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UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Of bonds and bondage : gender, slavery, and transatlantic intimacies in the eighteenth century Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/652486x7 Author Rosenthal, Jamie Ellen Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Of Bonds and Bondage: Gender, Slavery, and Transatlantic Intimacies in the Eighteenth Century A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Jamie Ellen Rosenthal Committee in charge: Professor Rosemary George, Co-Chair Professor Kathryn Shevelow, Co-Chair Professor Rachel Klein Professor Lisa Lowe Professor Winifred Woodhull 2012 The Dissertation of Jamie Ellen Rosenthal is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ Co-Chair _____________________________________________________________________ Co-Chair University of California, San Diego 2012 iii For Neel, my best friend and partner. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page………………………………………………………………….…… iii Dedication.….………………………………………………………………………. iv Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………… v Acknowledgements.………………………………………………………………… vi Vita...………………………………………………………………………….…..… ix Abstract…………………………………………………………………….……….. x Introduction…………………………………………………………….…………… 1 Chapter One The Contradictions of Sensibility: Race, Slavery, and the Colonial ‘Lady’...……… 44 Chapter Two Slavery, Radicalism, and the Fates of Working Women….….………..………….… 108 Chapter Three Religion, Morality, and the Poetics of Resistance in Colored and Black Women’s Narratives...………………………………………………………………. 156 Conclusion.………………………………………………………………………….. 228 Bibliography….…………….……………………………………………………….. 235 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am extremely grateful to the many people who have helped me to complete this project. I am indebted to my co-advisors, Kathryn Shevelow and Rosemary George, for their generous guidance and support during the various stages of my graduate studies. I have benefitted greatly from Kathryn’s expertise in eighteenth- century British literature and culture and from Rosemary’s expertise in postcolonial studies. Their encouragement, constructive feedback, and patience during the long process of completing this project have been invaluable. I admire them both as scholars and teachers, and I am grateful for everything I have learned from them. Winnie Woodhull has provided friendly encouragement and helpful feedback on my work. Her comments on an early draft of my first chapter raised important questions that helped shape the chapter and the project as a whole. I have enjoyed our conversations over the years, and I appreciate the support and advice she has given me as I have learned to navigate the world of academia. Lisa Lowe has deepened my appreciation for the importance of transnational approaches to literature. I admire her work as a scholar and a teacher, and I am thankful for her interest in and support of my project. I am grateful to Rachel Klein for providing helpful comments during the early stage of this project and for her continued support of my work. As this project progressed, I received several generous fellowships and grants that helped make it possible. The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provided me with a 9-month fellowship that enabled me to conduct research in California, New York, England, and vi Antigua. The Huntington Library and the John Carter Brown Library each provided me with short-term research fellowships that enabled me to use their excellent collections. The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies provided me with a travel grant that helped fund my research in London. I am grateful to these institutions, and to the staff at CLIR, the Huntington Library, the John Carter Brown Library, the New-York Historical Society, the Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle at the New York Public Library, the British Library, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library, the School of Oriental and African Studies Library, the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda Library, and the Antigua and Barbuda National Archives. I have been fortunate to have the support of many friends in California, North Carolina, and elsewhere during the process of completing this project. The friends I made while at UCSD—including Paige Prindle, Amie Filkow, Leslie Hammer, Emily Kugler, Gloria Gandara, Lillian Atteridge Dunning, Anne Wullschlager, and Angie Chau—have provided invaluable encouragement, support, and assistance over the years. I am also lucky to have forged a wonderful community of friends and colleagues at UNC-Chapel Hill—including Laura Halperin, Nina Martin, Erika Wise, Elizabeth Havice, Sara Smith, Jean Dennison, Jocelyn Chua, Jennifer Ho, Ruth Salvaggio, and Minrose Gwin—who have supported me during the final stages of this work. I am also very grateful for the love and support of my family. My parents, Teresa Rosenthal and Steven Rosenthal, fostered my love of learning and literature from an early age and encouraged me to pursue my goals and dreams, however vii unconventional, over the years. My father, Steven, has always shown a strong interest in my academic work, which I truly appreciate. My brother, Josh, has been a wonderful friend on whom I can always rely. His talent, maturity, and wisdom never cease to amaze me. My step-mother, Ailsa Steckel, and my younger sisters, Eliana and Shoshana, have also been important sources of friendship and support. Finally, I thank my partner, Neel Ahuja, for his unwavering enthusiasm, encouragement, and support during this long journey. I have benefited enormously from his intelligent and insightful feedback, which has encouraged me to take my work in new and exciting directions. I am truly grateful for his constant willingness to listen and respond to my ideas and for the countless ways that he has helped me get through the last few years of researching, writing, and teaching. I enjoy spending every day with Neel and our pets, Keiki and Chef. I dedicate this work to Neel. viii VITA DEGREES 2012 Doctor of Philosophy, Literature, University of California, San Diego 2007 Master of Arts, Literature, University of California, San Diego 2000 Bachelor of Arts, Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz FIELDS OF STUDY Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture Transatlantic Studies Caribbean Studies Critical Theories of Race, Gender, and Sexuality PUBLICATIONS “The Contradictions of Racialized Sensibility: Gender, Slavery, and the Limits of Sympathy.” Affect and Abolition in the Anglo-Atlantic, 1770-1830: The Bonds of Sentiment. Ed. Stephen Ahern. Farnham: Ashgate Press, Forthcoming 2013. FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS 2009-2010 Mellon Foundation/Council on Library and Information Resources Dissertation Fellowship for Research in Original Sources 2009 Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Short-term Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence, RI 2009 W.M. Keck Foundation Short-term Fellowship at the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA 2009 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Aubrey Williams Research Travel Award 2008-2009 UC San Diego Literature Department Dissertation Fellowship ix ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Of Bonds and Bondage: Gender, Slavery, and Transatlantic Intimacies in the Eighteenth Century by Jamie Ellen Rosenthal Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego, 2012 Professor Rosemary George, Co-Chair Professor Kathryn Shevelow, Co-Chair This dissertation examines women’s autobiographical texts as key sites for understanding the variety of intimate, everyday practices through which the transatlantic slave system was constituted and challenged. I analyze journals, letters, slave narratives, and religious writings by women of different social and racial x backgrounds who traveled or lived in the Anglophone Caribbean during the long eighteenth century. I focus on the writings of Janet Schaw, Maria Nugent, Eliza Fenwick, Elizabeth Hart Thwaites, Anne Hart Gilbert, and Mary Prince. These women’s writings demonstrate that colonial control was exercised not only through formal state institutions, but also through the intimate interactions, alliances, and social norms produced by individuals in everyday life. At the same time, they show that colonial power was not only challenged through organized, collective action, but also by individuals who rejected or reinterpreted social norms regarding race, class, gender, and sexuality. Arguing against traditions of scholarship that minimize the centrality of intimate spheres in the constitution of the political, the complex positions of female colonists, and the theoretical and material contributions of slaves to the overthrow of the colonial slave system, I argue that intimacies produced within and across lines of social difference in the Caribbean were both productive of colonial power and the basis for unique forms of everyday resistance to the ideologies and material structures of the slave plantation economy. By reading women’s narratives in relation to unpublished