Jane Austen and Edward Said: Gender, Culture, and Imperialsim

Explores the problematic gender politics of Edward Said's commentary on Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. Contra Said, argues that neither Fanny Price nor Austen herself can be assumed to share the values of Mansfield's slaveholding patriarch, Sir Thomas Bertram. Said's general critique of culture's role in validating imperialism is invaluable, but his discussion of Austen's relation to this dynamic overlooks the subordinate, non-citizen status of women in Regency England