Politics of Irony in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park

Abstract

Jane Austen as a novelist of early nineteenth century gives a vivid picture of contemporary society in her novel Mansfield Park. She raises some of the sociopolitical issues to depict the social reality of the time. Mansfield Park is about the threat to an existing ideologies and its reform. Herein Austen uses irony to dramatize the crisis and failure of the so-called patriarchy on the one hand and the failure of the colonial motive of white man’s civilizing mission in the Caribbean Island on the other. Her politics of irony is most subversive one in that it reveals her inner thought about women’s emancipation and individual freedom. It is an artistic quality and craftsmanship of Austen who has successfully deviated from conventional thought of looking at female as inferior. Her heroine violates the conventional boundaries, and the norm of Austen's irony follows from this very violation which she supports.