RC3 OCT 27

Passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the best
answer to each question.




The cherished axiom of Jane Austen's unwordliness is closely tied to a
sense of her polite remove from the contingencies of history. It was
Q. D. Leavis (1942) who first pointed out the tendency of scholars to
lift Austen out of her social milieu, gallantly allowing her gorgeous
sentences to float free, untainted by the routines of labour that
produced them and deaf to the tumult of current events. Since Leavis,
numerous efforts have been made to counter the patronizing view that
Austen, in her fidelity to the local, the surface, the detail, was
oblivious to large-scale struggles, to wars and mass movements of all
kinds. Claudia Johnson (1988), for example, has challenged R. W.
Chapman's long-standing edition of Austen for its readiness to
illustrate her ballrooms and refusal to gloss her allusions to riots
or slaves, and has linked this writer to a tradition of frankly
political novels by women. It is in keeping with such historicizing
gestures that Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism insists on
Mansfield Park's participation in its moment, pursuing the references
to Caribbean slavery that Chapman pointedly ignored. Yet while arguing
vigorously for the novel's active role in producing imperialist plots,
Said also in effect replays the story of its author's passivity
regarding issues in the public sphere. Unconcerned about Sir Thomas
Bertram's colonial holdings in slaves as well as land and taking for
granted their necessity to the good life at home, Said's Austen is a
veritable Aunt Jane – naive, complacent, and demurely without overt
political opinion.



I will grant that Said's depiction of Austen as unthinking in her
references to Antigua fits logically with his overall contention that
nineteenth-century European culture, and especially the English novel,
unwittingly but systematically helped to gain consent for imperialist
policies. The novel was, Said asserts, one of the primary discourses
contributing to a 'consolidated vision', virtually uncontested, of
England's righteous imperial prerogative. Austen is no different from
Thackeray or Dickens, then, in her implicit loyalty to official
Eurocentrism. At the same time, Said's version of Austen in particular
is given a boost by the readily available myth of her 'feminine'
nearsightedness. This rendering of Austen is further enabled, I would
argue, by Said's highly selective materialization of her. Mansfield
Park is, in fact, almost completely isolated from the rest of Austen's
work. If the truth be told, Said's attention even to his chosen text
is cursory: Austen's references to Antigua (and India) are mentioned
without actually being read.



But this picture of Austen is disembodied in not only a textual but
also a larger social sense. Though recontextualized as an English
national in the period preceding colonial expansion, Austen's more
precise status as an unmarried, middle-class, scribbling woman remains
wholly unspecified. The failure to consider Austen's gender and the
significance of this omission is pointed up by Said's more nuanced
treatment of Conrad. According to Said, Conrad stands out from other
colonial writers because, as a Polish expatriate, he possessed 'an
extraordinarily persistent residual sense of his own exilic
marginality'. The result is a double view of imperialism that at once
refutes and reinforces the West's right to dominate the globe. As Said
explains, 'Never the wholly incorporated and fully acculturated
Englishman, Conrad therefore preserved an ironic distance [from
imperial conquest] in each of his works'. Of course Austen was not,
any more than Conrad, 'the wholly incorporated and fully acculturated
Englishman.' Lacking the franchise, enjoying few property rights (and
these because she was single), living as a dependent at the edge of
her brother's estate, and publishing her work anonymously, Austen was
arguably a kind of exile in her own country. If we follow out the
logic of Said's own identity politics, Austen, too, might therefore be
suspected of irony toward reigning constructions of citizenship,
however much, like Conrad, she may also in many respects have upheld
them. The goal of this essay is to indicate where and, finally, to
suggest why Said so entirely misses this irony. My point, I should
stress, is not to exonerate Austen of imperialist crimes. Surely Said
is right to include her among those who made colonialism thinkable by
constructing the West as centre, home and norm, while pushing
everything else to the margins. The question I would raise is not
whether Austen contributed to English domination abroad but how her
doing so was necessarily inflected and partly disrupted by her
position as a bourgeois woman.



What is the author's position regards Jane Austen and her works?


Austen's participation in an imperialist network through her novels is
nuanced by her status as a single and dependent woman.
Said is right to suggest that Austen through her novels upheld
imperialist notions of Eurocentricism.
Austen is a polite, unworldly lady from the higher strata of society
not aware of the majorevents of her times.
They are the works of a woman who did not keep up the standard of the
West as home, centre and norm.



2

What is the author's position on Said's remarks about Mansfield Park?


Said hasn't read the novel properly enough to be qualified to make any
com-ments on it.
Said would have been less critical of Austen had she been a man,
because that is what he does with Conrad.
Said hasn't been able to contextualize Austen's position vis-a-vis the
times she lived in and her status, therefore his remarks on Mansfield
Park are completely invalid.
Said's views on Mansfield Park are off the mark because he has neither
read the book properly, nor contextualized Austen's position in terms
of her times and status.

3


What is Said's position on Austen's Mansfield Park?


Austen is deliberately unconcerned by the imperialism and other
historical movements of her times, so she does not depict them in the
novel.
Austen's refusal to tackle slavery and imperialism is due to her
excessive detailing of high society ball rooms.
Austen's refusal to engage in the socio political debate of her times
is partly due to her position as a demure and naïve lady.
Austen argues in favour of the imperialist policies of European
culture of her times.