Austen and Slavery

Essay

Popularly, Austen’s books are often understood as “romance” and nothing more. The idea seems to be that she dealt with nothing but the tribulations and triumphs of love; yet it is evident that Austen dealt intelligently, even expertly, with the prevailing issues of her day. Status and social commentary form an important part of her stories, but she went further: even without examining her Juvenalia and unfinished works, her six full-length novels interact actively with the philosophies and social trends of her day.

Austen is predominately considered an “at-home” author since her work apparently contains no mention of the tumultuous events that marked the period she lived in: the American War of Independence, the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic Wars. These last two events affected her directly: her cousin Elizabeth had a father who was guillotined in Paris; her two sailor brothers, Francis and Charles, both served in the Royal Navy during Britain’s fight against Napoleon.

Austen set at least two of her stories during the Napoleonic Wars: they explain why the militia containing George Wickham was stationed in Meryton (Britain was anticipating a French invasion over the channel), and the cause for Frederick Wentworth’s distinction and newly-acquired fortune at the beginning of Persuasion (he had fought well in the war). It is characteristic of her to set her stories in a larger context which subtly influences or provides context for her plots, though they are seldom brought into the foreground. She makes a notable exception, however, in Mansfield Park, where she famously had her heroine Fanny Price address the issue of slavery.

Fanny Price (Frances O'Connor) in the 1999 film adaptation

By the time Austen published her early novels, Britain had been trafficking slaves across the Atlantic for years, and slavery had become so pervasive that everyone in the British Empire was, in one way or another associated with or benefited from the slave trade. Austen herself, though hardly benefitting from it directly, came into indirect contact with slavery through her family. A few of her father’s nephews emigrated to the West Indies; one of her uncles married an heiress to a plantation in Barbados; her father George Austen once acted as a trustee for the Antiguan plantation of a friend and colleague.

Sugar plantations in the West Indies were, of course, notorious for their labor-intensiveness (and hence constant demand for more slaves) as well as profitability: they “[pump] four million pounds annually into the British economy”. The Abolition Act of 1807 did no more than prohibit the slave trade on English soil; it was continued in various colonies despite the exertions of the Royal Navy, which patrolled the Atlantic to free slaves from slave ships. (Austen’s brother Francis, who expressed a deep antipathy for slavery, was a commander on one of these patrol vessels.)

Plantations paid for the leisure and luxury of many upper-class British citizens — among them the fictional Bertrams, cousins to Fanny Price. The Bertrams’ Antiguan plantation is the cornerstone of their estate in England, the eponymous Mansfield Park. When Sir Thomas Bertram, Fanny’s uncle, returned from a visit to Antigua, Fanny asked him tentatively about the slave trade, only to receive in reply — silence, and what is more notable, silence without explanation. In fact, the entire exchange is “silent” because it was unreported. The reader’s knowledge of it comes indirectly from a conversation between Fanny and her cousin Edmund:

‘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 further.’

‘And I longed to do it—but there was such a dead silence!’

Beginning with Edward Said, scholars have written volumes on this silence. Did Sir Thomas stay silent because he was unwilling to address the moral complications behind his source of income? Was he worried about the financial security of a trade that was gradually being disbanded by abolitionists?

The fictional Mansfield Park is named after the historical William Murray, the first Earl of Mansfield, who, in his capacity as Lord Chief Justice, condemned slavery. In Somerset vs. Stewart, Lord Mansfield ruled that the enslaved man Somerset was to be set free — the verdict was given in 1772, decades before the 1807 Abolition Act. At home, he took care of his nephew’s natural daughter Dido Elizabeth Belle, who was a ‘mulatto’ on account of her African mother. Illegitimate and colored, she was raised and treated as the equal of her white, legitimate cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray, a circumstance that was probably the first of its kind in upper-class Britain.

The irony of the story, then, rests in the name of the estate. Mansfield Park, whose wealth, consequence, and comfort were supplied by slave labor, has a markedly anti-slavery connotation. This leaves no doubt as to Austen’s intentions regarding Sir Thomas’ loaded silence, or indeed the silence of the Bertram family in general, for Fanny explains that her question was unanswered by her uncle as well as by her cousins, who were “sitting by without speaking a word, or seeming at all interested in the subject.” Even Edmund Bertram, who professes his hopes that “the question would be followed up by others”, offers no commentary.