Vancouver Region: A Capital Improver

"A Capital Improver": Speculation and the Slave Trade in Mansfield Park

The Vancouver Region is kicking off its autumn programming with guest speaker Katie Lund, a doctoral student in English at the University of British Columbia.

Her talk will trace social speculation and the valuing of people and bodies in Mansfield Park. Improvement—whether of characters, bodies, fortunes, houses, or landed estates—is always a loaded word in Jane Austen’s writing. Nowhere is this more marked than in Mansfield Park. At the midway point, the characters play a card game called speculation in which they bid for anthropomorphic court cards. In this scene of gambling, the trading of cards is bound up in a conversation about estate improvement. Building on postcolonial analyses, this presentation will employ the context of the transatlantic slave trade and 18th century finance capital to shed light on the influences of empire at work at the domestic heart of the novel. Reading this scene as a microcosm of colonial exchange, this talk will examine how the characters of Mansfield Park recreate the kinds of speculation and valuation that underpinned the slave trade.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, email jasnavancouverRC@gmail.com.