Lorrie Moore is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, "The Best American Short Stories" and "Prize Stories: The O Henry Awards." She is the author of two novels and two previous short-story collections.

The article is from Atlantic Monthly November 2004

Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen (1814).

Allusions to Antiguan slave trading and the cultural and economic imperialism that have enriched the Bertram clan are made explicit in Patricia Rozema's 1999 film—largely in the opening and the closing credit sequence, which feature African singers in a kind of wail from the sea. This theme of "black cargo" is made part of the story in a way the author never intended. Yet Rozema underscores the bitter ironies of Austen's world—its concern for moral character and respectable appearances—without sacrificing Austen (even if one does wonder what a slave ship is doing off the English coast). The milieu of Mansfield Park, contained and generally undistorted, is at the same time enlarged, contextualized, seen whole.