resumed his seat as master of the house at dinner, he had also set the
carpenter to work in pulling down what had been so lately put up in the
billiard room, and given the scene painter his dismissal, long enough to justify
the pleasing belief of his being then at least as far off as Nor-thampton. The
scene painter was gone, having spoilt only the floor of one room, ruined all the
coachman's sponges, and made five of the under-servants idle and dissatisfied;
and Sir Thomas was in hopes that another day or two would suffice to wipe
away every outward memento of what had been, even to the destruction of
every unbound copy of 'Lovers' Vows' in the house, for he was burning all that
met his eyeEdward Said about this scene
from Mansfield Park
More clearly than anywhere else in her fiction, Austen here
synchronizes domestic with international authority, making it plain that
the values associated with such higher things as ordination, law, and
propriety must be grounded firmly in actual rule over and possession
of territory. She sees clearly that to hold and rule Mansfield Park is to
hold and rule an imperial estate in close, not to say inevitable
association with it. What assures the domestic tranquillity and
attractive harmony of one is the productivity and regulated discipline
of the other. (104)
Edward Said, Culture and Materialism, 1993.John Stuart Mill's Principles of
Political Economy
spirit of Austen's use of Antigua as defined by Mill.
These are hardly to be looked upon as countries, carrying on an exchange
of commodities with other countries, but more properly as outlying
agricultural or manufacturing estates belonging to a larger community.
Our West Indian colonies, for example, cannot be regarded as countries
with a productive capital of their own . .. [but are rather] the place where
England finds it convenient to carry on the production of sugar, coffee
and a few other tropical commodities. All the capital employed is
English capital; almost all the industry is carried on for English uses;
there is little production of anything except for staple commodities, and
these are sent to England, not to be exchanged for things exported to the
colony and consumed by its inhabitants, but to be sold in England for the
benefit of the proprietors there. The trade with the West Indies is hardly
to be considered an external trade, but more resembles the traffic
between town and country. (quoted from Said 108).You can also read
