Operative and Inoperative Communities in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (1814)

Abstract

The present article analyzes the bipolar perception of community in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) drawing on the communitarian model theorized by the French thinkers Jean-Luc Nancy (1983), Maurice Blanchot (1983) and Jacques Derrida (2006). Although Austen was obviously unaware of the postmodern theoretical implications stemming from the communal dimension of her novels, I argue that the institution of Mansfield Park functions as a self-enclosed and inbreeding community which is grounded on operative traits—birth, origin, filiation and generation—and which, therefore, does not have a potential for otherness. And yet, there are some flirtatious intimations of inoperativeness in Mansfield Park that unwork the traditional model of community: the community of lovers that Henry and Maria form, which disrupts all the other operative communities in Mansfield Park; and the theatricals, which—through the characters’ anomalous speech acts—unleash the sexual tension that fluctuates between them.