Imperial Silence and Domestic Order: Colonial Foundations in Jane Austen’s  Mansfield Park

sonia khajuria

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i01.69384

Imperial Silence and Domestic Order: Colonial Foundations in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park

Author(s)	Dr. sonia khajuria
Country	India
Abstract	Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) occupies a distinctive position within the canon of nineteenth-century British fiction. Traditionally interpreted as a novel concerned with moral education, domestic stability, and social hierarchy, it has often been treated as detached from the political and economic realities of imperial expansion. However, postcolonial criticism has demonstrated that the domestic order represented in the novel is materially and ideologically linked to Britain’s colonial enterprise. Edward Said’s influential reading argues that the Bertram family’s wealth originates in a slave plantation in Antigua, yet Austen refrains from directly representing colonial labour or violence. This paper examines how Mansfield Park sustains imperial ideology through narrative omission, spatial displacement, and moral normalization. Drawing upon theoretical insights from Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Homi K. Bhabha, the study argues that Austen’s domestic realism is structurally dependent upon imperial power. Colonial exploitation remains both essential and invisible, enabling the English estate to appear morally coherent and socially stable. By presenting imperial wealth as natural while excluding its human consequences, the novel contributes to the cultural processes through which empire was legitimized. Ultimately, Mansfield Park reveals that domestic order and imperial authority were not separate domains but mutually reinforcing structures within nineteenth-century British society.
Keywords	imperial ideology, colonial economy, narrative silence, domestic realism, postcolonial criticism, British empire, Austen, Mansfield Park
Field	Sociology > Linguistic / Literature
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 1, January-February 2026
Published On	2026-02-20
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i01.69384

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Imperial Silence and Domestic Order: Colonial Foundations in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park

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