The French eat snails! eew.

Sir Thomas’s absence in Antigua, when spoken about, hints at him being in constant danger, as Edmund, trying to dissuade Tom from the play, says to him,

“It would show a great want of feeling on my father’s account, absent as he is, and in some degree of constant danger.”

 

Corroborating this with Edward Said’s article which states:

“Between France and Britain in the late eighteenth century there were two contests: the battle for strategic gains abroad- in India, the Nile delta, the Western Hemisphere- and the battle for a triumphant nationality…..and not matter how intimate and closeted the supposed English or French “essence” appears to be, it was almost always thought of as being (as opposed to already) made, and being fought out with the other great competitor.”

We can thus theorize that the function of the colony with regard to the incident of the play is to illustrate the rivalry between the English and the French.  Sir Thomas, the representative of English morality, is competing with the French in his overseas colony, and simultaneously, the English and French morality are clashing at Mansfield Park, embodied by Fanny and Edmund, and the Crawfords, respectively.  In other words, while Sir Thomas was in constant danger abroad, English morality was in constant danger at home. The play being enacted, Lovers’ Vows, involving such language and such acts as being able to excite passions where none are wanted, puts Maria Bertram, who is already engaged and hence in a delicate situation, at risk. We might not have expected much from Maria, but Edmund, who is supposed to be THE figure of Christian morality, also falls prey to the seductions and temptations of French immorality, when he decides to act as Anhalt alongside Mary Crawford.  It is only with the return of Sir Thomas, after he has been successful in setting matters right in Antigua, that the English morality triumphs. His unexpected return, very much like a surprise attack on the enemy in battle, is the determining factor of the English victory.

“My father wished us as schoolboys to speak well but he would never wish his grown up daughters to be acting plays. His sense of decorum is strict.”

“….Frederick was listening with looks of devotion to Agatha’s narrative, and pressing her hand to his heart….”

“…Sir Thomas was in hopes that another day or two would suffice to wipe away every outward memento of what had been, even to the destruction of every unbound copy of ‘Lovers’ Vows’ in the house, for he was burning all that met his eye.”

Hence, even though Austen does not elucidate what happens in Antigua directly, she shows a parallel at home of what she thinks might be happening there. And this really does show us the intricate connections that exist between an empire overseas and domestic or national consciousness.  As Said states:

“….the far from accidental convergence between the patterns of narrative authority constitutive of the novel on the one hand, and, on the other, a complex ideological configuration underlying the tendency to imperialism.”