1/8/00 John - Cheryl's view on Fanny Price

Dear Cheryl,

I cannot understand your objection to Fanny's obedience to Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris. Fanny had been brought to Mansfield Park both to lighten the load on the Prices and to educate and train Fanny to become either a companion (as she was to Lady Bertram) or a governess in the service of some family or other that would need such service when Fanny was old enough to provide it.  She is not a modern American teenager who seems to be completely the mistress of her own life. She is in the care of those who must be obeyed. This is not Hollywood High. If she became unruly--as you suggest she ought to be to gain your respect--she would be sent back to Portsmouth with an explanation and her brute of a father would beat the hell out of her. She would get no protection from the law:  her father's beatings would be regarded only as his duty to straighten out a wayward child. She would know what it was to disobey or give lip to her elders.

If you dislike Mansfield Park because of its definite Christian colouring, then there is no Austen novel for you. They are each a kind of Christian sermon.  Fanny represents the ideal young Christian woman. But it is not an unreachable ideal. There were and are plenty of  young women who regulate their lives according to strict Christian morality. Mary Crawford fails to obtain to this level only because given the choice she chooses to save her brother's social position and not his soul--and not even her own soul. As well, of course, she aims for the glittering social life of London and not a life of submission to the service of others entailed in the lot of a clergyman's wife.

Also, I do not understand what you mean by Fanny's lacking free will. Anyone governed by free will can do nothing but the right thing. A free will is one that is not tainted or motivated by error. A free will is the opposite of liberty and licence. In the case of a child, free will will be exercised in obedience to parents and learning the paths to moral and spiritual perfection. Mary Crawford chooses an immoral way of trying to save her brother against the dictates of her religion. She has liberty but no free will. Maria Bertram is absolutely at the control of her desires. She has no free will, but she is able to do whatever she feels like doing.

As for the young women you have mentioned, they are all on the path, a journey, to understanding themselves. They are governed by principles which do not permit them to choose easy ways out. Emma may seem to be motivated differently than are Elizabeth and Anne, but in everything, although wrong, she puts herself into the service of others. Her epiphany brings her into communion with the Martins and Jane Fairfax, and marriage to Knightley.

I hope that I have made your day a little brighter.
John

1/10/00 Julie Grassi - [banya@bigpond.com] free will

Dear Sir,

I don't know what you've done for anybody else, but you've certainly brightened MY day!  I plan to take your submission to work tomorrow, to explain that, by deciding not to go today, I was exercising free will, and therefore, must have been right.  Whether their agreement with this view will be reflected in my pay packet remains to be seen ...

I don't know whether the above is an expression of a Christian viewpoint, as I don't happen to be a Christian and am ignorant in this area, or whether it is a philosophical stance, but I can say that my free will has got me into far more trouble over the years than self-discipline - maybe I'm Henry Crawford in disguise!

1/8/00 Julie Grassi - [banya@bigpond.com] This is getting interesting!

Dear Sir,

What we would have to find out, then, is whether it would actually be possible for a gentleman in late eighteenth/early nineteenth century England to run a profitable estate in Antigua without slaves!  Absentee landlordism has its problems for a few Jane Austen characters:  Henry Crawford himself being one - and his estate was only in the north of England.  I must see if I can do a little digging and find out just what the economics in Antigua would have been at the time. Regardless of personal opinion, Sir Thomas may have been obliged to own slaves, or to allow his manager to own them, perhaps, in order to run his estate at a profit.  And of course, slavery is not always slavery ... unless you happen to be the poor bastard with the chain around your neck: Australia imported cheap island labour in the nineteenth century to work the cane fields in Queensland; they were a kind of indentured servant - not slaves, but certainly not free, either. Our aborigines for many years of this century were paid either no wages or a pittance for working as stockmen on the large pastoral holdings to the north:  paying in tea, sugar, flour and cloth was common, and there was an almighty stink when award wages began to be demanded.  These are just two of the more subtle ways in which one social group can exploit another, while avoiding the term 'slavery'.
Julie

1/8/00 Ashton - How slaveholders avoided the term "slave"

Dear Julie,

You are dead on correct - again. That is our task. I had put that on my "to do" list, but if you do it, it will be done better and sooner.

Amongst American abolitionists of the time, a slave was called a "slave". But, that term was not used in the south; there a slave was always called a "servant". Abolitionists would taunt the slaveholder with, "Well, if all slaves are 'servants', then are not all servants slaves?" (The irony, or course, is that my answer to the question is an unqualified "yes!")

This led to an interesting problem in the writing of our constitution. Let me give you some background. The Constitution was written about a decade after the Revolution when it was very clear that our original rules weren't working. Fortunately, Thomas Jefferson was in Europe at the time, so he couldn't screw it up. It was written in a convention, but the basics were invented by only two men, the aforementioned Alexander Hamilton of New York and James Madison of Virginia. It was written by one man, Morris of Pennsylvania - a very articulate man indeed! The convention almost came unglued over the issue of slavery and the greatest problem in that regard came over the way that the states would be represented in congress. It was decided that the representation would be on the basis of population, but how was "population" to be counted? Abolitionists were adamant that slaves were not to be counted because the slave states would never allow them to vote. The southern states were equally adamant that slaves must be counted; otherwise, the abolitionist states would control Congress and the first act would be to abolish slavery. Neither side would budge; so, the problem was sidestepped with a compromise: 3/5^ths of the slaves would be counted and, in that way, the representation of the slave states would equal that of the abolitionist states. The next problem was how was Morris to write this up? The northerners said "slave" but the southerner's said "servant"; also, there was that class of exploited Europeans, the "indentured servants" and that term would lead to confusion. Here is Morris's ingenious solution:

"3. Representation and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons. ..." ARTICLE I, Section 2

"Indians not taxed" means those native-Americans who, by treaty, were citizens of a soveriegn nation not the USA. Incidentally, notice that taxes and represention were both to be determined by population. The first might encourage States to underestimate their population while the second would encourage the opposite. Clever! right?

1/8/00 Anielka Rice - [anrice@perth.ssa.slb.com] Slavery

Dear Ashton and Julie and all,

• 1. The Mansfield Judgement. (Handed down by Judge Mansfield). In a nutshell concerned the case of one Joseph Somerset, an American slave brought to the UK who absconded. This may surprise you but slavery was illegal in England and legal in America at the time. Joseph Somerset was declared to be technically a free man in the UK. There was also a "baddy" called Norris who had something to do with slave ships in Portsmouth, I believe. Check me out and correct this story if anyone knows better. I am simply giving you a potted history from memory.
• 2. Don't think I've posted this before but here is one of my favourite quotes that sums up the early 19th century English and particularly Jane Austen’s view of slavery: "...when the American war of Independence suddenly transformed the slave-owners from brothers across the sea into rebels and traitors,...slavery became an issue. ....The newly discovered scandal of black slavery could be loaded almost exclusively on to American shoulders and so became a political as well as a moral consolation. It was comforting to picture colonial enemies in America as heartless sadists with slaves cowering at their feet."  (Derek Jarrett, Pitt the Younger).
  
  In other words, when JA was writing she lived in a moral climate where English people considered slavery to be an American vice which the English no longer practised.
• 3. Pitt the Younger was close friends with Wilberforce (MP) and together they called for an inquiry into the slave trade. In 1792 Pitt gave a passionate speeach in which he "scathingly compared his contemporaries’ contemptuous attitude to African 'barbarism' with the attitude of the ancient Romans to Britain herself" (Jarrett, again). Major prize for anyone who can get hold of a copy of this speech. I have never seen it but I know it is crucial to JA’s thinking.
• 4. JA was a big fan of Pitt the Younger. I am going to give up saying "I believe that she modelled Darcy on him" from now on you will just have to accept that she did. Pitt was a close ally with the King whom he could usually persuade to do things the way he wanted. Jane consequently loathed the Regent (check this out in her letters via Ashton’s surprise link of the month if you don’t believe me). When the King’s health was threatened, the Regent nearly stepped into power. Pitt did his best to limit that power and the Regent did not appreciate this. To simplify the whole thing:
  
  Camp 1 Wilberforce, the abolitionists, the Evangelicals, Jane Austen, The King, William Pitt, AND Mary Wollstencraft and the Unitarians = anti-slavery
  
  Camp 2 the Regent (and the Americans) = not anti-slavery
  
  The irony was that the Prince regent was a big fan of Our Lady and authorised his librarian, Mr. Clarke (he of the new, unauthenticated portrait) to offer her the opportunity to dedicate her next book (Emma) to The Prince.
• 5. Read a life of Mary Wollstencraft and then her Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The slavery references are continual, well-known to Jane Austen and I think that her main slavery thrust is that Fanny is portrayed as a slave. We can get deeper into this later but promise me you will read Vindication of the Rights of Woman and gem-up on MW’s life before you dispute the possibility. Slavery was a hot political issue. and the three branches of "slavery is wrong" thought were
  • A) Black slavery as practised in America is wrong (believed by Pitt, Wilberforce, The Unitarians, Burke etc. etc.)
  • B) It’s all very well condemning black slavery abroad but what about the terrible white servitude/slavery here in England? Why don’t we do something about that first? (believed by the ordinary working Englishman)
  • C) And while we’re talking about slavery, could we just point out that the position of women in England is very similar to that of slaves. What about our rights? (Believed by Mary Wollstencraft, select members of the Unitarians and other proto-"women’s righters" of the day).
    
    I personally think that Jane Austen embraced all three but, like Mary Wollstencraft she draws particular parallels between A and C in Mansfield Park
• 6. Let’s not get too caught up with Jane Austen’s use of the word mulatto. Today most of us would be offended by the use of that word. Our Lady is using it to mean "black but rich" (unusual at the time) Inherent in the use of the word is Miss Lamb’s lineage as an indication of how she became black and rich. The term black as I use it is currently politically correct as it is connected with black pride and disputes the notion of children being of "mixed race" and the suggestion that one is "not really black or white".  The important thing to note is that Jane Austen chose in her last book to write about a powerful black character at a  time when black was synonymous with slavery and rare in literature. This demonstrates her deep interest in the issue.

1/8/00 Ashton - Reply

Dear Anielka,

I think that both you and I need to refocus. The question is whether or not Jane Austen intended to say anything about slavery when writing Mansfield Park. You say yes, and I say I don't think so. Both of us have said some irrelevant things about slavery in America. Clearly, if Jane Austen implied anything, it was about West-Indian slavery and the slave trade. Incidentally, I believe the transatlantic slave trade operated out of Bristol and Liverpool. I also think that remained the case during Jane Austen's entire life. Correct?

Your comment about the Mansfield Judgment is very relevant. However, you have increased my skepticism rather than diminished it. If Judge Mansfield freed the black man, then he would be a hero of the anti-slavery movement, and the effect of the use of his name in the novel seems the opposite of what you would like to suggest. I am beginning to sense another of those unfettered, speculative theories that have grown up around Jane Austen's work. The off-hand comment about "Norris" increases that sense of things. I am sure that I could find an English slave trader with the name of Austen, or Austin, or even Rice for that matter.

Can you imagine any reason why Jane Austen could not be explicit? why she could only give obscure clues? I cannot and believe that she safely could be explicit and not offend anyone in her family or most of English society.

If I understand you, you have corrected a long-standing error of mine. Is this right? You say that King George wanted to end the slave trade and the Prince intended to continue it? Well, I had it backwards - thank you for that correction.

Let me correct you on something. If you think that the abolition movement was not alive and strong in America - from well before our beginnings as a nation - then you are quite wrong. I am familiar with Wollstonecraft's tract; I have read it, studied it actually; I will be interested in what you have to say about it.

1/8/00 Julie Grassi - [banya@bigpond.com] The one thing ...

Dear Sir and Anielka,

Well, two things, actually.  From the reading I am doing at the moment (in short bursts only, when my courage is high), indicates that in the slave-owning states of America, it was quite legal to kill a slave if one felt like it.  That point seems to me to indicate the crucial difference between outright slavery and various ingenious variations of it.  I am reading mostly from volume one , 1772 - 1849, of I Was Born A Slave, which is a collection of oral histories. The difference between the acknowledged slave and the variants seems to be the outright, acknowledged ownership of the person:  the right of life or death over that person, the right to kill that person's children if one wished, or to take any or all of them and sell them; the right to forbid legal marriage (they inserted a cute clause in the Marriage Vows to the effect of 'until God or our owners do us part').  This degree of ownership is of another dimension to that of an indentured servant (or indeed a scullery maid in 19th century London), while the sufferings of the latter group should not be minimised.  A scullery maid might be dismissed 'without a character', which virtually meant death by prostitution, but her employer could not take her out the back and hang her, and then pop down the road to buy another one!

On another note, I've been further considering the relationship of Henry and Mary Crawford: I still consider it to be lacking in that depth of feeling 'that would lead on to do any thing for the other.' Perhaps this was a subtle point of Jane Austen's, when she described how 'children of the same blood', who 'share the same early experiences', 'have some means of enjoyment in their power which no subsequent attachment can supply.'  Mary was not offended, apparently, or surprised by the fact that her brother refused to do his duty and provide her with a home:  this is the sort of behaviour which both would consider absolutely normal, having been brought up amongst people who seem to have been entirely selfish.  That, to me, is the sad point of the Crawfords:  they don't know the difference!  They both end up confused, baffled and (to different degrees) hurt by the 'better taste' they acquire from the example of Mansfield Park, but they end the novel not really much wiser - they know there is something out there that they want, but they can't work out what it is.
Julie

1/9/00 Anielka - [banya@bigpond.com] Another delve into slavery, America, politics and ... Austen.

Dear Ashton and all,

Very interesting point you make about Judge Mansfield declaring Somerset a free man. Because of course, Mansfield Park does exactly the same thing for Fanny. So rather than the opposite, it is, in fact, an amusing analogy.

Re. American slavery. This is highly relevant to Our Lady’s writings. Because at the time being anti-America and anti-slavery were inextricably politically bound together. They were also considered to be a moral position and they were not necessarily "mainstream" Tory politics. I believe Burke was forced to leave England and go to America following his radical abolitionist and Unitarian views were published in the UK (Wasn’t Mary Wollstencraft a big fan?). Bear in mind he developed these views in the UK. I accept that the abolitionist movement was alive and well in America but the climate in which Jane Austen wrote had little cognisance of that. It was still technically legal in America and illegal in England. Whilst Americans still lived in a country where slavery and plantations were woven into the fabric of society, Jane Austen lived in a country where slaves were not seen and the major political figure of the day, William Pitt (and of course his close friend Wilberforce) were making passionate speeches against slavery.

As regards the King’s and the Regent’s points of view. No, I won’t contradict you. Those may have been their personal points of view. Jane Austen was writing at a time when the political power balance was shifting from royal control to control by the Commons (politicians). I.e. the King or Regent were more greatly influence by their closest political allies than previously. Pitt opposed George III’s ridged attitude to American independence and over time Pitt ‘s advice became more and more invaluable to the King. As I said, Pitt could usually persuade the King to do things his (Pitt’s) way.

I think the critical alliance that influenced attitude to America was that of 1783 where Pitt (King’s friend, anti-slavery) and the King became isolated by the alliance of Fox (Regent’s friend, champion of the Americans) and North (had attempted to subdue the Americans). Pitt, who was an idealist, was temporarily left in the cold by Fox and North who, despite their many opposing views had one cohesive belief  they were the guardians of "the comfortable world of patronage politics".

Political climate was very different to the contemporary British political system. There was not necessarily a party line that had to be obeyed and alliances came and went across party boundaries and based far more on issues.

Now this is where it becomes critical to Jane Austen’s writing. This political issue-based climate helped spawn movements such as the Unitarians, the abolishionists, the reformers and the Evangelicals. As political issues spilled into church issues so they began to effect moral thinking, church attitudes and of course, literature.

Allegory has always been a great tool of English literature. Add to this the fact that Jane Austen’s family were very clever and very fond of double meanings and word games and you can see one possibility for Our Lady to be less than explicit. Most of her humour and the cleverness of the plots is derived from the fact that she puts speeches and actions in the mouths of characters which make them amusing to us. Or require a second reading to see how clever they are. It is almost impossible for the Austen scholar to see with fresh eyes the clever words of Frank Churchill or Jane Fairfax...because we already know what is coming. Incidentally, that particular novel is filled with word games ­ one of which is that apparently "Kitty, a fair but frozen maid" as quoted by Mr. Woodhouse is actually part of a rather risque poem ­ a joke that the modern reader cannot appreciate because we don’t fully understand the references. The whole P&P Elizabeth versus Lady C scene is dependent on the fact that you as the reader are in on the joke that Elizabeth tells the truth and Lady C misconstrues it. Austen has Darcy’s character hidden as a hero and equally Mr. Elliot’s character hidden as an anti-hero. Look at the way Eleanor and Marianne ­ as close as they are, cannot see the truth of one another’s feelings as they incorrectly read each other’s behaviour.

I look forward to stimulating responses. By the way, what I know about politics you could write on the back of a 45 cent stamp and still have room for the Australian National Anthem so feel free to correct me if you are better informed. Jane Austen declared herself the most ill-informed person who called herself a writer so I have decided my ignorance should not be a barrier to contribution!

Sorry it’s so long! Hope some of it’s interesting.

1/10/00 Ashton - Reply

Dear Anielka,

You say " ... at the time being anti-America and anti-slavery were inextricably politically bound together." But I understand things quite differently indeed. Remember, when Jane Austen sent Sir Thomas to the new world, our Lady sent him to British soil and not to the United States. Think about the African villager who was captured and ended up a slave in the United States; who transported him across the Atlantic? There are many answers to that question, but who did most of the transporting in the time of Jane Austen? My understanding is that the British controlled this part of the slave trade. I think that American slave ships traveled only as far as your West Indies. If by "America" you include all of the New World, including the British and French holdings in the Caribbean, then your posting makes more sense to me.

The number of Americans, of European ancestry, who favored abolition at the inception of our nation, was far greater than that who would preserve slavery ("servitude"). That is clearly illustrated by the need for the three-fifths rule that I described to Julie on 1/8/00 ("How slaveholders avoided the term 'slave' "). In fact, I think that pro-American feelings were often associated with progressive ideas, such as an end to tyranny. Perhaps you are unwilling to accept that from an American, so let me refer you to two progressive English persons of our Lady's time. I refer you to Thomas Paine and his good friend, Mary Wollstonecraft. If fact, in the first blush of her romance with the American Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft had imagined that she would immigrate to the United States.

In 1860, we fought a great civil war to end slavery. Our population was thirty-five million at the time. One million men were killed in four short years. (Those almost sound like European statistics, don't they?) Better than 99% of those killed were men of European ancestry. These facts say quite a lot I think. The war is only now winding down in a certain sense.

1/7/00 Julie Grassi - [banya@bigpond.com] Who's Scully? OR: Ray's going to kill me for this!

Dear Sir,

I agree that the Crawfords were close, but maintain that their relationship was lacking, just as were their relationships with other people.  Here goes:  the passage you quote was written with Jane Austen's tongue firmly in her cheek, or to use the dreaded word, she was being ironical in stating that Henry Crawford loved his sister, and was happy to play taxi-driver, but could see no necessity for making any real provision for her welfare.  Mary was certainly possessed of twenty thousand pounds, but that would not translate into a large (by Mary's standards) annual income:  indeed, she disdained to live upon her own fortune, plus Edmund's seven hundred pounds per year.  I am turning now to Mr Collins for advice, and he states to Elizabeth Bennet that her own fortune, invested 'in the five per cents' (by which I assume that this was the common method of managing fortunes) was too small to attract a suitor.  I leave it to the mathematicians amongst us to work out what would be the annual income from twenty thousand pounds, invested at five per cent, but clearly Mary did not think it sufficient: in any case, it would have been socially almost impossible for her to have set up house alone.  I believe that the very point of the quoted passage is to illustrate that the Crawfords' mutual affection is deficient; the real relationship in the family ends up developing between Mary and Mrs Grant.

It is interesting to note how very struck Henry Crawford is when he sees the love between Fanny and William Price: why should this be such an unusual sight for him?  One rather suspects that the Crawford children's relationship suffered from the fact that the Admiral and his wife used the children as cannon-fodder in their marital World War: though they doated on the children, the pair played favourites. The Admiral picked Henry, and Mrs Crawford picked Mary - like taking puppies from a litter.  It is clear that Mary knew far too much about the private side of her aunt's marriage, and was a partisan on her aunt's behalf.  This cannot have been a healthy environment for children:  no wonder they grew up to be manipulative, and quite unable to understand real, human relationships:  relationships to them were rather more like a game of chess, with ones' friends lined up on the board, to play strategies.  Though Mary loved Edmund, she still conducted herself the only way she knew how:  manipulatively.
Julie

1/7/00 Ashton - Arithmetic

Dear Julie,

5 percent of 20,000 is 1,000 pounds per annum, a considerable amount. (Elizabeth's fortune would only be 1,000 pounds, at her parent's death, and would only bring her 50 pounds per annum.) Mary could have lived quite comfortably - even fashionably on that. I don't agree that money was any kind of an issue here. The issue, for everyone, was the environment in which this pretty, lively, eminently eligible young woman was to live. Given that, the passage may be less ironic than you suppose. Given that, Crawford may be less selfish with his sister than you suppose.

"Scully" is a character in an American TV series. (It deals with space aliens and government conspiracies.) Her male partner always says these hackneyed things to her.

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