The emancipation (read Anglicization) of the colonized subject: Fanny Price

The Bertram household functions as a microcosm for the nation. When she arrives at Mansfield Park as a ten-year-old, she is immediately relegated to an inferior status. As the cousin of the Bertrams, she is brought to the household for a chance at a better life. Yet Mrs Norris immediately implies that "it is not at all necessary that she should be as accomplished as you are; -- on the contrary, it is much more desirable that there should be a difference". And each one of them sure throughout the course of the novel that she remains different. She lives in the attic; potential husbands are always suggested for Maria and Julia. Fanny always remains on the sidewalks. This is especially highlighted in the incident at Sotherton when the group goes into the wilderness and Fanny is left alone on the bench while Edmund and Miss Crawford foray into the woods: "She watched them till they had turned the corner, and listened till all sound of them had ceased." She is always portrayed as week and suffering from poor health, a notion the imperialists always connected with the colonized subject and his surroundings. By way of such a representation, the master also successfully lent effeminate characteristics to the colony. And thus rendering the subject and the colony incapable of taking charge for himself or worthy of Liberty. Amidst the politics of imperialism, as Gayatri Spivak writess, "the voice of the colonized female is lost between the object-constitution of imperialism, marked by the espousal of the woman as object of protection from her own kind". 

She is constantly reminded of the indebtedness she must feel towards the Bertrams for they have provided for her needs and made her who she is. her prior education and knowledge is looked down upon, "her cousins found her ignorant of many things with which they had been long familiar". "They thought her prodigiously stupid" for she "cannot put the map of Europe together -- or my cousin cannot tell the principal rivers in Russia".  

She only becomes mistress of the house, the caretaker of the matters when she is married to Edmund. In all of this as well, what Austen by way of her inherent Englishness is trying to reinforce is that only those who get trained in the English ways, totally and submissively give in to the subjugation of the master, do as they do and say, can the subject be hopeful of achieving some autonomy and freedom. "In [Susan’s] usefulness, in Fanny’s excellence, in William’s continued good conduct, and rising fame, and in the general well-doing and success of the other members of the [Price] family, all assisting to advance each other, and doing credit to his countenance and aid, Sir Thomas saw repeated, and for ever repeated reason to rejoice in what he had done for them all, and acknowledge the advantages of early hardship and discipline, and the consciousness of being born to struggle and endure." The colonial master has successfully civilized the barbarian, the native. The emancipated Fanny, with a mind that has by now been deeply colonized describes her mother and her household in these words, "She must and did feel that her mother was a partial, ill-judging parent, a dawdle, a slattern, who neither taught nor restrained her children, whose house was the scene of mismanagement and discomfort from beginning to end."