I find it hard to muster up any pity whatsoever for the plantation owners of the day, I'm afraid, up to and including Sir Thomas.

Agreed, but I don't think Sir Thomas needs pity, does he? He inherited/acquired a sugar plantation-we don't know how, or when. If he inherits, you really cannot accuse him of being a bad man- which is where I started out, if you remember. If he acquires it, that's not in itself bad either- it all depends upon what he does with it, doesn't it?

We know he has economic problems with the plantation but not why. History demonstrates that the economic problems were not either caused by the existence of slavery, nor solved by its abolition. So slavery in itself, isn't a proven reason for him going out there- it may well have been the other factors which got him there. One can only guess as to why he went- and one can just as plausibly say he went to free his slaves as well as sort out he economics as to say he didn't. We just don't know.

Likewise, we don't know what he did when he got there. He may well have freed his slaves, and he may just as well have not freed them- there's nothing in the book to say. All we can extrapolate is that Sir Thomas does seem to have come back a little kinder than when he left, and perhaps his experiences on the plantation affected his conscience.

One other thing I feel needs saying. Slavery is shocking... everything written about it is shocking. Almost everything you read about in political pamphlets, and in history books, is shocking, one way or another. Political pamphlets are written to shock people into action, and Linden has demonstrated that there were a lot of them about, even if she doesn't like mine ;-). Political pamphlets don't get written about good things, or non-contreversial things. Neither do history books cover these things, really. Almost all the accounts of slavery are written in order to shock, to express disapproval. That doesn't mean that kinder plantations did not exist- only that they didn't get written about.

Going baack to my original contention- that Antigua's image in the mind of the public was a complex one, I'll now agree with you that JA's readers would probably assume that Sir Thomnas owned slaves. We have not proved that he's a bad man because he owned slaves, and we've not proved that JA meant them to think of him a certain way because he owned slaves. We still do not have enough evidence of her intentions and I doubt we ever will. She did not have twenty-first century sensiblities, she did not, as far as anyone can tell, get herself associated with the anti-slavery campaign, and as yet, there are no extant letters where she specifically comments on the badness of slavery that might make one think she would have allied herself withthe anti-slavery cause. I really wish there were, becasue I, myself, would dearly like to think she was outraged by slavery, and I'm willing to believe that if she was outraged by it, that she'd send a clear anti-slavery message somewhere in her writings. The truth is, all we have is a message (via Jane Fairfax, and possibly in her letters to her governessing friend Ann ) that she thought governessing itself 'a kind of slavery'. If she really really did believe that, then she was far less aware of the political goings on that some people want her to be.

So sorry, -I still do not believe Sir Thomas was a bad man because he owned a plantation. I can think of other reasons to call hm a bad man, but they are not relevant here. And I'll still get infuriated by the fact that some people (and I'm really not pointing fingers here, really, becasue it's not one person, it's many ) use the fact of the barest breath of slavery in MP and Emma to start a "conversation" which invariably ends up with somebody accusing another of doubtful morality, inadequate religiosity, or whatever. Slavery happened, period. That doesn't make any twenty-first century Pemberleans lesser beings becasue they don't instantly rise to the bait, and denouce their ancestors in the strongest terms possible.

Okay, end of rant.

We have actually got some more information out of this, which is good. I'd like to thank Dee and (belatedly ) Linden for doing what I originally asked and digging up a few more hard facts.And Linden, I'll try to find my usually reasonable self again, I promise. It got lost in dealing with another part of Pemberley last week.;-)