Colony in Mansfield Park: The role of Antigua in the novel.

The luxury of Mansfield Park and the life that Fanny Price is able to live there is sustained by the estate in Antigua. Said argues that, “what assures the domestic tranquility and attractive harmony of one, is the productivity and regulated discipline of the other.” Because, Lord Bertram is managing his colonial plantation, his domestic estate can survive; domestic sustainability can only be achieved if the colonial lands provide for them. However, Said fails to question the “disharmony” that exists at Mansfield and Fanny’s place within it.

The constant mention of Antigua means that the colonial narrative is ever present in the readers’ consciousness. However, Said feels that the slight references to Antigua do not do justice to it. Sir Thomas’s colony is isolated from his family which remains millions of miles across the globe. And Said has a fair problem with that. We hear of the slave owner, not the slave so, the slave is just a far off entity whose presence is implied and whose work results in prosperity for Lord Bertram. Even Jane Austen focuses on this issue in Lady Bertram’s treatment of India as a place only good for the commodities it can offer, “I may have a shawl. I think I will have two shawls. His ultimate point is that the ‘Antigua’ seen in Mansfield Park is no more than a place for work, necessary for obtaining personal luxuries and fortune for the locals of Britain. Austen does not deny this in her novel, but she does not shout about it either.

Said also portrays Fanny and Lord Bertram as having a more compatible relationship than actually present. In fact, Fanny defies Bertram’s wishes in her choice to marry Edmund, further when she questions him about the slave trade, and is met with “dead silence”, it seems that in fact she is not accepting it, but is implying a connection with the slavery practiced in Antigua and the paternal practice of selling off one’s female dependents into matrimony, to gain social standing.

Said is of the view that, “Jane Austen sees the legitimacy of Sir Thomas’s overseas properties as a natural extension of the calm, the order, the beauties of Mansfield park, one central estate validating the supportive role of the peripheral other” which is quite true since, the money to sustain the estate and provide domestic sustainability is provided by the colonial estate. Hence, we can say that Austen references to Antigua and colonialism are definitely complicit in normalizing ideas of empire in the British consciousness.