Decolonizing imperialist discourse in Jane Austen’s Persuasion

Abstract

In his highly influential work Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said unravels the imperialist undertones in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Throughout the chapter entitled “Jane Austen and the Empire,” Said demonstrates how this seemingly domestic novel of manners, not normally associated with imperialism, is actually densely saturated with colonialist discourse. For Said, the marginalized representation of the colonized territory of Antigua as simply a “colonial garden” for the British imperial patriarch further accentuates the superior sense of colonialist entitlement. Thus, Said’s approach in decolonizing the imperialist discourse in Mansfield Park may be extended to other canonical works not generally considered imperialist in nature. In this article, the researchers utilize Said’s strategies involved in his reading of Mansfield Park to probe the imperialist nuances in Austen’s Persuasion, a novel usually categorized as a romance/novel of manners which depicts two lovers’ second chance at happiness despite all the social obstacles in their way. The researchers attempt to foreground the imperialist rhetoric in this novel, specifically Austen’s tendency to romanticize and glorify the rising British naval society as the champions of the Empire. Furthermore, this article investigates the absent, peripheral representation of colonial terrains as opposed to the privileged, central position of the British Empire in the narrative.