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Persuasions #2, 1980 Page 14
(Summary of speech
made at the Baltimore meeting)
THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF MANSFIELD PARK by David Spring My approach to Jane Austen’s novels is marked by the historian’s interest in the two-way traffic between the novels and the society from which they arose, between (so to speak) the text and the context. The late Lionel Trilling once said something to the effect that the novel is an examination of social experience – which strikes me as a useful definition. Being so, it follows that a proper understanding of Jane Austen’s experience may help us gain a proper understanding of her novels. It should cast some light on their meaning. Probably not a glaring light. The historian holds no key to all that Jane Austen may have meant us to gather from her novels. But no one does, so far as I know. Knowledge of the novels’ context may help us in small and not so small matters, in negative as well as positive ways. One example has to do with Sir Thomas Bertram’s troubles in Antigua, the spendthrift habits of his eldest son, and the deferment of his younger son’s (Edmund’s) taking the best family living. These several things in the text point to a degree of financial embarrassment at Mansfield Park. Eventually, however, the Antigua problems were overcome, and Edmund took his place in the Mansfield Park living on Dr. Grant’s removal. Presumably if there was financial disorder, it was neither major nor permanent. But contrary to what the text suggests, this temporary and minor financial embarrassment has been magnified by some interpretations as pointing to something of a crisis, economic, social and spiritual, in the history of English landed society, in which the ascendancy of the English landed class was seriously threatened. But knowledge of the context – let alone knowledge of the text – points to no such crisis. At the very worst, years like 1814-15 represented the tapering off of one of the greatest booms in English agricultural history. This was a boom which went back to the 1770’s, and coincided with the course of Jane Austen’s life. There was no serious crisis in the history of English landed society until deep in the 19th century. It would certainly be premature to invoke that textbook cliché – the rise or victory of the middle class – which I am afraid has exerted a baleful influence both on historian and non-historian. Knowledge of the context can thus serve to correct or modify what we take to be our knowledge of the text. But this is by no means an infallible approach. It depends essentially on how attentive we are. To put it bluntly, we should avoid reading about the context in the way we read a telephone book. When we read a telephone book, we accept what we find uncritically. This may easily get us into trouble, as happens in Julia Prewitt Brown’s recent and valuable book, where she relies uncritically on a pioneering work by Mary Beard, thereby coming up with a theory of the origin of Jane Austen’s feminism that will not stand critical investigation. Both context and text need study – but both need careful study. |
