Mansfield Park
Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) is a prominent English Romantic novel. This novel has been subject of many readings and interpretations. One of those well-known readings is the one that Edward Said presents in his book, Culture and Imperialism. In nutshell, Said argues that the novel is a colonial novel which constitutes a perfect example where literature and colonialism “co-existed.” However, one of the most recent readings on Mansfield Park suggests that the novel was solely directed the British interior. To put it in another way, the interpreter argues that the novel was meant to criticize the ills and moral decay and disintegration in the British society in the 19th century. This would suggest in another way that Austen aimed at that time by this critique to reform and rebuild the Occidental individual and the whole society.