ee how Austen is incorporating aspects of the wider world into the novel through a trivial event. Mary’s character is also interesting in this scene, as she shows that a man can have power despite his intelligence, just because he is a man. Mary achieves a sense of power for even recognising this fact, as many women would just accept the power men had. However, by using Marxist theory it is evident that sexual inequality is a result of a “historically specific phenomena with historically specific roots located in the invisible levels of social reality”1, meaning that women could never achieve political power due to a socially constructed history that saw the female as weak, and too full of emotional sensibility to conduct themselves in important situations, such as Parliament. When thinking of this situation in relation to socialist feminism, we can see that ‘oppression is rooted in a capitalist system’2, showing that in Western society there can be no liberation of women without over-throwing the capitalist system, and this is virtually impossible – they are ‘social subjects under bourgeois capitalism’3.It has become evident that the relationship between individuals and society is a main concern of Mansfield Park as it is a ‘novel of manners’, which observes and reports 7_______________________________1 Literary Theory: An Introduction, 2nd Ed, Terry Eagleton (Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1996), p572&3 Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader, Mary Eagleton (Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1986), p100EL2 – Essay 2Angela BathgateTutor – Julie Marneyon characters’ feelings, thoughts and decisions. Austen focuses specifically on the upper-middle class, large landowners, or members of the minor aristocracy. Sir Thomas Bertram is from the baronet level, and has economic power due to his large estates in both England and Antigua. Sir Thomas’s business in the West Indies allows A...
