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Mansfield Park

MOIRA FERGUSON (ESSAY DATE 1991)

SOURCE: Ferguson, Moira. "Mansfield Park: Slavery, Colonialism, and Gender." Oxford Literary Review 13, nos. 1-2 (1991): 118-39.

In the following essay, Ferguson explores the connection between the restrictions on Mansfield Park 's Fanny Price and the slave trade also discussed in the novel.

Mansfield Park (1814) is a eurocentric, post-abolition narrative that intertwines with a critique of gender relations and posits a world of humanitarian interactions between slave-owners and slaves. As such, following the successful passage of the Abolition Bill in 1807, Mansfield Park initiates a new chapter in colonialist fiction. Nonetheless, although the novel works against the idea of the traditionally closed and brutal world of plantocratic relations, it entertains the option of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. Jane Austen (Letter Date 18 November 1814)
   2. Jane Austen (Novel Date 1817)
4. General Commentary
   1. Mary Lascelles (Essay Date 1939)
   2. Margaret Kirkham (Essay Date 1983)
5. Title Commentary
   1. Emma
   2. Pride and Prejudice
   3. Mansfield Park
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright

1. Jane Austen
2. Feminism