‘An office in which she had always depended’ : surrogate managers in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and Persuasion

This article analyses the ways in which Jane Austen explores questions concerning female property management in two of her novels, Mansfield Park and Persuasion. These two novels are particularly relevant, as they share one common aspect: in both, two female characters attempt to appropriate the position of manager of a house they have no possibility of ever owning, thus replacing the legitimate manager. By analysing these two novels, I aim to show how Austen engages with the late eighteenth‐ and early nineteenth‐century discourse on female management and considers the possibilities and limits of this form of relationship with houses