In defense of Jane

In a 1995 piece in Critical Inquiry , Susan Fraiman defends Austen from the charges directed at her in Edward Said’s famous study of Austen and imperialism. Fraiman doesn’t think Said is a very careful reader: His “rendering of Austen is . . . enabled, I would argue, by Said’s highly selective materialization of her. . . . whereas in subsequent sections Aida is lovingly embedded within Verdi’s corpus and Kim within Kipling’s, and notwithstanding Said’s claim that Mansfield Park ‘carefully defines the moral and social values informing her other novels’ (C, p. 62), this single text is, in fact, almost completely isolated from the rest of Austen’s work. Yet had Said placed Sir Thomas Bertram, for example, in line with the deficient fathers who run unrelentingly from Northanger Abbey through Persuasion , he might perhaps have paused before assuming that Austen legitimates the master of Mansfield Park . If truth be told, Said’s attention even to his chosen text is cursory: Austen’s references to Antigua (and India) are mentioned without actually being read, though Said stresses elsewhere the importance of close, specific analysis. Maria Bertram is mistakenly referred to as ‘Lydia’ (C, p. 87) confused, presumably, with Lydia Bennet of Pride and Prejudice . And these are just a few of the signs that Mansfield Park ‘s particular complexity including what I see as its moral complexity has been sacrificed here, so ready is Said to offer Austen as exhibit A in the case for culture’s endorsement of empire.” Concerned as he is with social location and oppressed minorities, for instance, Said barely notes that Austen is a single woman writer.

Said’s argument depends on his assumption that Austen endorses the order of Mansfield, but Fraiman argues (rightly in my view) that this is far from true: ” Mansfeld Park as I read it, then, has little patience with high-handed patriarchs, their eldest sons, Regency sexual mores, or traditional marital practices, and even England itself is not above criticism. Its irreverence – bearing out Austen’s earliest juvenile sketches, resonating with the other mature novels, and anticipating the final, unfinished Sanditon suggests to me a less complacent view of power relations, especially gender relations, than Said is prepared to acknowledge.”