How Trennels was built.

[jackmerlin]

I know this has been brilliantly covered in fanfic, but I have been searching back through old threads and can't see that it has ever been discussed in a thread here. In Peter's Room we are told as a casual aside, that Trennels was built by a Joshua Marlow, who made his pile in the slave trade

Comments

[sorrelforbes]

Mansfield Park definitely feels likely as an influence, doesn't it? Though Nicola is otherwise no Fanny Price...

Re whether they feel guilty about living in it - I'd guess most of them don't, especially the ones who are navy mad. Their identity's much more tied to that naval service than the more distant past, and they feel they're on the side of right as a result. Also, all the way up to Run Away Home, Trennels is still a novelty that they've been unexpectedly dropped in and are still coming to grips with, rather than something that's part of them. Rowan's the exception but it's a slog for her, not a privilege. I bet Ann would come to be very disturbed about it though. Maybe AF was laying a bit more ground for her future doing good works in Africa?

[jackmerlin]

That's a very interesting point about Ann and her possible future motivation for going to Africa.
Obviously the Marlows didn't ask to inherit Trennels - as far as they're concerned they've been landed with a big house saddled with debts and an inadequate boiler, and none of it is their choice. And Peter, who is the only one who refers to Joshua, is a classic example of teenage preoccupation, absorbed in his own ideas and concerns. I think he would have been quite shaken to have been asked what he actually thought about JM and the slave trade and wouldn't have actually thought that it had anything to do with him.
But given that AF uses Malise in PR and Nicholas in CT as a significant part of the character's thoughts, why does she mention Joshua if he's not going to be used in any way?
Maybe one day Edwin will come across an entry in the farm log about the family moving from the 'old' house into the big, new one Mr Joshua has built, and discussion will follow.

[legionseaglelj]

I've always thought that it was very much tying the Marlows of Peter's Room into Mansfield Park (surely the Bertrams have to be slave-owners; they have plantations in the West Indies and the Act of 1807 only prevented the trade in slaves; the slaves on British-owned plantations became emancipated in 1833, at which point the likes of the Bertrams received compensation.) It's very much a Mansfield Park plot in many ways, including as you say the love triangle (and left out family members; Julia, as well as Fanny) as well as peer pressure into acting. But also the plot about influence in the Navy and William's ambitions ties in to other Marlow preoccupations, not necessarily in Peter's Room but certainly in Falconer's Lure and The Marlows and the Traitor.

On the topic of fanfic, I presume you've read ankaret's fabulous Sugar which deals with this bit of Marlow history, as well as lilliburlero's Unedited Transcript Fragment about how the Marlows' unconsciousness of it might strike someone with West Indian roots.

[jackmerlin]

I have indeed read them, and loved them both!

[thekumquat]

Been pondering this, and enjoying the linked fics, one of which i hadnt read

[jackmerlin]

Yes, that's a good point about explaining the jump from being just farmers to being the Marlows up at the Big House. I suppose Joshua's money kept the whole thing going for a century or so, because it seems rather a hobby farm by Jon's time.
I feel I should run and do some finding out. How many of the big houses/estates built or bought by those who profited from the slave trade are still lived in by the same family?
As you say, at the time of writing PR, the slave trade was distant history to a white, middle class audience. AF's editor can't have suggested leaving it out, as they certainly might have later on.
ETA I can't help feeling that putting an entail on an estate that was funded by the slave trade is rather like putting all your descendants under a curse - handing on the bad karma in perpetuity, as it were.