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Jane Austen’s 1814 novel Mansfield Park is noteworthy for its brief and ambivalent mention of slavery in the British colonies. Edward Said has notably argued that the novel demonstrates a dismissive attitude toward, slavery, while other critics have argued that the stern treatment which the novel’s heroine, Fanny Price, receives at the hands of her extended family is itself similar to slavery. At least one critic has written that the novel can be viewed with the Anti-Oedipal work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in mind. The purpose of this paper is to extend the Anti-Oedipal argument further by contextualizing it within the adamant refusal of Fanny Price to bend to her family’s wishes that she wed a suitor whom she distrusts. Thus, an Anti-Oedipal reading of Mansfield Park explains the family dynamics of the Bertrams and their enablers, the unorthodox reaction of the young lady whom they unsuccessfully attempt to dominate, and perhaps hints at the larger view of British society. If Fanny Price’s situation is indeed an analogue to slavery, then her “liberation” is also an indication that Austen may have viewed slavery as an inherently unstable institution. One of the most influential readings of Jane Austen’s 1811 novel Mansfield Park is that of Edward Said, which focuses on the seemingly minor detail that the Bertram family owns property in Antigua at a time when slaves are still being used in the West Indian island’s sugar plantations, and that various members of the family are seemingly complacent about the fact. Said’s analysis, which is also one of the most memorable literary interpretations in his 1994 work Culture and Imperialism, has been criticized by those who would defend Austen against accusations that she was relatively indifferent to the issue of slavery. However, the issue is ambiguous because the novel is simply not transparent in its attitude toward slavery – not in the outlook of the characters and certainly not in the novel’s position toward slavery as a social institution. The sparse mention of Antigua and the lone reference to slavery make it difficult to infer the unspoken opinions of the main character Fanny Price, which is precisely what we are forced to do if we wish to broach the topic at all. The easy solution is either to credit the Mansfield Park characters (or Fanny, at least, and probably her sympathetic cousin Edward as well) with a charitable opposition to slavery that was as forceful as the times would allow, or else to accuse them of viewing slavery as a necessary evil best ignored if they did not wish to imperil their comfortable lifestyles. And because the Said controversy shows that little can additionally be said about the direct exchanges in the novel concerning slavery, I propose a search of other details in Fanny Price’s story that will help illuminate her unspoken feelings on the subject. Specifically, I would like to focus on Fanny’s adamant refusal to accept the marriage proposal of the immature and morally lax Henry Crawford, in light of the work of the French postmodernist philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. My argument is that Fanny’s decision may seem illogical, perplexing and even selfish to her family, but is nonetheless in keeping with the type of familial/social protest addressed by Deleuze/Guattari in their celebrated 1977 work Anti-Oedipus. Taken in this context, Fanny can be credited with a third alternative that is brightly separated from both anti-slavery sentiments and of easy acquiescence as a means of enriching the ruling class. The result, I believe, will defend Said against a purported misreading on his part that has been alleged by various critics, but at the same time will be a rejection of any notion that Mansfield Park represents a grudging acquiescence in slavery as a social institution. To wit, I argue that Fanny’s “third way” is a recalcitrance that reflects the inherent instability of slavery which should have been apparent to anyone in the early nineteenth century. She balks, but does so because she understands at some level that the institution is hopeless, just as she instinctively understands that marrying the immature Henry Crawford would be just as doomed to ultimate failure. Further, I argue that her attitude is foreshadowed by many seemingly incidental references to household servants and staff that often include equally incidental details about the relationships between the family and their hired help. An Anti-Oedipal reading is especially appropriate for the very reason that it circumvents the possibility of being shoe-horned by two alternative pathways. And though the general title of Deleuze/Guattari’s two volume work is Capitalism and Schizophrenia, it is important to stipulate at the outset that an Anti-Oedipal interpretation in no way assumes insanity or even slight mental imbalance on the part of the characters or author. Rather, AntiOedipus draws much of its potency in the interpretation of certain works of literature from its background in the turbulent 1960s – particularly the May 1968 protests that paralyzed much of France for a period of time and flummoxed the traditional anti-establishment figures (oxymoron quite deliberate) who thought that a Marxist orientation should be the political and spiritual home of anyone dissatisfied with the status quo. The Deleuzian/Guattarian expert Ian Buchanan begins his guidebook on Anti-Oedipus with this insight, and for good reason: the events of May 1968 indeed heralded a new order, but at the same time demonstrated the high likelihood that history would merely repeat itself and that a new order would not be permanently established. As Buchanan explains, Deleuze and Guattari eventually reached the conclusion that the issue had to do with the manifestation of human desire itself and with the manner in which desire is impacted by social institutions (8). What does this have to do with Fanny Price’s rejection of Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park? The answer is that her doing so was a bit “crazy” by the standards of her day, and certainly by the acquiescence expected of her by an extended family that considered her to be a social inferior. The novel involves the niece by marriage of Thomas Bertram, a powerful baronet by birth and husband of Fanny’s maternal aunt. The very first paragraph of the novel, in fact, assures the reader that Lady Bertram “married up” by securing a husband who would normally not be enticed by the 7,000 pounds that she brought into the marriage by dint of her own familial inheritance. Fanny’s second maternal aunt, the dreadful Mrs. Norris, presumably had something similar at her disposal when her own time came to seek a husband, but did little better than marrying a clergyman who died and left her to [1]

Sunbeams and Sugar Cane: An Anti-Oedipal Interpretation of Mansfield Park