Mansfield Park by Kate Hamill (and Jane Austen)

Authors

Christopher Nagle, Western Michigan UniversityFollow

Author Biography

Christopher Nagle is Associate Professor of English and Gender & Women’s Studies at Western Michigan University. He is the author of Sexuality and the Culture of Sensibility in the British Romantic Era (Palgrave Macmillan), and essays on a wide range of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women writers, including Jane Austen, Sydney Owenson, Letitia Landon, and Ann Batten Cristall. He is currently working on a book-length study of Austen adaptation and appropriation across various media.

Abstract

This article reviews the world premiere of Kate Hamill's Mansfield Park directed by Stuart Carden and produced for the Northlight Theatre in Chicago in November and December 2018. Hamill’s bold new adaptation is notable for foregrounding the contexts of empire and the slave trade undergirding the novel, and in ultimately offering a feminist fairy-tale of radical self-assertion and self-determination for its heroine.

Keywords

Jane Austen, adaptation, #BlackLivesMatter, empire, farce, feminism, #MeToo, slavery

Recommended Citation

Nagle, Christopher (2019) "Mansfield Park by Kate Hamill (and Jane Austen)," ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830: Vol.9: Iss.1, Article 7.
https://doi.org/10.5038/2157-7129.9.1.1211
Available at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol9/iss1/7