A novel interpretation
Sir: Has Rachel Holmes (Diary, 10 March) read Jane Austen’s novels? From her descriptions of the characters it would seem she knows them only from television adaptations. She believes the heroines are made up of ‘a lace-ruffled heaving bosom’ (Emma? Anne Elliot?) with a ‘subservient attitude to limp egoistic fops’ (Captain Wentworth? Darcy?).
‘The most relevant Austen novel to our present historical moment,’ she writes, is ‘Mansfield Park, with its sharp critique of slavery, economic colonialism, and the dismal failure to enforce the Abolition Act.’ Slavery is mentioned once, and only once, in Mansfield Park. ‘Economic colonialism and the dismal failure to enforce the Abolition Act’ are not mentioned at all. When Fanny tries to broach the subject of slavery with her plantation-owning uncle, she is met with that famous ‘dead silence’. The implication is that the silence was due to Sir Thomas’s refusal to answer questions on a sensitive subject.
Felicity Browne
London W8
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