A general silence succeeded. Each was thoughtful. Fanny made the first interruption by saying, "I wonder that I should be tired with only walking in this sweet wood; but the next time we come to a seat, if it is not disagreeable to you, I should be glad to sit down for a little while." "My dear Fanny," cried Edmund, immediately drawing her arm within his, "how thoughtless I have been! I hope you are not very tired.

(p. 74)

“I am afraid you are very tired, Fanny," said Edmund, observing her; "why would not you speak sooner? This will be a bad day's amusement for you if you are to be knocked up. Every sort of exercise fatigues her so soon, Miss Crawford, except riding."

(p. 75)

“Fanny Price’s stressors include alienation from a (minimally) supportive family background, inferior social status, her consciousness of which is repeatedly re-enforced, and an affection which is socially impermissible. The external disconfirming experience is replicated by her internal self-criticism. These stresses are driven back into and played out in her body.”

John Wiltshire, Jane Austen and the Body: "The Picture of Health" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

A general silence succeeded. Each was thoughtful. Fanny made the first interruption by saying, "I wonder that I should be tired with only walking in this sweet wood; but the next time we come to a seat, if it is not disagreeable to you, I should be glad to sit down for a little while." "My dear Fanny," cried Edmund, immediately drawing her arm within his, "how thoughtless I have been! I hope you are not very tired.

(p. 74)

“I am afraid you are very tired, Fanny," said Edmund, observing her; "why would not you speak sooner? This will be a bad day's amusement for you if you are to be knocked up. Every sort of exercise fatigues her so soon, Miss Crawford, except riding."

(p. 75)

Fanny looked on and listened, not unamused to observe the selfishness which, more or less disguised, seemed to govern them all, and wondering how it would end. For her own gratification she could have wished that something might be acted, for she had never seen even half a play, but everything of higher consequence was against it.

(p. 104)

You will have a sweet little wife; all gratitude and devotion. Exactly what you deserve.

(p. 228)

The gentleness and gratitude of her disposition would secure her all your own immediately.

(p. 229)

The advantage or disadvantage of your family, of your parents, your brothers and sisters, never seems to have had a moment's share in your thoughts on this occasion. How they might be benefited, how they must rejoice in such an establishment for you, is nothing to you. You think only of yourself, and because you do not feel for Mr. Crawford exactly what a young heated fancy imagines to be necessary for happiness, you resolve to refuse him at once, without wishing even for a little time to consider of it, a little more time for cool consideration, and for really examining your own inclinations; and are, in a wild fit of folly, throwing away from you such an opportunity of being settled in life, eligibly, honourably, nobly settled, as will, probably, never occur to you again. Here is a young man of sense, of character, of temper, of manners, and of fortune, exceedingly attached to you, and seeking your hand in the most handsome and disinterested way; and let me tell you, Fanny, that you may live eighteen years longer in the world without being addressed by a man of half Mr. Crawford's estate, or a tenth part of his merits.

(p. 249)

We were unlucky, Miss Price," he continued, in a lower tone, to avoid the possibility of being heard by Edmund, and not at all aware of her feelings, "we certainly were very unlucky. Another week, only one other week, would have been enough for us. I think if we had had the disposal of events—if Mansfield Park had had the government of the winds just for a week or two, about the equinox, there would have been a difference. Not that we would have endangered his safety by any tremendous weather—but only by a steady contrary wind, or a calm. I think, Miss Price, we would have indulged ourselves with a week's calm in the Atlantic at that season." He seemed determined to be answered; and Fanny, averting her face, said, with a firmer tone than usual, "As far as I am concerned, sir, I would not have delayed his return for a day. My uncle disapproved it all so entirely when he did arrive, that in my opinion everything had gone quite far enough." She had never spoken so much at once to him in her life before, and never so angrily to any one; and when her speech was over, she trembled and blushed at her own daring.

(pp. 176-7)

Fanny agreed to it, and had the pleasure of seeing him continue at the window with her, in spite of the expected glee; and of having his eyes soon turned, like hers, towards the scene without, where all that was solemn, and soothing, and lovely, appeared in the brilliancy of an unclouded night, and the contrast of the deep shade of the woods. Fanny spoke her feelings. "Here's harmony!" said she; "here's repose! Here's what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what poetry only can attempt to describe! Here's what may tranquillise every care, and lift the heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene."

(pp. 89-90)

Her mind had been never farther from peace. She could not feel that she had done wrong herself, but she was disquieted in every other way. Her heart and her judgment were equally against Edmund's decision: she could not acquit his unsteadiness, and his happiness under it made her wretched. She was full of jealousy and agitation.

(p. 125)

He was gone as he spoke; and Fanny remained to tranquillise herself as she could. She was one of his two dearest—that must support her. But the other: the first! She had never heard him speak so openly before, and though it told her no more than what she had long perceived, it was a stab, for it told of his own convictions and views. They were decided. He would marry Miss Crawford. It was a stab, in spite of every long-standing expectation; and she was obliged to repeat again and again, that she was one of his two dearest, before the words gave her any sensation. Could she believe Miss Crawford to deserve him, it would be—oh, how different would it be—how far more tolerable! But he was deceived in her: he gave her merits which she had not; her faults were what they had ever been, but he saw them no longer. Till she had shed many tears over this deception, Fanny could not subdue her agitation; and the dejection which followed could only be relieved by the influence of fervent prayers for his happiness. It was her intention, as she felt it to be her duty, to try to overcome all that was excessive, all that bordered on selfishness, in her affection for Edmund. To call or to fancy it a loss, a disappointment, would be a presumption for which she had not words strong enough to satisfy her own humility. To think of him as Miss Crawford might be justified in thinking, would in her be insanity. To her he could be nothing under any circumstances; nothing dearer than a friend. Why did such an idea occur to her even enough to be reprobated and forbidden? It ought not to have touched on the confines of her imagination. She would endeavour to be rational, and to deserve the right of judging of Miss Crawford's character, and the privilege of true solicitude for him by a sound intellect and an honest heart.(207-8)

(p. 125)

all that was excessive, all that bordered on selfishness, in her affection for Edmund. To call or to fancy it a loss, a disappointment, would be a presumption for which she had not words strong enough to satisfy her own humility. To think of him as Miss Crawford might be justified in thinking, would in her be insanity. To her he could be nothing under any circumstances; nothing dearer than a friend. Why did such an idea occur to her even enough to be reprobated and forbidden? It ought not to have touched on the confines of her imagination. She would endeavour to be rational, and to deserve the right of judging of Miss Crawford's character, and the privilege of true solicitude for him by a sound intellect and an honest heart.

(pp. 207-8)

Engraving by William Blake, after drawings by John

Gabriel Stedman, for Stedman's The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against

the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1796)

Thomas Clarkson

Thomas Hearne, Sugar Plantation, Antigua (1779)

Your uncle is disposed to be pleased with you in every respect; and I only wish you would talk to him more. You are one of those who are too silent in the evening circle." "But I do talk to him more than I used. I am sure I do. Did not you hear me ask him about the slave-trade last night?" "I did—and was in hopes the question would be followed up by others. It would have pleased your uncle to be inquired of farther." "And I longed to do it—but there was such a dead silence! And while my cousins were sitting by without speaking a word, or seeming at all interested in the subject, I did not like—I thought it would appear as if I wanted to set myself off at their expense, by shewing a curiosity and pleasure in his information which he must wish his own daughters to feel."

(p. 155)

Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993).

Antigua ‘sustains’ the life that is depicted in the novel – and Sir Thomas’s plantations there serve as parallel to as and extension of his English estate.

Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993).

Antigua ‘sustains’ the life that is depicted in the novel – and Sir Thomas’s plantations there serve as parallel to as and extension of his English estate.

Both at ‘home’ and in the colonies, Sir Thomas Bertram is the master, the overseer.

Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993).

Antigua ‘sustains’ the life that is depicted in the novel – and Sir Thomas’s plantations there serve as parallel to as and extension of his English estate.

Both at ‘home’ and in the colonies, Sir Thomas Bertram is the master, the overseer.

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 […]

(p. 149)

Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993).

Antigua ‘sustains’ the life that is depicted in the novel – and Sir Thomas’s plantations there serve as parallel to as and extension of his English estate.

Both at ‘home’ and in the colonies, Sir Thomas Bertram is the master, the overseer.

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 […]

(p. 149)

‘Austen here synchronizes domestic and international authority […] 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.’ (Said, p. 87)

Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993).

Said also points to the way in which Fanny is herself ‘a transported commodity’. She accrues value by moving from one space (Portsmouth) to another (Mansfield), just as the sugar grown on Sir T’s plantation accrues value by moving from Antigua to England. (88-89)

Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993).

Said also points to the way in which Fanny is herself ‘a transported commodity’. She accrues value by moving from one space (Portsmouth) to another (Mansfield), just as the sugar grown on Sir T’s plantation accrues value by moving from Antigua to England. (88-89)

‘Antigua is like London or Portsmouth, a less desirable setting than a country estate like Mansfield Park, but producing goods to be consumed by everyone’. (Said, pp. 90-91)

Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993).

Said also points to the way in which Fanny is herself ‘a transported commodity’. She accrues value by moving from one space (Portsmouth) to another (Mansfield), just as the sugar grown on Sir T’s plantation accrues value by moving from Antigua to England. (88-89)

‘Antigua is like London or Portsmouth, a less desirable setting than a country estate like Mansfield Park, but producing goods to be consumed by everyone’. (Said, pp. 90-91)

What is absent within (money, propriety) can be provided from ‘without’. (Said, pp. 91-2)

Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993).

Said also points to the way in which Fanny is herself ‘a transported commodity’. She accrues value by moving from one space (Portsmouth) to another (Mansfield), just as the sugar grown on Sir T’s plantation accrues value by moving from Antigua to England. (88-89)

‘Antigua is like London or Portsmouth, a less desirable setting than a country estate like Mansfield Park, but producing goods to be consumed by everyone’. (Said, pp. 90-91)

What is absent within (money, propriety) can be provided from ‘without’. (Said, pp. 91-2)

Said showing that the moral and social system that is at the centre of Austen’s novel is not separable from imperialism.

‘Mansfield Park connects the actualities of British power overseas to the domestic imbroglio within the Bertram estate’. (p. 95)

Attacks on Said

White, Gabrielle D.V. Jane Austen in the Context of Abolition. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Attacks on Said

White, Gabrielle D.V. Jane Austen in the Context of Abolition. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Boulukos, George E. “The Politics of Silence: Mansfield Park and the Amelioration of Slavery.” Novel 39 (2006): 361-85.

Attacks on Said

White, Gabrielle D.V. Jane Austen in the Context of Abolition. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Boulukos, George E. “The Politics of Silence: Mansfield Park and the Amelioration of Slavery.” Novel 39 (2006): 361-85.

If we imagine that Fanny asks her uncle about the "slave trade" enthusiastically, because she sees him as a morally exemplary slave-owner, the exchange as Austen represents it makes far more sense.

Your uncle is disposed to be pleased with you in every respect; and I only wish you would talk to him more. You are one of those who are too silent in the evening circle." "But I do talk to him more than I used. I am sure I do. Did not you hear me ask him about the slave-trade last night?" "I did—and was in hopes the question would be followed up by others. It would have pleased your uncle to be inquired of farther." "And I longed to do it—but there was such a dead silence! And while my cousins were sitting by without speaking a word, or seeming at all interested in the subject, I did not like—I thought it would appear as if I wanted to set myself off at their expense, by shewing a curiosity and pleasure in his information which he must wish his own daughters to feel."

(p. 155)

His prime motive in sending her away, had very little to do with the propriety of her seeing her parents again, and nothing at all with any idea of making her happy. He certainly wished her to go willingly, but he as certainly wished her to be heartily sick of home before her visit ended; and that a little abstinence from the elegancies and luxuries of Mansfield Park, would bring her mind into a sober state, and incline her to a juster estimate of the value of that home of greater permanence, and equal comfort, of which she had the offer. (289)

To be in the centre of such a circle, loved by so many, and more loved by all than she had ever been before, to feel affection without fear of restraint, to feel herself the equal of those who surrounded her, to be at peace from all mention of the Crawfords, safe from every look which could be fancied a reproach on their account!—This was a prospect to be dwelt on a fondness that could be but half acknowledged. (290)

PORTSMOUTH• Dirt and propriety

• Identity and origins

• Delay and displacement

William was gone;—and the home he had left her in was—Fanny could not conceal it from herself—in almost every respect, the very reverse of what she could have wished It was the abode of noise, disorder, and impropriety. Nobody was in their right place, nothing was done as it ought to be. She could not respect her parents, as she had hoped. (305)

A meal at the Price home in Portsmouth (from Patricia Rozema’s film adaptation)

She felt that she had, indeed, been three months there; and the sun’s rays falling strongly into the parlour, instead of cheering, made her still more melancholy; for sun-shine appeared to her a totally different thing in a town and in the country. Here its power was only a glare, a stifling, sickly glare, serving but to bring forward stains and dirt that would otherwise have slept. There was neither health nor gaiety in sun-shine in a town. She sat in a blaze of oppressive heat, in a cloud of moving dust and her eyes could only wander from the walls marked by her fathers’ head, to the table cut and knotched by her brothers, where stood the tea-board never thoroughly cleaned, the cups and saucers wiped in streaks, the mild a mixture of motes floating in this blue, and the bread and butter growing every minute more greasy than even Rebecca’ hands had first produced it. (345)

The horror of a mind like Fanny’s, as it received the conviction of such guilt, and began to take in some part of the misery that must ensue, can hardly be described. At first, it was a sort of stupefaction, but every moment was quickening her perception of the horrible evil. … Fanny seemed to herself never to have been shocked before. There was no possibility of rest. The evening passed, without a pause of misery, the night was totally sleepless. She passed only from feelings of sickness to shudderings of horror; and from hot fits of fever to cold. The event was so shocking, that there were moments even when her heart revolted from it as impossible—when she thought it could not be. (346)

PORTSMOUTH• Dirt and propriety

• Identity and origins

• Delay and displacement

She was home. But alas! It was not such a home, she had not such a welcome as---she checked herself; she was unreasonable. What right has she to be of importance to her family? She could have none, so long lost sight of! William’s concerns must be dearest—they always had been—and he had every right. Yet to have so little said or asked about herself---to have scarcely an enquiry made after Mansfield! It did pain her to have Mansfield forgotten; the friends who had done so much--- (300)

When she had been coming to Portsmouth, she had loved to call it her home, had been fond of saying that she was going home; that word had been very dear to her; and so it still was, but it must be applied to Mansfield. That was home. Portsmouth was Portsmouth; Mansfield was home. (338)

PORTSMOUTH• Dirt and propriety

• Identity and origins

• Delay and displacement

NORTHAMPTONSHIRE

PORTSMOUTH

Fanny Price’s England

The postman’s knock within the neighborhood was beginning to bring its daily terrors – (313) This was a letter to be run through eagerly, to be read deliberately, to supply matter for much reflection, and to leave every thing in greater suspense than ever. The only certainty to be drawn from it was, that nothing decisive had yet taken place. Edmund had not yet spoken. (327) At length a something like composure succeeded. Suspense must be submitted to, and must not be allowed to wear her out, and make her useless. Time did something, her own exertions something more, and she resumed her attentions to Susan, and again awakened the same interest in them. (328) Oh! write, write. Finish it at once. Let there be an end of this suspense. Fix, commit, condemn yourself. (333)

The End of the Novel

Had it been possible for her to return Mr. Crawford’s regard, the probability of his being very far from objecting to such a measure, would have been the greatest increase of all her own comforts. She thought he was really good-tempered, and could fancy his entering into a plan of that sort, most pleasantly. (329)

I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people.—I only intreat every body to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny, as Fanny herself could desire. (369)