Canberra author and academic, Roslyn Russell.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that in a Jane Austen novel, a young woman with wits or beauty (or both) to recommend her and a young man in possession of a good fortune will usually meet at a Ball or an evening party, fall in love, and have obstacles thrown in their way to stop that love-often in the form of hideous relatives or a dashing rival or their own vanity and pride. But fortunately by the end of the novel, these obstacles have been removed, the heroine and her hero marry, and they live happily ever after.

Such is the fate of many of Jane Austen’s beloved characters including Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy in Pride & Prejudice, Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth in Persuasion, and Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey. As readers, we feel a strong sense of satisfaction and pleasure in their coming together because, really, that’s what we would expect of a Jane Austen novel, even if we’ve read her novels a hundred times over.

But what about Jane Austen’s other characters-the relatives and neighbours and friends and dashing or scheming rivals who people her novels and add colour, variety and spice to the societies of Longbourne, Netherfield, Mansfield Park, London, Bath, Hartfield, Barton Park, and Northanger Abbey?  What are their fates? What version of ‘happily ever after’ do they end up with?

“Many fans of Jane Austen’s novels long to be able to read more in the same vein and are interested in what might have happened to her characters after her novels end,” Canberra author and academic, Roslyn Russell, explains. “This accounts for the plethora of sequels and spin-off novels that are very popular with Jane Austen devotees.”

Fortunately for the Jane Austen devotees out there, the fate of one of Austen’s secondary but more controversial characters is the subject of Roslyn’s debut novel. Maria Rushworth, the handsome, privileged eldest daughter of the formidable Sir Thomas Bertram in Mansfield Park (first published in 1814), is the heroine of Roslyn’s new novel, Maria Returns: Barbados to Mansfield Park (Bobby Graham Publishers, 2014).

The Fate of Maria Rushworth

“I have always felt that poor Maria was dealt a bad hand at the end of Mansfield Park, packed off to a remote place to live with her awful Aunt Norris,” Roslyn says.

For those of you who have read Mansfield Park, then you will know what a truly horrible fate living in exile for the rest of your life with Mrs Norris actually is.

Mrs Norris is possibly the most repugnant character that Jane Austen ever created. Mrs Norris is famous for bullying Mansfield Park’s heroine, the very timid Fanny Price, mercilessly. But she dotes on and spoils Fanny’s cousin, Maria. The main events of Mansfield Park happen after Fanny turns 18. Maria agrees to an engagement with the brainless but very rich and respectable Mr Rushworth. But then her father, Sir Thomas, leaves Mansfield to sort out his affairs in the Caribbean island of Antigua.

This is when things get really interesting, especially when Mary Crawford and her brother, Henry, arrive and turn the world of Mansfield Park upside down. Henry flirts with both Maria and her sister, Julia, and both sisters fall in love with him. Then Sir Thomas returns to Mansfield Park unexpectedly. Henry departs, and a heartbroken and angry Maria marries Mr Rushworth. However, towards the end of the novel, Henry meets up with Maria again. Maria causes a scandal by leaving her husband and running off to live with Henry. But Henry tires quickly of their adulterous affair, and he basically dumps her.

So what happens to the unfortunate Maria? Well, she has brought shame and disgrace to the Bertram family, and so Sir Thomas does the fatherly thing and banishes her far away from all the comforts and privileges of Mansfield Park, to live out the rest of her days in exile with the awful Mrs Norris.

Now this is where Roslyn Russell’s story comes in.  “The end of Austen’s novel allows no scope for Maria to mature and to achieve some kind of redemption,” she says. “Her social disgrace was absolute, and she is pictured by Austen as living in a constant state of resentment and anger, with no suggestion that she could have gradually matured and changed. My take on Maria gives her a second chance. She has become reconciled to her situation after some years, and it is time to give her the opportunity to make a new life for herself. It is also time – 14 years or so after she has been sent away from her family – for some degree of reconciliation, with her parents at least.”

But Roslyn’s story also deals with a very important issue that Jane Austen briefly touches on in Mansfield Park but which forms a dark undercurrent to Austen’s novel: slavery.

Slavery in the British Empire

In Mansfield Park, the reason why Sir Thomas Bertram suddenly goes to the Caribbean island of Antigua to sort out his affairs is because his ‘affairs’ in Antigua involve the slave plantation that he owns there.

The trading of African slaves by Europeans across the Atlantic Ocean (known as the Atlantic or Transatlantic slave trade) took place from the 16^th to 19^th centuries. The British transported tens of thousands of African slaves to their settlements in Barbados and the other Caribbean islands to cultivate sugar. By the mid 18^th century, Britain was the foremost European country involved in the slave trade. This was a subject that the well-informed Jane Austen knew very well.

“The sub-text of slavery in Mansfield Park was brought home to me very strongly when I began to work in the history of the Caribbean, and specifically in Barbados,” Roslyn says.

“Visiting plantation Great Houses such as Holders Great House, whose former owners were neighbours of Jane Austen in Hampshire and are referred to in her letters, focused my attention on Austen’s links with Caribbean slavery, not only in Antigua where a distant relative, like the Bertram family, owned an estate, but also among the Austen family’s friendship network. I had been aware of the atrocities of slavery before working in Barbados, and of the movement to abolish slavery in the British Empire, but actually being in the location where slavery held sway for two centuries, knowing of the wealth that slave owning generated there, and visiting sites associated with the 1816 Bussa slave rebellion, made me even more aware of its enormities.”

In her book Maria Returns, Roslyn explores the whole issue of slavery underpinning the respectability of the Bertram family, and Maria’s gradual awareness and distaste for it.  This is where Maria is able to redeem herself. “She transforms from a disgraced but proud woman,” Roslyn says, “to one who is prepared to challenge the foundations of her family’s wealth, and to make them aware of the consequences of their actions in the context of slavery.”

Maria Returns makes a timely debut, as 2014 marks the 200^th anniversary of the publication of Mansfield Park. But this anniversary year also coincides with another timely and very important event-the decision by a group of Caribbean nations to seek reparation for the centuries when the labour of enslaved people there created vast fortunes in countries across Europe, including Great Britain, France, Spain and Portugal, but left the descendants of the enslaved in poverty that persists in many of the Caribbean island states today. “Teasing out the possible connections between Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park and Caribbean slavery in my novel will, I hope, raise awareness of this historical debt that is as yet unpaid,” Roslyn says.

A little bit about Roslyn Russell

Roslyn has had a long and impressive career. She has worked as a high school and TAFE teacher; she was a research assistant to Emeritus Professor Manning Clark at the Australian National University from 1982-1987; as a historian, she has worked on numerous heritage projects and organised museum exhibitions across Canberra (including the National Museum and the Canberra Museum & Gallery), across Australia and Barbados; and she has been and continues to be involved with UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme (which concerns itself with preserving the world’s documentary heritage).

Roslyn first arrived in Canberra in 1982 to work with Professor Manning Clark, and she has lived and worked here ever since. She is married to a fellow historian and retired academic public policy specialist, Dr Michael Jones, and their daughter recently gave birth to their first grandchild.

Roslyn first became interested in Austen when she studied Emma and Mansfield Park during her studies at the University of Sydney. But Mansfield Park is actually not her favourite Austen novel-that honour belongs to Persuasion. However, the horrible Mrs Norris is Roslyn’s favourite Austen villain of all time!

Maria Returns: Barbados to Mansfield Park is Roslyn’s first work of fiction. “I hope that readers will take away from the novel the message that people can change,” she says, “that personal failure is not final, and that a hitherto selfish person can gain the courage to risk rejection by championing those who were regarded as beyond the social pale.”

Don’t miss the Maria Returns Book Launch!

Roslyn will launch Maria Returns on 3 May in the Common Room at University House, ANU from 2pm-4pm. The President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia, Susannah Fullerton, will launch the book, and Roslyn will be speaking about what inspired her to write it, and the background to the Barbados scenes in particular.

Where you can get your copy

Maria Returns can be purchased at a special launch price at Roslyn’s book launch and also through the publisher’s website (RRP $19.99). The book will also be available in the National Library bookshop and other outlets in the near future, including the ANU Co-op Bookshop and Paperchain bookstore in Manuka.

The Essentials

What: Roslyn Russell launches Maria Returns
When: Saturday, May 3, from 2pm-4pm
Where: Common Room, University House, ANU (Cnr Balmain Cr & Liversidge St, Acton)
Tickets: Get your free tickets to the book launch here.