제인 오스틴, 노예제, 계급, 인종

Jane Austen, Slavery, Class and Race: A Study of Mansfield Park

From Edward Said, who criticized Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park(1814) as a colonialist novel upholding slavery in his Culture and Imperialism(1993) to Gabrielle White who criticized Said and defended Austen as an abolitionist in his Jane Austen in the Context of Slavery(2006), the dispute on whether Austen is an abolitionist or not has been developing fiercely between feminists and postcolonialists for the last two decades. Austen’s indirect and ambiguous description of the slavery questions in Mansfield Park has made criticism more controversial. For a persuasive solution to this controversy over Austen and slavery, a complex reading from the perspective of gender, class and race is required. Though it is true that Austen is interested in gender questions, her concern is only in white English women. She is indifferent to other race’s dual exploitations, sexual and racial. As for class, though Austen is a sensitive commentator of various levels of classes, her major concern is the upper class, not the ‘social other,’ lower class which includes workers or servants. Austen’s conception of the ‘social other’ in the novel is connected with that of the ‘racial other,’ black or mulatto in the West Indies. For Austen, ‘racial other’ is the source of anxiety because English pure blood can be tainted by miscegenation between other races. This is significant in the sense that the anxiety about miscegenation and hybridity, which is prevalent in the Victorian Age, already germinated in Austen. Considering Austen’s emphasis on ‘Englishness’ through all of her works, it is very hard to find a reason why Austen would oppose slavery, the economic foundation of British imperialism. Austen exploits the West Indies as the property of England and doesn’t listen to pain, repression and exploitation of slaves working there. Thus, those critics insisting that Austen is an abolitionist just seems to be participate in the ‘saving English Austen’ movement.