If one brother drank and gambled away half of another brother’s “income for life,” wouldn’t this create a serious breach in most modern families? We never hear Edmund or anyone else drop a word on the subject.
Internal evidence in the novel suggests that the chief events of Mansfield Park take place in 1808, the year after the British Parliament outlawed the slave trade (that is, transporting and selling slaves, not slavery itself). Here is the reference to it in Mansfield Park:
“Did not you hear me ask [Sir Thomas] about the slave-trade last night?” [Fanny asks Edmund].
“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.”
Austen does not reveal what the question was, or how Sir Thomas answered. It’s frequently remarked of Jane Austen that she ignored dramatic real-life events such as the Napoleonic Wars, in favour of domestic affairs. This was obviously her conscious choice, so I think it’s faintly ridiculous that the merest passing reference to slavery in Mansfield Park has led some to claim that the book is an anti-slavery tract. I agree with the suggestion that Sir Thomas Bertram’s extended absence in Antigua is simply a plot device to get him out of the way, not a means of introducing the topic of chattel slavery into the book. Because of Napoleon, Europe was closed off to English people at that time, so there were comparatively few distant places to which Austen could dispatch Sir Thomas, to enable her to advance her storyline of the Maria, Rushworth and Henry Crawford triangle.
However, the fact of Sir Thomas and his plantations means that modern readers of the Mansfield Park must inevitably grapple with this issue.
Some modern readers may find it impossible not to dwell upon the fact that slavery supports the elegant, civilized lifestyle of the family. The critical appreciation of many of our great works of art has been challenged by changing sensibilities about racial stereotypes, cultural appropriation, and sexism. The Merchant of Venice has for its comic villain a grasping Jew who gets his comeuppance. Turandot, the Chinese princess of Puccini’s opera, has three court officials named Ping, Pang and Pong. Even my beloved Astaire and Rogers movies depict Fred Astaire behaving in a fashion which would get him arrested for stalking today. If we’re going to continue to enjoy these great masterpieces, we have to calmly and rationally understand the times and mores in which they were created. To do otherwise is to deprive yourself of the enjoyment of our cultural heritage, and to subject everyone around you to the irritation of listening to your virtue-signaling. (Oh, you’re against slavery, are you? How courageous of you to speak up.)
Because of the difficulty of dealing with the slavery issue, because of the grim reality underlying the world of Mansfield Park, I frankly wanted to avert my eyes from it; but the more I researched the period in which the main action of the novel is set, the more fascinated I became with the true story of the campaign to abolish the slave trade.
So the abolitionist movement does play a part in A Contrary Wind, with consequences for many of the characters, including some new characters I’ve invented (Mrs. Butters, her lady’s maid, and Mr. Thompson) and some real historical people who make an appearance in this variation (Hannah More and James Stephen).
I have also included some of the real arguments made by people who defended the slave trade at the time. To attempt to understand is not to endorse, of course. And because I prefer to think well of Sir Thomas, I gave him a troubled conscience. The 1999 movie which portrayed Sir Thomas as a brutal slave owner skews the novel completely out of shape.
Now, finally, to the central problem with Mansfield Park: the heroine, Fanny Price. Why is Fanny Price so unlikeable, that in modern film and television adaptations of the book, Austen’s timid, long-suffering Fanny Price is excised completely and replaced by a feisty, spunky, rebellious Fanny Price v. 2.0?
Tony Tanner pointed out that the things that irritate us about Fanny Price—her physical frailty, her passivity, her humility, her tendency to cry at the drop of a hat—are presented in the book as virtues. Here are some descriptions of her from some literary critics: “She is never, ever, wrong,” (Tony Tanner) she is a “monster of complacency and pride…. morally detestable,” (Kingsley Amis), “a dreary, debilitated, priggish, goody-goody,” (W.G. Harding), “fiction holds no heroine more repulsive in her cast-iron self-righteousness,” (Reginald Ferrar). Author Robert Rodi points out that Fanny “evades possibility, declines to decide, makes no move, lifts no finger to alter her destiny in any way, good or bad; takes no risk, assumes no responsibility, [and] rebuffs all affection.” Pretty harsh words about an 18-year-old girl! And I’ll pile on by agreeing with Rodi that she is helpless to help herself, whether she has been forgotten and left to sit on a bench, or is waiting for someone to bring her a cup of tea. Her only power is the power of refusal—significantly, refusing to accept Henry Crawford’s marriage proposal, despite the enormous pressures brought to bear on her.
In Mansfield Park, Austen skilfully describes the inner life, emotions and thoughts of Fanny Price—sometimes even moment to moment, as for example here:
Dr. Grant was in the vestibule, and as they stopt to speak to him she found, from Edmund's manner, that he did mean to go with her. He too was taking leave. She could not but be thankful. In the moment of parting,
