ABSTRACT
Jane Austen’s canonical novel Mansfield Park (pub. 1814) and Joanna Baillie’s never performed (and now rarely read) play The Alienated Manor (pub. 1836) both offer insights into archio-disciplinary surveillance in the insular household sphere. This chapter develops the concepts of ‘disciplinary architecture’ and ‘scripted spaces’ – where the layout and structure of buildings play a part in controlling and determining movements and actions – through a discussion of the Panopticon, a structure that was designed by Baillie’s friend Jeremy Bentham. Bearing the imaginative imprint of that friendship, Baillie’s comedy explores the surveillance that awaited women in the home in the early nineteenth century. The chapter also considers how the interrelation of power and architecture in The Alienated Manor offer new ways to understand Mansfield Park. While valuable comparative criticism has been directed at the work of contemporaries Austen and Baillie (notably by Christine A. Colón and Catherine Burroughs), the hitherto undiscussed pairing of Austen’s Mansfield Park and Baillie’s The Alienated Manor offers a more productive frame of comparison since in both narratives, male domains and authority are challenged by women who are actively engaged in reconfiguring spaces.
