"Obliged to yield": The Language of Patriarchy and the System of Mental Slavery in Mansfield Park

This essay argues that a close reading of language in Mansfield Park—especially the words "duty," "gratitude," "obligation," and "ought"—correlates patriarchy with mental slavery and marks Fanny Price as the text's representative slave. Yet, to borrow a phrase from William Blake, the same linguistic "mind forg'd manacles" that enchain Fanny also constrict the rest of the characters in the romance. In Mansfield Park, no person is free. Ultimately, the essay contends that Austen's romance unmasks patriarchy as an inescapable system of mental slavery, and it sheds light on the complexities and subtleties of language in this work as countless scholars have already done in Austen's other novels, which, unsurprisingly, often foreground the thematic importance of specific words in their very titles.