Alastair Duckworth, “Mansfield Park and Estate Improvements: Jane Austen’s Grounds of Being”

In this essay, Alistair M. Duckworth argues that in Mansfield Park Austen uses the concept of estate improvement to examine notions of “cultural inheritance” and cultural evolution. He reads judicious estate improvement as a metaphor for Austen’s ideal approach to social change—one that avoids the extremes of “atrophy” and of immoderate “innovation.”

Alastair Duckworth, “Mansfield Park and Estate Improvements: Jane Austen’s Grounds of Being”