Emma <\/em> specifically. Part of the evidence is circumstantial. Some of Austen\u2019s best-loved writers favored not only the abolition of the slave trade (which happened in 1807) but also the abolition of chattel slavery in British colonies (which didn\u2019t happen until the 1830s, well after Austen\u2019s death). <\/p>\n Samuel Johnson pondered, \u201chow is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?\u201d and once gave a toast at Oxford, \u201cHere\u2019s to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies.\u201d <\/p>\n
In \u201cThe Negro\u2019s Complaint,\u201d Cowper detailed the injustice of slavery: <\/p>\n
FORCED from home and all its pleasures
Afric\u2019s coast I left forlorn,
To increase a stranger\u2019s treasures
O\u2019er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though slave they have enrolled me,
Minds are never to be sold. <\/p>\n
Still in thought as free as ever,
What are England\u2019s rights, I ask,
Me from my delights to sever,
Me to torture, me to task ?
Fleecy locks and black complexion
Cannot forfeit nature\u2019s claim;
Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same. <\/p>\n
Why did all-creating nature
Make the plant for which we toil?
Sighs must fan it, tears must water,
Sweat of ours must dress the soil.
Think, ye masters iron-hearted,
Lolling at your jovial boards,
Think how many backs have smarted
For the sweets your cane affords. <\/p>\n
Is there, as ye sometimes tell us,
Is there One who reigns on high?
Has He bid you buy and sell us,
Speaking from his throne, the sky?
Ask him, if your knotted scourges,
Matches, blood-extorting screws,
Are the means that duty urges
Agents of his will to use? <\/p>\n
Hark! He answers!\u2014Wild tornadoes
Strewing yonder sea with wrecks,
Wasting towns, plantations, meadows,
Are the voice with which he speaks.
He, foreseeing what vexations
Afric\u2019s sons should undergo,
Fixed their tyrants\u2019 habitations
Where his whirlwinds answer\u2014\u201cNo.\u201d <\/p>\n
By our blood in Afric wasted
Ere our necks received the chain;
By the miseries that we tasted,
Crossing in your barks the main;
By our sufferings, since ye brought us
To the man-degrading mart,
All sustained by patience, taught us
Only by a broken heart; <\/p>\n
Deem our nation brutes no longer,
Till some reason ye shall find
Worthier of regard and stronger
Than the colour of our kind.
Slaves of gold, whose sordid dealings
Tarnish all your boasted powers,
Prove that you have human feelings,
Ere you proudly question ours! <\/p>\n
And \u201cPity for Poor Africans,\u201d he attacked the economy of slavery with bitter irony: <\/p>\n
I OWN I am shock\u2019d at the purchase of slaves,
And fear those who buy them and sell them are knaves;
What I hear of thcir hardships, their tortures, and groans
Is almost enough to draw pity from stones. <\/p>\n
I pity them greatly, but I must be mum,
For how could we do without sugar and rum?
Especially sugar, so needful we see?
What? give up our desserts, our coffee, and tea! <\/p>\n
Besides, if we do, the French, Dutch, and Danes,
Will heartily thank us, no doubt, for our pains;
If we do not buy the poor creatures, they will,
And tortures and groans will be multiplied still. <\/p>\n
Cowper\u2019s views were summarized in his question, \u201cWe have no Slaves at home \u2013 then why abroad?\u201d <\/p>\n
White suggests that a brief conversation about the slave trade in Emma shows that Austen sympathized with such views: \u201cI begin by suggesting an allusion to the Biblical phrase \u2018one flesh\u2019 for the phrase \u2018human flesh\u2019 that is used by Jane Fairfax. The obnoxious Mrs Elton interjects that the governess-to-be must mean by the sale of human flesh \u2018a fling at the slave trade.\u2019 Within the context of the novel, and related to discourse about the nouveaux riches <\/em> at Maple Grove, the setting of the dialogue on the slave trade suggests that just as Mrs Elton was not after all much of a friend to Jane Fairfax, so the owner of Maple Grove, Mr Suckling, may not have been much of a \u2018friend to the abolition.\u2019 Since the respect in which governesses are compared to slaves is in being traded, both may be regarded as commodities. Furthermore, since these objects of trading are said to be victims and to be caused misery, in the case of the slave trade its guilt also being affirmed implies its victims should be freed from their misery.\u201d <\/p>\n Though White\u2019s argument is a fairly standard attempt to associate Austen with every right cause, and though this exchange hardly places abolition at the center of the novel, there is definitely something to it. If the \u201cgoverness trade\u201d produces misery and if, as Jane suggests, the slave traders have greater guilt, then it seems reasonable to conclude that Jane Fairfax (and presumably Jane Austen) is an opponent of the slave trade (already abolished when Austen published the book). <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gabrielle White offers an abolitionist reading of Austen\u2019s work, and of Emma specifically. Part of the evidence is circumstantial. Some of Austen\u2019s best-loved writers favored not only the abolition of the slave trade (which happened in 1807) but also the abolition of chattel slavery in British colonies (which didn\u2019t happen until the 1830s, well after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"yoast_head":"\n
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