Florida State University Libraries

Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School

2007 In Search of Something Akin to Freedom: Black Women, Slavery, and Power Katrina Songanett Smith

Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected]

THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

In Search of Something Akin to Freedom: Black Women, Slavery, and Power

By

Katrina Songanett Smith

A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2007

The members of the Committee approve the Thesis of Katrina Songanett Smith defended on June 8, 2007.

______Candace Ward Professor Directing Thesis

______Jerrilyn McGregory Committee Member

______Amit Rai Committee Member

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.

ii To the black and colored women in the Caribbean whose trials, tribulations, and triumphs served as the inspiration for this project.

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost I must thank my family. I thank my parents for instilling in me the values and ethics that have made my life successful up to this point. I extend thanks to my sisters for listening to me when I was complaining about how much work I had to do and for telling me that I could do whatever I set my mind to. Without the love and support of my family, none of this would have been possible.

I must also thank the incredible friends who have gone through this long and arduous process along with me. Lindsey, thanks for always knowing everything about everything. Anytime I’ve had a question, you’ve always had the answer.

Thanks also for the many dinners and lunches we’ve shared throughout this process. Sami, thanks for always telling me that I would get done. At times, I wasn’t so sure. Also, thanks for always keeping a smile on my face. Tao, thanks for the advice and the words of wisdom. Without you telling me what I had to do, I’m sure I would have missed a step somewhere along the way. Danielle, thanks for always being a breath of fresh air. Pete, thanks for always threatening me with the fear of not being a serious scholar. I love you guys so much.

Last, and definitely not least, thanks to Dr. Ward for being a great major professor. Even when the work that I turned in to you was sub-par, you always showed me the positives. You never made me feel inadequate. Your constant motivation and support have helped me tremendously in my journey towards academic success. Not only have you been a great major professor, but you’ve been a great role model as well, someone I can aspire to be like when I grow up.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... vi

Introduction …………………………………………………………………..1

Chapter One: Historical Accounts of Black Women’s Sexuality and Strategies of Resistance: The Narratives of Mary Prince, Thomas Thistlewood, John Stedman, Maria Nugent, and Janet Schaw...... 8

Chapter Two: The Revenge of the Shrew: Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko ...... 32

Chapter Three: The Sacrifice of the Colored Woman in J.W. Orderson’s Creoleana ...... 44

Epilogue ……………………………………………………………….… .66

Works Cited .……………………………………………………………….... .70

Biographical Sketch ……………………………………………………….... 72

v ABSTRACT

This thesis examines both historical and fictional representations of interracial relationships in the 18th century. My argument in this project is two-fold. First, I argue that some black women used sexual relationships with white men to gain advantages for themselves and their fellow slaves. Second, I argue that novelists of the time period re-wrote history in an attempt to erase the positive aspects of miscegenation.

vi INTRODUCTION

Oh the horrors of slavery! – How the thought of it pains my heart! But the truth ought to be told of it; and what my eyes have seen I think it is my duty to relate; for few people in England know what slavery is. I have been a slave – I have felt what a slave feels, and I know what a slave knows; and I would have all the good people in England to know it too, that they may break our chains, and set us free. -Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince

For much of her adult life, Mary Prince’s main objective was to gain her freedom.

She was willing to use any means necessary, from sleeping with a white man who she thought would purchase her freedom to fleeing from her owner’s house in England, to ensure that she would not spend her entire life in bondage. At a time when black women, both in America and the Caribbean, had no tangible power, Prince used the one commodity that she had, her body, to gain agency and thus guarantee her freedom.

This theme of using one’s body to gain freedom is one that was replayed over and over both in real life and in fiction during the eighteenth century. Building off of Mary

Prince’s description of how she gained her freedom, this project looks at how enslaved black women used their sexuality to gain agency. For the purpose of this project, agency is used to describe the ability to empower oneself in whatever arena one so chooses.

Agency, then, is defined on a personal level and in relation to the goals one is trying to achieve. Therefore, in this project, I use the word agency to describe the black woman’s ability to negotiate within the dominant power structure and wrestle away some measure of control over her situation.

During the period of slavery, enslaved women’s sexual relationships with their masters often became a tool for their survival. By becoming a mistress, voluntarily or otherwise, black women gained some measure of control over their circumstances. In many cases, these black mistresses served as substitute wives, taking care of the household, the children, and their “husbands.” Additionally, many of these women no

1 longer had to work outside in the fields. Upon the death of their masters, many of these mistresses were manumitted. This research project seeks to look at the ways that enslaved women in the Caribbean used their sexuality to gain agency and to manipulate the dominant culture’s expectations of them. In some cases their white lovers were in a position to manumit them and in other cases white men were able to provide their black mistresses with enough money to purchase their freedom. I argue that for many black women in the Caribbean, relationships with white men provided them with benefits they could not attain otherwise. A secondary goal of this project is to look at how many novels of the long eighteenth century dealing with miscegenation depicted interracial relationships differently than non-fictional narratives of the time period. Specifically, I argue that the novelists make sure that none of the black mistresses survive events depicted in the novel. In doing so, novelists effectively erased the agency that black women gained through these relationships with their “masters.” This study, then, will explore the reasoning behind this erasure, and the implications of the act.

The depictions of black women in the novels of the eighteenth century are quite fascinating. Instead of being praised for her perseverance and endurance, the Afro-

Caribbean woman is continuously depicted in literature as a promiscuous tramp or written about in recent scholarship as a sad victim of sexual abuse during slavery.

White accounts of black women in the Caribbean during the eighteenth century – for example Edward Long in The History of Jamaica – often write of their lack of morals and their sexual depravation. Few have argued for the strength, endurance, and ability of the Afro-Caribbean woman to survive the abuses she suffered during slavery. This project seeks to help re-coup some of the respect that Afro-Caribbean women have lost at the hands of novelists, a project that’s especially important at this point in literary history when a number of these works are being rescued. It is important to historicize these novels so that they’re not taken as accurate historical representations of 18th and

19th century life in the Caribbean.

2 When examining the sexual relationships between masters and their black/coloured mistresses, it is tempting to limit our reading of black women to see them as victims of white male patriarchal domination. No one can dispute that white plantation owners used their slaves for sexual as well as economic purposes, yet scholars often overlook one of the most obvious sources of power for enslaved women in the Caribbean. It is important to note that in this project “power” is a relative term that I use to imply having some measure of control over one’s life. Through the sexual power that they wielded over their masters, many black mistresses became pseudo- wives, fulfilling many of the productive as well as reproductive functions of the household. Within these relationships, enslaved black women were able to acquire money, in many cases enough to buy their freedom1. Unlike Oroonoko, Creoleana, or The

White Witch of Rose Hall, the non-fictional narratives of the time period portrayed the relationships between white men and black women as committed and most often as serious as legally recognized marriages. Many of the narratives illustrate positive benefits of these relationships, including relief from working in the fields, not having to worry about having one’s children sold to another plantation, and ultimately, manumission.

To lay the foundation for this project, I will analyze one such nonfiction work to demonstrate one woman’s use of her body to gain freedom. Like many other black women, Mary Prince initially tried to use her sexuality to gain her freedom. She engaged in a sexual relationship with a white man named Captain Abbot in the hopes of earning enough money to buy her freedom. She also entered into a sexual relationship with a free man who promised to purchase her freedom. When neither of these relationships led to her emancipation, Prince decided to find another way to use her body to gain her freedom. In England, she showed the scars on her back to the

1 See: Beckles, Hilary. “Property Rights in Pleasure: The Marketing of Enslaved Women’s Sexuality.” Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World. Ed. Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers

3 white women she was hoping would help her escape from her owner, Mr. Woods. This is one of the things that ultimately enabled her to gain enough support so that she could leave Mr. Woods and start out on a life of her own. Although Prince’s attempts to use her sexuality to gain her freedom were unsuccessful, like the other black women I discuss in this project, she was ultimately able to use her body in a different way to achieve that objective.

After discussing Mary Prince, I will move on to a discussion of two black women who attained a degree of agency through their relationships with white men. One of these women was Phibbah, a slave under the watch of Thomas Thistlewood.

Thistlewood moved to Jamaica from England in 1750. After serving as an overseer/book keeper on several sugar estates, he eventually became a landowner and owned several slaves, many of whom he slept with. Indeed, Thistlewood had sex with many women, not all of whom were his slaves, but it was his slave Phibbah that he eventually developed a serious relationship with. His feelings for her are evident in the diary he kept, the manuscript of which eventually totaled over 10,000 pages. Like Thistlewood,

John Stedman had a sexual relationship with a colored woman in the Caribbean. Also like Thistlewood, Stedman kept a diary that was eventually published. Stedman was a soldier in the Scots Brigade and in 1774 he was sent to Surinam to repress a slave revolt.

He spent five years there, and his narrative discusses his experiences with slaves and slave owners in Surinam. His relationship with his colored wife Joanna is an important part of his narrative. My analysis of the ways Phibbah and Joanna used their bodies will further prove my argument that black women in the Caribbean often used their sexuality to gain agency.

Additionally, I will look at two narratives written by white women who commented on these relationships. The narratives of Lady Maria Nugent and Janet

Schaw provide a white woman’s perspective on sexual relationships between white

Limited, 2000. 692-701.

4 men and black women. Janet Schaw traveled with her brother Alexander from Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal between 1774 and 1776. Journal of a

Lady of Quality: Being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies, North

Carolina, and Portugal in the Years 1774 to 1776 is the published version of the journal that

Schaw kept during her voyage. Like Schaw, Lady Maria Nugent also kept a diary.

Nugent was born in New Jersey. She moved to Jamaica after marrying George Nugent,

who served as the governor of Jamaica from 1801 to 1806. Through their narratives I

will show that many white women resented these interracial relationships for several

reasons, including their belief that black women posed a threat to white women’s

marriage prospects by having relationships with white men. Many white men in the

Caribbean chose never to marry and to have a colored mistress instead. This led to

animosity between black and white women because upper class white women had a

limited supply of socially acceptable white men that they could marry. Lower class

white women, on the other hand, had relationships with black men more often than

most people believe2. Since many upper class white women relied on marriage to provide them with a stable life, they did not take kindly to watching their limited supply of men snatched up by women that they felt were inferior.

Using Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, J.W. Orderson’s Creoleana, and Herbert De Lisser’s

White Witch of Rose Hall, I will show that in these novels, relationships (or potential relationships) between black women and white men were portrayed as dysfunctional, even though the narratives of the period reveal that many of them were stable. Behn,

Orderson, and de Lisser, by using their powers as authors to rewrite history, self- consciously emphasized the negative aspects of these interracial relationships in order to negate the power, however limited, that black women wielded in the Caribbean.

2 See: Beckles, Hilary. “White Women and Slavery in the Caribbean.” Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World. Ed. Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers Limited, 2000: 659-669.

5 This fact assumes greater significance with the recognition that these authors had first-hand experience of Creole culture. Behn, Orderson, and de Lisser spent time in the

Caribbean. Behn visited Surinam in 1663. It was here that she allegedly met the slave that inspired Oroonoko. Orderson was born in Barbados in 1767. At a young age, he became the editor of his family’s newspaper, The Barbados Mercury. De Lisser was born in Jamaica in 1878. Although slavery had been abolished by this time, race still was a huge factor on the island. With their intimate knowledge of Creole culture, all three of these authors understood the dynamics of interracial relationships in the Caribbean. So why did they choose to show only the negative aspects of these relationships? This is the primary question I will explore in subsequent chapters.

Throughout history, women of all races and economic backgrounds have used their sexuality to gain power. In Egypt, Cleopatra used her sexual relationship with

Julius Caesar to attain greater power. In terms of literature, women have been using their sexuality to gain power as far back as Geoffrey Chaucer, whose Wife of Bath in The

Canterbury Tales appears aware of male defined stereotypes of women’s sexuality and manipulates them to gain agency. What is significant about black women in the British

Caribbean using such strategies to gain agency is that it was widespread, and not just isolated to one or two women. Additionally, the stakes for not using sex to gain power in the Caribbean were much higher. Slavery in the Caribbean was brutal, so it was important that black women in the Caribbean find a way out of that brutality. More significantly for this project, however, is the fact that other women who used their sexuality to gain agency were not depicted as lascivious, deceitful, and promiscuous as often as black women in the Caribbean were. This project stems from a desire to erase some of those negative depictions of black women in the Caribbean.

There is much still to learn about the enslaved black woman in the Caribbean.

Since there are so few narratives written by enslaved women, it is almost impossible to know what their lives were like, what they felt, who they loved, or what their motives

6 were for entering into sexual relationships with white men. Through this project, however, I will try to prove that some black women, when faced with two evils, chose the lesser of the two and entered into these sexual relationships with their masters to protect themselves. Most likely they felt about this choice as Harriet Jacobs did when she found herself in a similar predicament, that “there is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment” (Jacobs 244).

7 CHAPTER 1:

HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS OF BLACK WOMEN’S SEXUALITY AND STRATEGIES

OF RESISTANCE: THE NARRATIVES OF MARY PRINCE, THOMAS

THISTLEWOOD, JOHN STEDMAN, MARIA NUGENT, AND JANET SCHAW

To understand the historical basis for this research project, it is important to examine actual accounts of black women using their bodies to gain agency. Many black women served as concubines or “housekeepers” for white men in the Caribbean.

Through these roles, many of these women were able to gain what Orlando Patterson3 refers to as “partial freedom.” Jenny Sharpe discusses the benefits black and colored women gained through their relationships with white men in her book Ghosts of Slavery.

Sharpe contends that the autonomy black women gained from these relationships “was, of course, contradictory, for it was acquired through a dependency on white men, and a woman was often placed at greater risk of physical violence, particularly if her keeper

(as they were known) was a jealous man” (Ghosts 44). Sharpe goes on to argue, however, that “the existence of sexual exploitation does not diminish the mobility black and racially mixed women were able to acquire for themselves within the coercive relations of slavery” (Ghosts 44). Because of her role as a white man’s wife, concubines gained access to privileges that were normally not granted to slaves, especially slave women (Ghosts 44). Partial freedom “is in fact what slave women were able to achieve through a manipulation of their sexual exploitation” (Ghosts 44). Through building sexual relationships with white men who were not their masters, many slave women were able to leave the households to which they belonged (Ghosts 45). These were just some of the many reasons black and racially mixed women decided to become a white man’s concubine. Unlike slave men who could take on odd jobs to acquire money, black women had fewer options for making their own money. Also, the woman herself was not the only one who benefited from these relationships. Her entire family benefited

8 from the money, gifts, and prestige she received (Ghosts 58-59). During the time period, many people looked on these interracial relationships as the result of black women actively pursuing white men. Many scholars today, however, paint a picture of the black woman as exploited at the hands of white men. What Sharpe argues in her text is

that there is a third way of explaining sexual relationships between master and slave

rather than limiting the analysis to either seduction or rape. Sharpe contends that this

third option is that these relationships were battles for power waged over an extended

period of time (Ghosts 64). This chapter will analyze actual accounts of these battles for

power.

The chapter begins with a discussion of Mary Prince, the only black woman in

the Caribbean to have written a slave narrative. I analyze the ways Prince attempts to

use her sexuality to gain her freedom. When this fails, Prince is forced to find other

ways to secure her freedom. Ultimately, she uses the scars on her back to convince the

women in London that she has indeed been abused. In other words, when the

credibility of her words cannot be proven, the scars on her back serve as a testament to

the abuse she has suffered. This is one of the acts from her friends in London that

garners enough support for her to leave the Wood household. From Mary Prince, I

move on to a discussion of Phibbah, a slave woman under the watch of Thomas

Thistlewood. Phibbah used her relationship with Thistlewood to make life better, not

only for herself, but for all of Thistlewood’s slaves. The section on Phibbah details her

sexual relationship with Thistlewood and the power she seems to have gained from that

relationship. Also included in this chapter is a discussion of Joanna, the mulatto wife of

John Stedman. Prior to her “marriage” to Stedman, Joanna lived under the constant threat of being sold. After her marriage to Stedman, Joanna was purchased by a woman who allowed her to live with Stedman. Joanna’s status in this arrangement hints at the privileges she enjoyed. Like Phibbah, Joanna’s relationship with a white man enabled

3 Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death

9 her son to be manumitted. Following the discussion on Joanna, I explore Maria

Nugent’s and Janet Schaw’s feelings towards miscegenation as expressed in their narratives. Both women make it clear that they believe miscegenation is a sin. I analyze their narratives to illustrate that many white women felt threatened by interracial relationships. This anxiety, along with these cases of black women using their bodies to gain agency will serve as the foundation for subsequent chapters. In order to understand how novels of the time period deviated from factual accounts of miscegenation, it is important to have a sound understanding of the history. Mary Prince

In 1831, The History of Mary Prince became the first narrative of a black woman to be published in Great Britain. What most people know of Prince is what is found in her narrative. What I want to focus on here, however, is what is not found in Prince’s published History, primarily information about her sex life.

Jenny Sharpe, in her article “Something Akin to Freedom: The Case of Mary

Prince,” argues that “slave women used their relationships with free men to challenge their masters’ rights of ownership” (2). Sharpe, however, is quick to point out that the evidence to back up this claim cannot be found in Prince’s narrative. Indeed, Prince’s narrative, except for the implicit description of her bathing her master, is completely void of sexual relationships whether consensual or otherwise. Therefore, in order to find evidence to prove her claim, Sharpe uses Prince’s court testimony to prove her point. After the publication of Prince’s narrative, her former owner sued Thomas

Pringle, her editor, for libel. Prince was called to testify at the trial. It is Prince’s court testimony that I wish to examine in comparison to her narrative

The first gentleman that Prince attempts to use for her personal gain is Captain

Abbot. Abbot is only mentioned fleetingly in Prince’s narrative when she writes: “A gentleman also lent me some [money] to help to buy my freedom – but when I could not get free he got it back again. His name was Captain Abbot” (27). From this brief

10 mention, it does not seem as if Prince’s and Abbot’s relationship was intimate. Her narrative insinuates that he was a philanthropist and that Prince would pay Abbot back the money he loaned her. In her court testimony, however, Prince admits that her relationship with Abbot was sexual. Sara Salih, in one of her appendixes to Prince’s narrative, writes that Prince “had lived seven years before with Captain Abbot. She did not live in the house with him, but slept with him sometimes in another hut which she had, in addition to her room in the plaintiff’s yard” (Prince 102). Sharpe argues that

Prince did not borrow money from Abbot but that she served as his concubine in order to raise money to purchase her freedom. According to Sharpe, “Prince’s purchase price was $300 (equivalent to [pounds] 67.10s sterling), a sum not easy for her to raise. It is likely that she made an arrangement with Abbot to serve as his housekeeper – which was the term used for concubines – in exchange for her purchase price” (“Something

Akin” 9). I will return to the concept of the “housekeeper” when I analyze Herbert de

Lisser’s The White Witch of Rose Hall, but for current purposes, it is important to note the differences in the edited version of Prince’s relationship with Abbot in The History

of Mary Prince versus her court testimony. Between the publication of her narrative and the trial, Abbot morphs from a money lender to a lover.

Most people argue that Thomas Pringle, Prince’s editor, erased this event from

Prince’s narrative for abolitionist purposes, but Sharpe offers an interesting interpretation. Sharpe suggests that Pringle erased this incident from Prince’s narrative because he did not want to suggest that prostitution was a legitimate means to

manumission (“Something Akin” 9). This claim is provocative because it suggests that

Pringle knew that some black women were using their bodies to gain their freedom.

There were so many women acting as concubines to white men that it would have been

nearly impossible for Prince to be unaware of the potential benefits of these

relationships. Interracial sexual activity was so prevalent in Antigua that Joseph

Phillips, an Antiguan solicited by Pringle to give his opinion on Prince’s morality, wrote

11 in his letter to Thomas Pringle that: “at any rate, such connexions [sic] are so common, I might almost say universal, in our slave colonies, that except by the missionaries and a few serious persons, they are considered, if faults at all, so very venial as scarcely to deserve the name of immorality” (Prince 51). Pringle would not have feared promoting the activity if he did not already believe that it was going on.

Hilary Beckles writes extensively on black women’s sexuality during the era of slavery. In “Property Rights in Pleasure: The Marketing of Enslaved Women’s

Sexuality,” Beckles discusses the issue of black prostitutes during the pre-Emancipation period. According to Beckles, some slave women were able to achieve emancipation through prostitution and concubinage (699). The number of black women gaining their freedom through prostitution was so great that legislators sought to raise the price of manumission. Beckles notes that “In 1739, the manumission fee had been legally set at

£50 plus an annuity of £4 local currency” (699). He goes on to say that:

In 1774, a bill was introduced into the Assembly aimed at curtailing the

number of females being manumitted. It was designed to raise the

manumission fee to £100, but was rejected on the grounds that slave

owners should not be deprived of the right to assist the “most deserving

part” of their slaves – “the females who have generally recommended

themselves to our ‘kindest notice.’ (699)

This passage is extremely provocative. First, it implies that legislators believed concubines had earned the right to be free based on their years of service to their lovers.

Additionally, it implies that concubines are more deserving of manumission than any other group of slaves. Second, the term “recommended themselves” suggests that these women had an active say-so in whether or not they entered into these relationships.

Third, the phrase “kindest notice” implies that the white men believed they were doing the women a favor by engaging in these relationships. This attempt to raise the cost of manumission is one way that legislators sought to deter white men from freeing their

12 black mistresses and prostitutes. Other legislators, however, recognized the inherent right of slave owners to “reward” their mistresses with manumission. Therefore, the motion to raise the price of manumission failed.

Prince’s desire for manumission caused her to attach herself to another free man when her relationship with Abbott did not have the desired effect. Sharpe mentions that

Prince “knew a free man of the name of Oyskman, who made a fool of her by telling her he would make her free. She lived with him for some time, but afterwards discharged him” (“Something Akin” 11). This is another case of Prince attempting to use her sexuality to gain her freedom. Prince’s ability to discharge Oyskman makes it clear that she was in a position of power. Had she been in the relationship on terms other than her own, she would not have been in the position to end the relationship when she saw fit.

Unlike the women that I discuss later, Prince’s relationship with a white man did not lead to her freedom. She was, however, able to use her body in a different way to achieve the same goal. In London, Prince fought hard to gain her freedom because she wanted to be able to return to Antigua to her husband. In order to garner support for her cause, Prince told the story of her captivity to several abolitionists. As a black woman, though, her testimony was questioned. Several of her owner’s associates questioned the validity of Prince’s claims. It was at this time that she used her body as a testament to the abuse she had suffered.

In a letter dated March 28, 1831, Mrs. Pringle details the scars she had seen on

Prince’s back. Three other women who “read” the scars on Prince’s back also signed the letter. Mrs. Pringle writes:

The whole of the back part of her body is distinctly scarred, and, as it

were, chequered, with the vestiges of severe floggings. Besides this, there

are many large scars on other parts of her person, exhibiting an

appearance as if the flesh had been deeply cut, or lacerated with gashes, by

some instrument wielded by most unmerciful hands. (Prince 64)

13 In this way, Prince’s body serves as the evidence of her abuse. Where her verbal claims to abuse can be dismissed because of her race and supposed promiscuity, the scars on her back cannot be as easily dismissed. In the words of one critic, the abolitionist “report on Prince’s physical condition results in a confirmation and affirmation of her story.

While their action has an element of invasion in which the black female body is seen as a spectacle, an object to be inspected and dissected, it also serves to situate Prince’s story as truthful” (Baumgartner 264). In this way, Prince’s body, rather than her words, is her key to emancipation. It is through the physical evidence that her body provides that she is able to validate her story and garner enough support and enough friends to make leaving the Woods a feasible option.

Though Prince’s sexual relationships with white men did not lead to her freedom, she did not give up on her quest to be free. When her words were questioned, she used her body to make her case. Prince used her body as currency in much the same way as the women I discuss below. Though using her scars to gain her freedom was not sexual, access to her physical body attained a use value for her. The women that I discuss in subsequent sections were able to gain more privileges through their relationships with white men Thomas Thistlewood’s Mistress Phibbah

Thomas Thistlewood left England to go to Jamaica in 1750. While there, he became the overseer of the Egypt sugar estate. Prior to going to Jamaica, Thistlewood was already sexually experienced, having had sex with several white women in

London. He recorded these activities in his journal, a fact that implies that for

Thistlewood sexual activity was something to be proud of. After his journey to Jamaica, however, his sexual exploits increased exponentially. His position of power in Jamaica gave him an almost endless supply of slave women that he could sleep with. Some of the women were slaves under his watch; others were not. Some of the women had sex with him willingly, some didn’t. Most of the sexual encounters Thistlewood had with

14 slave women were not consensual. Even those women who did not fight back against

Thistlewood knew that they were not in a position to say no. Sharpe writes:

If the women complied, Thistlewood gave them a small sum of money; if

they resisted, he raped them. We cannot say that the women who

complied consented to sex, for consent suggests its opposite – the right to

refuse – and, as is evident from his treatment of women who refused his

sexual advances, they did not have this right without the consequence of

rape. (Ghosts 63)

One slave woman, however, took her relationship with Thistlewood for all it was worth, creating a life of relative leisure for her and her child. Where other slave women were seen as nothing more than property to Thistlewood, property that he could sexually abuse whenever he saw fit, this woman was able to rise above that status. This woman was Phibbah and the story of how she worked the system to fit her needs is quite remarkable.

Phibbah’s relationship with Thistlewood was much deeper and more complex than other relationships that Thistlewood had with his slaves. Trevor Burnard notes that, “Thistlewood and Phibbah were, to all intents and purposes, husband and wife. As his wife, Phibbah established for herself an enviable position as a privileged slave, enabling her to have a richer and fuller life than was possible for most slave women”

(228). Phibbah’s privileged life included a life in the main house, an education for her child, and eventually freedom for herself.

The advantages that Phibbah gained through her relationship with Thistlewood are countless, but one important advantage was the benefits her son John received. One reason Burnard notes for black women attaching themselves to white men is the privileged status of children born of these relationships (235). Thistlewood’s and

Phibbah’s son John enjoyed a far better life than an ordinary slave child. Some of the privileges John enjoyed were being free, being educated, and being trained in a

15 profession, “powerful reasons why Phibbah would want to stay with Thistlewood, besides ties of affection and the personal advantages that being a mistress of a white

man afforded” (Burnard 235). Many children born to slave women and their white

lovers were manumitted. As we will later see, John Stedman was able to acquire

freedom for his son that he had with his mulatto wife Joanna. Black children born to

slave women were at risk of being separated from their parents. Mixed race children,

however, had a much better chance of remaining in the care of their mothers. Slave

women had to have known this, and this may have been one reason slave women

would enter into relationships with white men.

Fieldwork in the Caribbean was back breaking and brutal. Slaves were often

expected to work from sun up until sun down and women were expected to do as much

work as the men. Another advantage Phibbah’s relationship granted her was a reprieve

from having to perform such labor. As Burnard notes, “The brutality of field labor may

have been one reason why Phibbah and other privileged house slaves sought white men

as partners” (231). Phibbah’s relationship with Thistlewood allowed her to be a house

slave, thereby protecting her from the daily hardships of working the fields. Later,

when I discuss the journals of Maria Nugent and Janet Schaw, we will see that white

women were very upset with the fact that these concubines did not have to “work.” In

fact, both women comment on these concubines as being lazy and unfit for any kind of

labor.

Through her relationship with Thistlewood, Phibbah was also able to accumulate

wealth, including land and livestock. She was able to acquire these possessions by

selling and trading the gifts she received from Thistlewood. Thistlewood would often

provide Phibbah with cloth that she would sew into garments. She would then sell the

garments and split the profit with Thistlewood. Through these transactions she was able

to amass a considerable sum of money. With this money, Phibbah was able to purchase

the freedom of her sister and her granddaughter. Though Phibbah was “a slave who

16 acquiesced to her master’s demands,” she also “used the privileges she wrested from her master to benefit her enslaved compatriots” (Burnard 228).

Thistlewood and Phibbah’s relationship, however, was more than just business.

The bond between Phibbah and Thistlewood – at least from his perspective – is recorded in his diaries. Though Thistlewood does not go into details about his emotional attachment to Phibbah, his reactions to their partings is evidence that he had strong feelings for her. Likewise, Phibbah’s sorrow when Thistlewood leaves shows that she was emotionally attached to him as well. Burnard writes:

Phibbah’s lengthy sexual and emotional relationship with Thistlewood

was more than just the exploitation of a black woman by a powerful white

man. By the end of her thirty-three-year relationship with Thistlewood,

Phibbah was attached to her lover and longtime partner by bonds of

affection and possibly love. (228)

Love is not a word often heard in discussions regarding relationships between slave owners and their slave mistresses. This term, however, seems to apply to Phibbah’s and

Thistlewood’s relationship. Sharpe asks of Phibbah “what is it about this slave woman that can account for her being able to negotiate power through a withholding of sex and risk an overseer’s wrath and jealousy by entering into sexual relations with other men?”

(Ghosts 64). Of all the women Thistlwood had sexual relationships with in Jamaica,

Phibbah was the only one who could refuse to have sex with him without the risk of being raped. Additionally, during her relationship with Thistlewood she also had sexual relationships with other men. I contend that the answer to Sharpe’s question is

Thistlewood’s love for her.

After spending much time at Egypt plantation, Thistlewood prepared to move to another plantation. The reasons for his move are unclear, but Douglas Hall theorizes that Thistlewood left Egypt either because of his recurring venereal infections or because of his constant bickering with his boss (78). When Thistlewood was preparing

17 to leave for Kendal, it became clear that Phibbah had become attached to him. Their parting was difficult for her to accept. On Sunday, June 19, 1757, Thistlewood wrote:

“Phibbah grieves very much, and last night I could not sleep, but vastly uneasy” (Hall

79). Whether Phibbah grieved because she would miss Thistlewood or simply because she would miss the protection her relationship with him afforded her cannot be ascertained from this one incident. Her feelings for him, however, did become clearer a few days later when she gave him a gold ring to remember her by. After moving to

Kendal, Thistlewood missed having Phibbah with him daily. On Monday, July 4, 1757,

Thistlewood noted in his diary: “Tonight very lonely and melancholy again. No person sleep in the house but myself, and Phibbah’s being gone this morning still fresh in my mind” (80). While at Kendal, Thistlewood was occasionally visited by Phibbah. She always brought gifts for him and he always sent her away with gifts. Sharpe makes an interesting point about the gifts Phibbah gave to Thistlewood. She contends that

“slaves’ gifts to the men who ran their lives can be seen as an act of self-empowerment rather than the sign of subservience and acquiescence” (Ghosts 65). This could explain why Phibbah’s relationship with Thistlewood was so much different than the relationships he had with other slave women. After their partings, Thistlewood was melancholy. This pattern of grieving during times of separation and rejoicing in times of togetherness makes it clear that there were deep feelings involved in their relationship.

After Thistlewood’s death, Phibbah received the greatest gift: her freedom.

During his lifetime he had tried on several occasions to hire or purchase Phibbah, but his attempts had been unsuccessful. In Thistlewood’s will, he left orders for his executors to purchase Phibbah’s freedom. His will stated: “I order and direct that my

Executors hereinafter named do as soon as is convenient may be after my decease purchase the freedom of a certain Negroe woman slave named Phibbah the property of the Honourable John Cope” (Hall 313). Thistlewood’s will went on to provide Phibbah with a piece of land and fifteen pounds per year for the rest of her life.

18 The advantages Phibbah gained from her relationship with Thistlewood are many, but what is more significant is the way that her relationship with Thistlewood helped changed the lives of so many people. Burnard writes that

“what is most remarkable about her is how skillfully she was able to exploit her relationship with Thistlewood to gain personal advantage and social benefits for the entire slave community” (228). Prior to his relationship with Phibbah, Thistlewood was a relentless master. After he began his relationship with Phibbah, he tempered his relationship with his slaves. As noted earlier, Burnard believes that “Phibbah’s lengthy sexual and emotional relationship with Thistlewood was more that just the exploitation of a black woman by a powerful white man” (228). He is right. Phibbah’s relationship with Thistlewood was a tool for survival that she wielded to her advantage at every opportunity. Her relationship is a prime example of a black woman using her body to gain agency for herself, her family, and her entire slave community. John Stedman’s Wife Joanna

In 1774, John Stedman was sent to Surinam with the Scots Brigade to repress a slave revolt. During his five years there, he met a mulatto slave woman named Joanna whom he eventually married. Stedman’s relationship with Joanna occupies much of his

Narrative and it is this relationship that I want to focus on here, especially how Joanna’s body helped her secure her freedom. Sharpe discusses Stedman’s modeling of Joanna and why it is troubling:

I am interested in how abolitionists perpetrated a myth that was initiated

in Stedman’s Narrative – namely, that a slave woman could be capable of

exercising free choice. In the antislavery literature, Joanna served as model

for the tragic mulatto, a figure that would eventually displace the earlier

stereotyping of mulatto women as vain, arrogant, and sexually

promiscuous. Stedman represents Joanna as a mixed-race version of the

noble black slave and domestic white woman, an image that particularly

19 appealed to abolitionists. In doing so, however, he eliminates

contradictions in the practice of concubinage that slave women were able

to exploit. (Ghosts 46).

It is these contradictions that I want to illuminate in this section. Though Joanna’s story is vastly different than Phibbah’s, she too was able to secure her freedom and her son’s freedom through her relationship with a white man.

One important thing to keep in mind when studying Joanna is that the Joanna we see in Stedman’s Narrative is a construction of his sentimental pen. As Sharpe reminds us, whenever we read about her in the Narrative, “Joanna appears as a sentimental heroine who always speaks with downcast eyes and tears falling on her heaving bosom” (Ghosts 52). Whether or not we get the entire story about their relationship is up for debate. In his writing, Stedman romanticizes not only his relationship with Joanna, but he also romanticizes Surinam. Prior to Stedman’s arrival in Surinam, it had already

“been set out as a literary space for the presentation of extremes of violence and interracial sexuality focused on plantation slavery” thanks to Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and Thomas Southerne’s adaptation of the novella (Wood 96). Between the time of publication of Oroonoko and Stedman’s trip to Surinam, “the colony had both grown

and degenerated” (Wood 97). Consequently, “death, violence, decadence, sex, luxury,

slavery, torture, and bondage are constant foci in Stedman’s writing about his life in

Surinam” (Wood 97).

Marcus Wood discusses Stedman’s Narrative in his book Slavery, Empathy, and

Pornography. Wood writes of the Narrative that it “exists on the edge, an edge that cuts across several areas of publishing including abolition polemic, pro-slavery discourse, exotic travelogue, sentimental novella, Romance, bildungsroman, and pornography” (94).

Wood focuses on the illustrations in Stedman’s text to reach the conclusion that the

Narrative is “a deeply disturbing work which produces beautiful images of eroticized torture” (95).

20 As soon as Stedman meets Joanna, he is enamored with her. His description of her occupies an entire page in the text. Stedman writes of her:

Rather taller than the middle size, she was possessed of the most elegant

shape that nature can exhibit, moving her well-formed limbs with more

than common gracefulness. Her face was full of native modesty, and the

most distinguished sweetness; her eyes, as black as ebony, were large and

full of expression, bespeaking the goodness of her heart; with cheeks

through which glowed, in spite of the darkness of her complexion, a

beautiful tinge of vermillion, when gazed upon. (33)

From this initial description of Joanna’s beauty, it is clear that Stedman was captivated

with her from the moment he first laid eyes on her. This description of Joanna is

important because it allows us to see the features that are important to Stedman. Her

skin tone is somewhere between black and white, so she is neither as “savage” as a black woman nor as domesticated as a white woman. The only things about her that are black are her eyes. Sharpe comments on Stedman’s description of Joanna by writing:

“Existing halfway between the European and African, she is a domesticated Other who appears more white than black, the only betrayal of her race being her brown skin, slightly prominent lips, curly hair, and exotic clothing” (Ghosts 54). As we will see when we come to Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, author’s whiten their desired black character to make that character more acceptable for his/her love interest. Wood also comments on

Stedman’s initial description of Joanna, stating that “Stedman is both describing a product to his reader, and eyeing up the physical attributes he will soon possess, in very real terms, according to the local system of concubinage designated a Surinam marriage” (128). Wood goes on to contend that Stedman “runs through the attractions as if advertising this young woman on the auction block” (128). Stedman’s description of Joanna continues and Joanna’s beauty leads him to ask of her condition. What he finds about her immediately leads him to see himself as her rescuer.

21 Upon asking about Joanna’s situation, Stedman learns that she is the daughter of a white gentleman and a black slave woman. Although Joanna’s father offered to buy her and her siblings’ freedom, their master, Mr. D.B., would hear nothing of it. After coming to the realization that the beautiful Joanna is nothing more than a common slave, Stedman reflects on the institution of slavery and its effects on Joanna:

When reflecting on the state of slavery altogether, while my ears were

stunned with the clang of the whip and the dismal yells of the wretched

negroes on whom it was exercised from morning till night, and

considering that this might one day be the fate of the unfortunate mulatto

I have been describing should she chance to fall into the hands of a

tyrannical master or mistress, I could not help execrating the barbarity of

Mr. D.B. for having withheld her from a fond parent, who by bestowing

on her a decent education and some accomplishments, would probably

have produced, in this forsaken plant now exposed to every rude blast

without protection, an ornament to civilized society. (34)

From this we can see that Stedman, even from the very first time that he met her, was interested in rescuing her from her situation. This is far different from Prince’s situation and Phibbah’s situation. Prince never had anyone come to her rescue, so she actively sought out someone to help her. Thistlewood did not enter into his relationship with

Phibbah thinking that he needed to rescue her. Instead, Phibbah worked her situation to her advantage, leading Thistlewood to eventually free her. The thought of Joanna being whipped literally pains Stedman. Wood contends that Stedman’s sympathy for Joanna is self-serving. Wood writes of Stedman that “his attitude is constantly shifting between a moral outrage that is rhetorically constructed and shrill, and an equally hysterical series of attempts to emotionally bond with the slave victim by attempting to appropriate their pain in order to demonstrate his own sensitivity” (96).

22 Later, when Joanna is about to become the property of another master, Stedman decides that he will be her salvation. He writes: “From that moment I determined to be her protector against every insult, and persevered, as shall be seen in the sequel” (39).

Immediately afterwards, Stedman contacts the administrator of the estate Joanna belongs to and announces that he wants to purchase and educate Joanna. Joanna,

however, rejects Stedman’s proposals. The very fact that Joanna was in a position to

reject Stedman’s proposals shows that she possessed agency. At the time that Stedman

initially approached her, she was in control of her situation. When she lost control over

that situation and realized that she needed help, then she approached Stedman.

Joanna’s rejections, though, only serve to heighten Stedman’s interest in her. As

time goes on, his feelings for her move from friendship to romance. During one of

Stedman’s illnesses, Joanna comes to his aid. It is at this time that he realizes that he

wants more than friendship from her: “Till this time I had chiefly been Joanna’s friend, but now I began to feel I was her captive. I renewed my wild proposals of purchasing,

educating, and transporting her to Europe; which, though offered with the most perfect

sincerity, were, by her, rejected once more” (41). According to Stedman’s account,

Joanna rejects his proposal because she believes that her status as a slave will only embarrass him. Her lamentations, however, only make Stedman want her more.

Immediately following her sorrowful response to his proposal, Stedman writes that

“from that instant this excellent creature was mine” (41) and indeed she was.

Stedman and Joanna’s relationship takes off from this point. Stedman has won over Joanna and they get married: “A decent wedding, at which many of our respectable friends made their appearance, and at which I was as happy as any bridegroom ever was, concluded the ceremony” (42). Stedman – always concerned with how things are perceived – makes sure to point out that not only was he happy at his wedding, but also that everyone else at the wedding was happy. This makes it clear to his English readers that his marriage to Joanna was not unusual in the colony. Their

23 marriage, expectedly, is complicated by Joanna’s status as a slave. On more than one occasion, Stedman tries to buy her, but it never works out for him. His inability to buy

Joanna becomes a huge obstacle when Joanna is put up for sale.

While in Surinam, Stedman frequently visits slave auctions. This lends credence to Wood’s assertion that these auctions held a pornographic element for Stedman, that while Stedman was disgusted by the treatment of the slaves, he was also aroused by their helplessness. Imagine his surprise upon seeing his beloved Joanna for sale on one such occasion. Stedman writes of the occasion: “On the 10th, the surgeon having lanced my thigh, I scrambled out once more, to witness the selling of slaves to the best bidder.

After what has been related, the reader may form some judgment of my surprise and confusion, when I found among them my inestimable Joanna” (81). Seeing Joanna on the auction block sends Stedman into a panic. Luckily for both Stedman and Joanna, the administrator of the estate is a friend of Stedman. He assures Stedman that he will do everything in his power to protect Joanna and he does. This incident, however, further shows Stedman that it is of the utmost importance that he purchase Joanna. As long as

Joanna belongs to someone else, he is unable to determine her future.

Stedman immediately writes a letter to Joanna’s new owners asking for permission to “purchase her liberty” (120). Unfortunately, Joanna’s owner dies before

Stedman receives an answer to his request. Prior to learning of the death, Joanna becomes pregnant. Stedman’s dejection at the death of Joanna’s owner is heightened by the thought of his child being subjected to the horrors of slavery: “It was now that I saw a thousand horrors intrude all at once upon my dejected spirits; not only my friend but my offspring to be a slave, and a slave under such a government” (129). This thought is followed by the realization that Joanna will once again be put up for sale. All hope for saving Joanna and their unborn child seems lost, but an unexpected gift makes it possible for him to save them.

24 After trying to borrow the money to purchase Joanna’s freedom, Stedman becomes acquainted with a woman who is willing to give him the money he needs to buy Joanna. Mrs. Godefroy remarks to Stedman: “Permit me then to participate in your

happiness, and in the future prospect of the virtuous Joanna and her little boy, by

requesting your acceptance of the sum of two thousand florins, or any sum you stand in

need of” (Stedman 168). Mrs. Godefroy then implores Stedman to use the money to

“redeem innocence, good sense, and beauty from the jaws of tyranny, oppression, and

insult” (Stedman 168). With the money, Stedman purchases Joanna’s freedom and for

the first time in their relationship, they do not have to fear Joanna being sold. The only

obstacle left for Stedman is to secure his son’s freedom.

Stedman soon learns that gaining his son’s freedom is a lot easier than gaining

Joanna’s. He only has to write one letter to secure Johnny Stedman’s freedom. After his

son is emancipated, Stedman writes Johnny into his will. At this point in time, Stedman

is in a state of euphoria. That euphoria, however, is short lived. Stedman’s tour of duty

in Surinam is up and he is faced with the prospect of having to go back to Europe

without Joanna and his son.

Prior to leaving for Europe, Stedman pleads with Joanna to accompany him.

Stedman writes: “I now once more earnestly pressed her to accompany me, in which

was seconded by the inestimable Mrs. Godefroy and all her friends; but she remained

equally inflexible” (233). Joanna never changes her mind, and Stedman is forced to leave

Surinam without her.

Through his sentimental construction of her, Stedman erases much of Joanna’s

agency. In all things Stedman is the one in control, the one guiding Joanna’s destiny. I

argue that Joanna was much more powerful than Stedman gives her credit for. When

Stedman originally approaches her, she declines his advances. When she feels that a

relationship with Stedman would be advantageous, however, she goes to him and becomes his mistress. When Stedman is leaving for England, he wants Joanna to

25 accompany him, but she refuses, presumably because she does not want to be an embarrassment to him in England. I contend that it is quite possible, maybe even likely, that Joanna had no desire to go with Stedman to London because she no longer had any use for him. Stedman’s motivations in writing that Joanna did not go to England because she did not want to embarrass him were most likely complicated and contradictory. That’s why scholars need to analyze what is missing from Stedman’s text, namely Joanna’s voice, to fully understand it. Through Joanna’s relationship with

Stedman, she had already secured her freedom and the freedom of their son. Sharpe also mentions another potential source of agency for Joanna. Sharpe contends that

Joanna “must have been practicing some form of birth control, as she did not become pregnant again after giving birth to their son, John. Since sons were more likely to be manumitted than daughters (as John eventually was), it is possible that her pregnancy was calculated rather than accidental” (Ghosts 68). This source of agency is totally absent from the text. If Joanna did in fact choose to get pregnant and then practice some form of birth control after the birth of her son, then she was manipulating Stedman in a manner that even he couldn’t understand.

Though John Stedman went to Surinam to repress a slave revolt, he did much more. Through his efforts, he was able to make life better for at least one person, his adored wife Joanna. Through his Narrative, Sharpe argues,

Stedman memorializes the commitment to Joanna that he was unable to

give her in life. His slave wife may have died young, but he gave her a

literary life through which he could demonstrate his devotion to her. It is a

sentimentalized image, however, that exists in the absence of the historical

woman and of the social norms governed by their relationship. (Ghosts 70)

Like Phibbah, Joanna benefited from her relationship with a white man. Both women were able to secure their freedom through these relationships. Though Joanna remained on paper the property of Mrs. Godefroy, she did not live the life of a slave. When

26 Stedman met Joanna she was a dejected slave, living under a cruel master. By the time

Stedman left Surinam, Joanna was enjoying a life of relative leisure. No one can know for certain what Joanna’s life would have been like had she not met Stedman, but one thing is certain; Stedman’s text would have us believe he made her life better. Lady Maria Nugent and Janet Schaw

Two of the most interesting narratives written about time spent in the West

Indies are those of Lady Maria Nugent and Janet Schaw. Neither of these women

considered themselves West Indian, so their narratives provide an outsider’s view on

life in the West Indies. Schaw’s The Journal of a Lady of Quality juxtaposes the beauty of

lush Caribbean islands “with glimpses of the ugliness and violence underlying the

plantation culture” (Bohls 365). Maria Nugent “began life as the daughter of affluent

colonial commoners, then entered genteel British society, was the governor’s wife in

Jamaica, and shortly thereafter became Lady Nugent” (Klepp 640). One thing that they both provide commentary on in their narratives is miscegenation. It is their views on

these interracial relationships that I want to discuss to illustrate the animosity that many

white women harbored against black women because of these relationships.

Nugent’s first negative reference to black women comes in reference to

something she heard from several ladies in Jamaica. Nugent comments: “The ladies told

me strange stories of the influence of the black and yellow women, and Mrs. Bullock

called them serpents” (12). Without a doubt, Mrs. Bullock had witnessed the power that black women wielded over their white lovers. It is entirely possible that she had lost a

love interest to a black woman. That would explain her distaste for black women and

would serve as the motivation for her calling them “serpents.” It is also important to

note that Nugent refers to these stories as “strange.” She is new to Jamaica and doesn’t

yet know how common these stories are. After a little more time in Jamaica, the stories become a little less strange and a lot more common to her.

27 Later in the narrative, Nugent gives her theory on how to make the slave trade obsolete. She has no desire to end slavery, but she thinks that if slave masters altered how they handled their slaves, there would be no need for the slave trade: “Yet it appears to me, there would be certainly no necessity for the Slave Trade, if religion, decency, and good order, were established among the negroes; if they could be prevailed upon to marry; and if our white men would but set them a better example”

(Nugent 86). Nugent argues that if slave masters allowed their slaves to marry, slave women would produce more slave children and there would be no need for the slave trade. In order for slaves to be enticed to marry, Nugent believes white men need to set a good example, and that begins with ending their relationships with black women:

“but white men of all descriptions, married or single, live in a state of licentiousness with their female slaves; and until a great reformation takes place on their part, neither religion, decency, or morality, can be established among the negroes” (87). In her journal, Nugent

denied that enslaved people had any inherent sense of morality: they had

to be shown the way by their owners. Blacks were ciphers to whom whites

might inscribe the most convenient characteristics – and here the

slaveowner’s economic interests in reproduction of the labor force just

happened to coincide with sacramental Christianity. For Nugent then, it

was stricter control and more regulation by a morally superior, self-

restrained gentry that would solve any problems in the slave system.

(Klepp 657)

Here, Nugent makes a blanket statement equating all sexual relationships between

white men and black women as lustful and lascivious. From the earlier examples of

Phibbah and Joanna, we know that this was not the case.

Nugent continues her derision of white men when she says that they are under

the control of their mulatto mistresses. She is amazed at how differently European men

28 behave in Jamaica than in England. She notes: “In the upper ranks, they (European men in the Caribbean) become indolent and inactive, regardless of every thing but eating, drinking, and indulging themselves, and are almost entirely under the dominion of their mulatto favourites” (98). Over the course of her stay in Jamaica, Nugent has gone from a naïve young women who believed that stories of interracial relationships were

“strange,” to a woman who recognizes the power that black women have over white men.

This power is further illustrated by Nugent’s realization that many white men leave their estates to their mistresses. Nugent writes in her journal: “One of the lieutenants of the Apostles’ battery came as we were going to breakfast, to announce the death of poor wretched Captain Dobbin. He died without seeing his children, and it is said has left all he is worth to his black mistress and her child. This is, I am afraid, but too common a case in Jamaica” (234). This entry is important for two reasons. First,

Nugent calls Captain Dobbin poor and wretched. One can only assume that he is poor and wretched because of his relationship with a black woman. This shows what Nugent thinks of men who enter into these relationships. This entry is also important because it shows the reader that Nugent is weary of white men leaving their estates to their black mistresses. This is significant because it shows that her concerns are economic rather than moralistic.

Whereas Lady Nugent seems to place the blame on white men for their relationships with black women, Janet Schaw clearly places the blame on the black women. She “avoids censuring the men for their promiscuity, preferring instead to view them as victims of the sun and of the ‘young black wenches’ who ‘lay themselves out for white lovers.’ Her general opinion of the white Creole men was extremely favorable” (Coleman 177). Of black women she writes: “The young black wenches lay themselves out for white lovers, in which they are but too successful. This prevents their marrying with their natural mates, and hence a spurious and degenerate breed, neither

29 so fit for the field, nor indeed any work, as the true bred Negro (112). As in Nugent, it is the “product” of these relationships that is a problem for Schaw as much as the relationship itself. In a later chapter I will further discuss the scientific and ideological beliefs held about mulattos through a discussion of works by Edward Long, J.B.

Moreton, and Robert Young.

Like Nugent, Schaw recognizes the power that black women have over their white lovers and insinuates that black women lay traps to ensnare white men. Schaw writes of white men that they “have their fair share of failings, the most conspicuous of which is, the indulgence they give themselves in their licentious and even unnatural amours” (112). Schaw believes that interracial relationships are unnatural and that black women are keeping white men away from the women that they should truly be with.

To Shaw, these interracial relationships are “a crime that seems to have gained sanction from custom” (112). In Schaw’s text, “while white ‘ladies’ are presented as natural, black women bear the stigma of a corresponding unnaturalness, focused by the blame laid to them for the quintessentially ‘unnatural’ phenomenon of miscegenation” (Bohls

383). Further, “black women threaten the ‘natural’ order of which white women are the cornerstone” (Bohls 384). It is this threat that causes Schaw and Nugent to speak out against these interracial relationships.

Schaw later tries to come up with an explanation for why white men often choose black women over white women. She cannot accept the fact that black women are preferred to white women for any aesthetic reason. For her, the reason must be economic. She reasons: “As the population of the country is all the view they have in what they call love, and tho’ they often honour their black wenches with their attention,

I sincerely believe they are excited to that crime by no other desire or motive but that of adding to the number of their slaves” (154). With the threat of the slave trade being abolished, Schaw tries to justify these relationships by saying that white men have sex with black women only to increase their numbers of slaves. From other accounts of

30 miscegenation, we know that this was not the case. Although some white men may have entered into these relationships with that goal in mind, it could not have been the only motivation because some white men had sex with black women that weren’t their slaves and other white men manumitted their mistresses and their children. Therefore, the desire to raise the number of slaves one owned can not be seen as the only reason white men entered into interracial relationships. It is important for Schaw to believe this, however, because it allows her to believe that her position in Caribbean society is safe and that she has more power than black women.

From the diaries of Maria Nugent and Janet Schaw, it becomes clear that women from outside of the West Indies did not approve of these interracial relationships.

Nugent believed that interracial relationships were wrong because they inhibited black couples from marrying and having families in order to increase the slave population.

Schaw believed that miscegenation was a crime because it kept white men away from their “natural mates.” Taken together, these narratives illustrate two important points: first, black women in the West Indies wielded a great deal of power, and second, many black women in the West Indies used their relationships with white men to gain their freedom. Conclusion

In analyzing these historical accounts of miscegenation, it is clear that many of these relationships were stable and productive for both parties. In the novels I analyze next, this is not the picture that is painted. What I hope to uncover are the reasons why eighteenth-century authors misrepresented history.

31 CHAPTER 2:

THE REVENGE OF THE SHREW: APHRA BEHN’S OROONOKO

The female narrator in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko begins the novel with the declaration: “I was my self an Eye-Witness to a great part, of what you will find here set down; and what I cou’d not be Witness of, I received from the Mouth of the chief Actor in this History, the Hero himself, who gave us the whole Transactions of his Youth” (8).

In doing so, the narrator establishes herself as an authority. Self-conscious of her position as a woman, the narrator lets readers know upfront that she is knowledgeable about the events to come. As the novel progresses, however, the narrator’s confidence dissipates and by the end, she believes that Oroonoko deserved a better champion than her. As the narrator’s confidence wanes, however, Imoinda, the black heroine of the novel, becomes more and more active. As a white woman, the narrator’s whiteness puts her at a disadvantage against Imoinda. The societal constructs placed on the narrator make it impossible for her to obtain the thing she wants more than anything else:

Oroonoko. This chapter analyzes the juxtaposition between the narrator and Imoinda and explores how Imoinda uses various strategies to gain a precarious agency. First, I argue that the narrator wants a relationship with Oroonoko, but because of her race, she can’t pursue that relationship. I then move on to a comparison of the perceptions and constructions of Imoinda’s and the narrator’s bodies. From there, I assert that Imoinda’s body is more powerful than the narrator’s for many reasons, namely the fact it makes it possible for her to be with Oroonoko. I conclude by analyzing the death of Imoinda as an act of revenge for both the narrator and Behn.

Srinivas Aravamudan contends that the relationship between the narrator and

Oroonoko is “sexually charged” (49). Likewise, Felicity Nussbaum argues that the narrator competes with Imoinda for Oroonoko’s attention (178). Additionally, there are hints throughout the text that the narrator’s feelings for Oroonoko run deeper than friendship. It begins with her first description of Oroonoko. She remarks: “Besides, he

32 was adorn’d with a native Beauty so transcending all those of his gloomy race, that he strook an Awe and Reverence, even in those who knew not his Quality; as he did in me, who beheld him with Surprize and Wonder, when afterwards he arriv’d in our World”

( Behn 12). The narrator goes on to say:

His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat. His mouth,

the finest shap’d that cou’d be seen; far from those great turn’d Lips,

which are so natural to the rest of the Negroes. The whole Proportion and

Air of his Face was so noble, and exactly form’ed that, bating his Colour,

there cou’d be nothing in Nature more beautiful, agreeable and

handsome. (Behn 13)

In her description of him, she gives him European features. Through her whitening of him, she attempts to erase the one obstacle that she feels keeps them apart, their race.

Another hint to the narrator’s true feelings toward Oroonoko is the fact that she seems to be having a difficult time dealing with the fact that she isn’t good enough for him. At one point in the text she says:

But his misfortune was, to fall in an obscure World, that afforded only a

Female Pen to celebrate his Fame; though I doubt not but it had liv’d from

others Endeavours, if the Dutch, who, immediately after his Time, took

that country, had not kill’d, banish’d and dispers’d all those that were

capable of giving the World this great Man’s Life, much better than I have

done. (Behn 36)

At this point in the text, the narrator is coming to terms with the fact that, unlike

Imoinda, whom I will discuss later, she is not of the same royal class as Oroonoko. At the end of the novel she reiterates her assertion that Oroonoko deserved better than her when she says: “Thus dy’d this Great Man; worthy of a better fate, and a more sublime

Wit than mine to write his Praise; yet, I hope, the Reputation of my Pen is considerable enough to make his Glorious name to survive to all Ages; with that of the Brave, the

33 Beautiful, and the Constant Imoinda” (65). Dealing with the fact that they were not as prized in the Caribbean is something that many white women had to come to terms with. Theoretically, the narrator’s white skin puts her at an advantage over Imoinda, but in the Caribbean, as we saw in chapter one, white is not always preferred over black. Couple this with the fact that Behn contructs Imoinda and Oroonoko with royal blood, and it is clear that the narrator is at a disadvantage against Imoinda.

The allusions to her true feelings for Oroonoko continue when she comments that: “We [his female companions] had all the Liberty of Speech with him, especially my self, whom he call’d his Great Mistress; and indeed my Word wou’d go a great way with him” (41). The narrator wants the world to know that she’s his mistress and that she has control over him. In a sense, she is bragging about her relationship with him and the influence she has over him. In doing so, she aligns herself with him in an attempt to replace Imoinda in his life, though Oroonoko does not seem to want Imoinda replaced.

Another way we can gather that the narrator has romantic feelings for Oroonoko is through her decision to call him Caesar. After he is given this new name in Surinam, the narrator calls him by that name and not his African name. In doing so, she makes

Oroonoko a part of her group. He becomes one of them. Imoinda, on the other hand, is continually referred to by her African name. Though she is given a Christian name like

Oroonoko, the narrator only calls her Clemene a few times before she reverts to the

African name Imoinda. In doing so, the narrator others Imoinda. Unlike Oroonoko,

Imoinda is not a part of the narrator’s inner circle. Through the names that she calls

Imoinda and Oroonoko, it is clear that the narrator wants to bring Oroonoko closer to her and in doing so she distances him from Imoinda.

Perhaps the most noticeable suggestion the narrator gives about her romantic feelings for Oroonoko comes when she details their adventures together. They go on walks and visit the natives but nowhere during her discussion of these adventures does

34 she mention Imoinda. It is not until the narrator is finished discussing her ramblings with Oroonoko that she mentions Imoinda was with them through it all. She says:

“Caesar made it his Business to search out and provide for our Entertainment, especially to please his dearly Ador’d Imoinda, who was a sharer in all our

Adventures” (Behn 51). Since the narrator can’t remove Imoinda from Oroonoko’s life, she does the next best thing and leaves her out of her stories about her time with

Oroonoko. This is one example of what Aravamudan calls the narrator’s marginalization of Imoinda (31).

Each of these comments taken independently does not paint a picture of a woman in love, but taken together, it becomes increasingly clear that the narrator wants more than a platonic relationship with Oroonoko. Because of her race though, a relationship with Oroonoko is not a possibility. Hilary Beckles, in his essay “White

Women and Slavery in the Caribbean,” argues that “Black men faced punishments such as castration, dismemberment, and execution for having sexual relationships with white women, who in turn were socially ostracized. In this way, the sexual freedom of white women was curtailed” (667). Therefore, a relationship between the narrator and

Oroonoko could, at the very least, lead to Oroonoko’s death and the narrator’s loss of any respectability. As a result, the narrator cannot pursue a relationship with Oroonoko and must sit by and watch Oroonoko have a relationship with Imoinda. Once again, we see the disadvantage of the narrator’s white skin. To pursue a relationship with him would be to give up her elevated status in the colony, a status that is clearly dear to her.

We should note that the punishment Beckles writes that black men faced for having sexual relationships with white women is the same punishment that Oroonoko received for trying to lead a rebellion. Both of these crimes, miscegenation and rebellion, would undermine the power structure set in place in Surinam and challenge the superiority of the white man. Consequently, the punishments for both crimes were similar.

35 Early on in the text, the narrator defines black beauty. She understands that for most Europeans, the notion of anyone with a dark complexion being considered beautiful is a foreign concept. Therefore, before she can fully detail Imoinda’s beauty, she must first establish that Africans can be beautiful. The narrator states: “The King of

Coramantien was himself a Man of a Hundred and odd Years old, and had no son, though he had many beautiful Black-Wives; for most certainly, there are beauties that can charm of that Colour” (11). This comment lays the foundation for the description of the beautiful Imoinda that is to come.

The first thing the narrator tells us about Imoinda is that she is “a Beauty that, to describe her truly, one need say only, she was Female to the noble Male; the beautiful

Black Venus, to our young Mars; as charming in her Person as he, and of delicate

Vertues”(14). Oroonoko’s beauty, which the narrator also emphasizes, is only matched by Imoinda’s beauty. More importantly, however, Imoinda’s beauty can only be defined

relationally to Oroonoko’s. Even early on in the text the narrator is coming to terms

with the fact that she can’t compete with Imoinda’s body, a body that gains much of its

strength from its beauty. The narrator continues to discuss Oroonoko and Imoinda’s

equal footing when she notes that “she was, indeed, too great for any, but a Prince of

her own Nation to adore” (Behn 14). Through her constant comparison of Oroonoko’s

and Imoinda’s beauty, the narrator sets up the two as equals and destined to be

together. This emphasis on Imoinda’s beauty continues throughout the text.

We first see the benefits of Imoinda’s beauty when she is still in Africa. Prince

Oroonoko is coveted by all the women in the land, but it is the beautiful Imoinda who

gets him. Of Oroonoko’s first encounter with Imoinda, Behn’s narrator says:

When he came, attended by all the young Soldiers of any Merit, he was

infinitely surpriz’d at the Beauty of this fair Queen of Night, whose Face

and Person was so exceeding all he had ever beheld, that lovely Modesty

with which she receiv’d him, that Softness in her Look, and Sighs, upon

36 the melancholy Occasion of this Honour that was done by so great a man

as Oroonoko, and a Prince of whom she had heard such admirable things;

the Awfulness wherewith she receiv’d him, and the Sweetness of her

Words and Behaviour while he stay’d, gain’d a perfect Conquest over his

fierce Heart, and made him feel, the Victor cou’d be subdu’d. (14)

Here, we see the continued emphasis Behn places on Imoinda’s beauty. It is her beauty

that conquers Oroonoko, and not her status as the general’s daughter. Through her beauty, Imoinda is able to turn the tables on Oroonoko. Instead of Oroonoko capturing

her heart in much the same way that he captures his enemies, Imoinda does the

capturing. Behn also alerts the reader to the fact that this is what Imoinda wants. It is

important to note that this act of winning Oroonoko is an example of Imoinda using her body to gain agency only because it is what she wants. From Imoinda’s conquest of

Oroonoko we see the agency that her beauty garners.

Yet Imoinda’s beauty is also an obstacle. In Africa, her beauty was able to help

her ensnare Oroonoko, but it also made the King want her. Likewise, in Surinam, her beauty gains her unwanted attention. The narrator mentions that she has seen a

hundred white men sighing at Imoinda’s feet (Behn 14). One of these men is her

overseer, Trefry. Trefry tells Oroonoko that “all the white Beautys he had seen, never

charm’d him so absolutely as this fine creature had done; and that no Man, of any

nation, ever beheld her, that did not fall in Love with her” (Behn 38). Though most slave

women would not be in a position to resist the advances of their masters, Imoinda is

able to do so. Trefry explains:

When I have, against her will, entertain’d her with Love so long, as to be

transported with my Passion; even above Decency, I have been ready to

make use of those advantages of Strength and Force Nature has given me.

But oh! she disarms me, with that Modesty and Weeping so tender and so

moving, that I retire, and thank my Stars she overcame me. (Behn 38)

37 Through her crying and her obvious chastity, Imoinda is able to bring Trefry to his senses and make him realize that raping her is not what he wants to do.

Likewise, Imoinda is able to use her body to keep from having to do any labor.

As a slave woman, Imoinda is expected to do as much work as the men. One look from her, however, is enough to get the male slaves to do her work for her. Trefry says: “Her task of work some sighing Lover every day makes it his Petition to perform for her, which she accepts blushing, and with reluctancy, for fear he will ask her a Look for

Recompense, which he dares not presume to hope” (Behn 38). This brings up the concept of reproductive versus productive labor in the Caribbean. All slaves were expected to produce something. Field slaves took part in the productive labor while concubines often took part in reproductive labor. Though Imoinda’s body prevents her from having to do manual labor, she is still a slave and must produce something. This something is her child.

Immediately after Trefry ends his discussion with Oroonoko about Imoinda,

Imoinda and Oroonoko are reunited. They immediately rekindle their relationship, and before long, Imoinda becomes pregnant. Until this moment, Oroonoko has been content with his captivity. Though he questions Trefry about returning him and Imoinda to their homeland, he seems perfectly at ease in Surinam. He goes on several adventures with the narrator and her friends. He doesn’t have to do any work on the plantation.

Indeed, he is a slave in name only. After Imoinda becomes pregnant, however,

Oroonoko decides that it is time that he and his family reclaim their freedom.

The narrator writes that Imoinda “believ’d, if it were so hard to gain the liberty of Two, ‘twou’d be more difficult to get that for Three. Her griefs were so many darts in the Heart of Caesar” (Behn 51). After watching Imoinda grieving for her lost freedom and the captivity of her unborn child, Oroonoko, or Caesar as he has been christened in

Surinam, heads to the slave quarters to urge the slaves to fight for their freedom. Since arriving in Surinam, Oroonoko had not really fought for his freedom. Though he

38 questioned when he and Imoinda would be released, he did not actively seek to make it happen. Imoinda’s pregnant body, however, spurs Oroonoko to start a rebellion.

Even while pregnant and in the midst of an uprising, Imoinda’s body is still powerful. Her body is so powerful that it is her and not Oroonoko who inflicts a wound. The narrator details the rebellion and Imoinda’s role in it. She says: “By degrees the Slaves abandoned Caesar, and left him only Tuscan and his Heroick Imoinda; who, grown big as she was, did nevertheless press near her Lord, having a Bow, and a Quiver full of poyson’d Arrows, which she manag’d with such dexterity, that she wounded several, and shot the Governor into his Shoulder” (Behn 55). The image of the pregnant

Imoinda paints a powerful picture of her courage, a picture that stands in stark contrast to the one we get of the narrator, who always seems to be flying down the river whenever Oroonoko needs her most.

Though Imoinda and Oroonoko put up a gallant fight, they are no match for the

Europeans with their superior weapons. The rebellion is soon squelched and Oroonoko is to be punished. Unlike the noble Imoinda, the narrator, in what soon becomes typical fashion, is nowhere to be found when it is time for Oroonoko’s punishment. The narrator explains her absence by saying:

This apprehension made all the Females of us fly down the River, to be

secur’d; and while we were away, they acted this Cruelty: For I suppose I

had Authority and Interest enough there, had I suspected any such thing,

to have prevented it; but we had not gone many leagues, the News

overtook us that Caesar was taken and whipt like a common Slave. (Behn

57)

The narrator’s absence is significant for two reasons. First, and perhaps most importantly, she does not have to see the man that she cares for be whipped. Secondly, it provides her a convenient excuse for why she isn’t able to prevent Oroonoko’s beating. In her mind, it is her absence that prevents her from saving Oroonoko, rather

39 than her position as a woman. She’s giving herself authority, real or pretended, in order to help her compete with Imoinda’s power.

The narrator is also conspicuously absent on the day that Oroonoko is executed.

This time, her excuse is not that she and the other women are afraid of the impending rebellion, but instead that she is sick. She notes: “I was perswaded to leave the Place for some time (being my self but Sickly, and very apt to fall into Fits of dangerous Illness upon any extraordinary Melancholy” (Behn 64). Before she leaves, however, she makes

Trefry, the servants, and the surgeons promise to take good care of Oroonoko (Behn 64).

Once again, she provides her readers with an excuse for her inability to save Oroonoko.

Previously, it was her absence, but now it is her belief that Trefry and the others will honor their promise to save Oroonoko. She transfers responsibility so as to avoid it.

A common theme throughout the text is the narrator’s need to establish herself as an authority. She recognizes that since her father died before he could assume his role in the colony, her status with the other colonists is tenuous at best. Therefore, she uses her relationship with Oroonoko to give herself additional authority. Aravamudan writes:

As the narrator’s status is in some dispute with the other settlers,

her access to Oroonoko increases her prestige and establishes her

social superiority through his metonymic proximity to her. That

she is termed his Great Mistress is obviously a point of pride …

The narrator enhances her status, improving her tenuous position

as daughter of the intended lieutenant governor who died en

route before he could assume charge. (41)

Although it is through her relationship with Oroonoko that the narrator is able to gain authority, Oroonoko and his family pose a very real threat to her position in the colony.

If Oroonoko and his family survive the rebellion, they start a royal bloodline in

40 Surinam. This royal family would only serve to further distance the narrator from the position of authority and power that she desperately wants.

Behn’s Oroonoko, with its black male hero and implicit theme of miscegenation, is reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Othello. Othello’s role as the strong black man foreshadows Oroonoko’s role as the royal prince. Additionally, both men have white love interests. Othello falls in love with Desdemona whom he woos and marries. Their marriage, however, is doomed from the beginning because of jealousy. Similarly,

Oroonoko becomes the love interest of a white woman. In his case, however, she does not win his affections and he instead marries Imoinda. The most conspicuous similarities between the texts, however, lie in the death of both men and their wives.

Both men, driven by a jealous rage, kill their wives. Both characters are driven by passion, but these passions are very different. Othello is a dupe of Iago, and his jealousy is unfounded. Oroonoko’s fears, on the other hand, are realistic within a colonial setting and the already established history of black women’s sexual exploitation.Whereas

Othello kills Desdemona because he thinks that she is cheating on him, Oroonoko kills

Imoinda because he knows she will be raped by the white men in the colony. Oroonoko’s fear of miscegenation, in this case the rape of Imoinda, is so strong that he is willing to sacrifice her to protect her from this fate. At this point in time, Europeans were afraid that miscegenation was going to lead to the ruin of the white race. As we saw in chapter one, both Nugent and Schaw believed that miscegenation was leading to the production of a degenerate race. That’s why Oroonoko’s fear of miscegenation is so intriguing.

Through his fear he asserts his belief that his blood line is worth preserving. Just as

Othello plans to kill himself after he realizes that he has killed Desdemona for no good reason, he kills himself. Oroonoko, though he has those same intentions, cannot go through with killing himself. The actions leading up to his death, however, are as good as suicide.

41 Nussbaum writes that: “Aphra Behn’s experiment in including a central black female character in the original Oroonoko thus seems ever more bold because of its rarity” (161). At a time when blackness was seen as a sign of inferiority and whiteness as a sign of superiority, it is interesting to see how this hierarchy is inverted in this text.

This reversal, however, is something that was more common in the Caribbean than many might assume. Many black women in the Caribbean used their sexuality to place themselves higher on the totem pole than their white counterparts. What is unique about Behn’s text is the fact that the coveted man is black. Even so, the competition between the narrator and Imoinda is something that was played out often in the

Caribbean. For example, Lady Maria Nugent, in her narrative, wrote of the power black women wielded, as mentioned in chapter one. She notes a particular case of a white man leaving his estate to his black mistress. She also writes of a certain captain in

Jamaica who “died without seeing his children, and it is said has left all he is worth to his black mistress and her children. This is, I am afraid, but too common a case in

Jamaica” (Nugent 234). Janet Schaw also wrote of her displeasure with black women in her narrative. She writes that “tho’ they have fine [white] women and such as might inspire any man with sentiments that do honour to humanity … they often honour their black wenches with their attention” (Schaw 154). From these comments, it becomes clear that some white women in the Caribbean felt a strong animosity towards black women.

Since Behn spent time in the Caribbean, it is quite possible that she too saw the power that black women had. It is widely believed that while in Surinam, Behn met a royal slave that served as the inspiration for Oroonoko. Indeed, Aramavudan writes that the relationship between Behn and her narrator is transferential and that for many readers, the narrator is synonymous with Behn (30). When speaking of why Behn didn’t turn

Oroonoko into a play, Thomas Southerne wrote: “She thought either that no Actor could represent him; or she could not bear him represented. And I believe the last, when I remember what I have heard from a Friend of hers, That she always told his Story, more

42 feelingly, than she writ it” (Behn 191). Though we can’t prove that Behn’s narrator is in fact a fictional version of herself, we can understand that if she had feelings as strong for her royal prince as the narrator had for her’s, she, like Nugent and Schaw, may have harbored ill will towards the black women she saw as a threat. Therefore, it is not surprising that Imoinda dies in the novel. Unlike Schaw and Nugent, Behn’s power as a novelist allowed her to take the power back from the black women, in this case

Imoinda.

This competition between and juxtaposition of a black woman and a white woman is something that was continually played out in literature about the Caribbean.

In J.W. Orderson’s Creoleana the beautiful Caroline Fairfield is placed against her mixed

race half-sister Lucy. In Herbert de Lisser’s White Witch of Rose Hall, the plantation

owner Annie Palmer is pitted against Millicent, the black woman who is determined to become the housekeeper of Annie’s love interest. Another commonality between texts

about the Caribbean is the death of the black female characters. Just as Imoinda dies in

Oroonoko, Lucy dies in Creoleana and Millicent dies in White Witch of Rose Hall. In

Thomas Southerne’s adaptation of Oroonoko, the black Imoinda is literally erased from

the text and replaced with a white female character. Throughout the rest of this project I

will address the competition between black and white characters and the ways black

women, for one reason or another, always seem to drop out of the text.

43 CHAPTER 3:

THE SACRIFICE OF THE COLORED WOMAN IN J.W. ORDERSON’S CREOLEANA

“There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Men's hands cannot be strong when God rises up. The strongest have no power to resist him, nor can any deliver out of his hands. -- He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but he can most easily do it. Sometimes an earthly prince meets with a great deal of difficulty to subdue a rebel, who has found means to fortify himself, and has made himself strong by the numbers of his followers. But it is not so with God. There is no fortress that is any defence from the power of God.” - Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, 1741

In 1741 Jonathan Edwards stood before his Puritan brethren in Enfield,

Massachusetts (now Enfield, Connecticut), and delivered what has become his most famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. In the sermon, Edwards preached that there is a hot and fiery hell awaiting all sinners and that his congregation needed to get right with God in order to avoid that hell. One hundred years later, J. W. Orderson published Creoleana, “the first novel by a Barbadian during the slave period, and perhaps the earliest novel of the Anglophone Caribbean to be written by someone demonstrably a native of the region” (Gilmore 2). John Gilmore, editor of the 2002 reprint of Creoleana, wrote in his introduction to the novel that:

Orderson is not a modern historian, describing and interpreting the

Caribbean past for a twenty-first century audience, but someone who

lived in the Barbados of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

and who in his old age sought to give younger readers an impression of a

time and place which he had known intimately but which had already

vanished. (1)

Though Edwards and Orderson were separated by an ocean, and their most famous works separated by a century, Orderson’s novel, with its continuous Biblical references and clear didacticism, harkens back to the hellfire and damnation preached by

44 Edwards. In Creoleana, Orderson usually makes Biblical references when discussing black people or, more specifically, when talking about sexual relationships between black women and white men. Through these references it is clear that Orderson does not believe in interracial relationships. In fact, in Orderson’s Cursory remarks and plain facts connected with the question produced by the proposed Slave Registry Bill, “he made it

clear he disapproved of sexual relationships between white and black under any

circumstances” (Gilmore 13). The proposed Slave Registry Bill would establish a central

registry of slaves in London. Only those slaves who were registered could be moved

from colony to colony. The bill was proposed because some legislators believed there

were slave owners who were illegally importing slaves. Orderson explicitly stated in his

response to the proposed bill that even Christian marriages between blacks and whites

would be “not only repugnant to my feelings, but contrary to my ideas of morals,

religion, and policy” (qtd. in Gilmore 13). Orderson believed that marriage between blacks would lead to the gradual emancipation of the slaves. According to Orderson, even legalized by marriage, miscegenation, would prolong slavery. Orderson’s feelings on miscegenation are further made clear in Creoleana with his unfavorable depictions of both Lucy, the mulatto half-sister of the heroine of the novel, and her black mother.

Gilmore writes:

In his account of Mr. Fairfield’s relations with Lucy’s mother, in the story

of Lucy herself, in the history of Lauder and Rachel Pringle, Orderson is

quite open about the sexual exploitation of black women by white men

which was a constant feature of Barbadian society, and about the

temptation held out to black women to use such relationships as one of

the very few ways open to them to improve their position in such a society

where on every hand they faced the constraints imposed on them by race

and class. (14)

45 The only person depicted less favorably than Lucy and her mother is Mac Flashby, the

white man in the text who enters into a sexual relationship with Lucy. Even though Mac

Flashby is depicted unfavorably, it is not because he exploited a black woman. Instead,

much like Lady Nugent’s disapproval of interracial relationships, Orderson’s

disapproval of Mac Flashby’s seduction of Lucy is grounded in his condemnation of the

white man who behaves in “an immoral manner” (Gilmore 13). It is clear that the

opinions Orderson had of interracial relationships that he illustrated in Cursory Remarks are further perpetuated in Creoleana. In this chapter I analyze how Orderson’s views on miscegenation are illustrated in the novel through his juxtaposition of black and white women. I argue that because of Orderson’s beliefs about miscegenation, he consciously chooses to depict only the negative aspects of interracial relationships. In negatively representing Lucy and her mother, he attempts to re-write a history of which he didn’t approve. I also analyze the ways that Orderson praises Caroline, Mr. Fairfield’s white daughter, only for possessing qualities he feels are suitable for a wife, intimating that he feels a white woman’s place is in the home. Orderson’s praise of Caroline is also a part of his attempt to rewrite history because his depiction of her does not align with historical accounts of Creole women.

Orderson begins his negative depictions of interracial relationships early in the text. Readers are first introduced to Lucy’s mother through a Biblical reference.

Orderson writes: “It is not, however, to be dissembled that during this period, giving way to the influences of robust health and a warm constitution, he fell into the commission of that frailty which a ‘certain Levite’ of old did ‘in those days when there was no king in Israel’” (26). This quote is significant for two main reasons. First, this is the first time that readers are made aware of the fact that Fairfield had a mistress.

Secondly, it is clear that Orderson feels that Fairfield could not help falling into the habit of having a mistress. The Biblical reference is to Judges 19:1 which reads: “And it came to pass in those days, when there was a certain Levite sojourning on the side of Mount

46 Ephraim, who took to him a concubine out of Beth-lehem-judah” (King James Study

Bible, Judges 19:1). The nineteenth chapter of Judges is quite fascinating and reading it alongside Orderson’s novel increases the significance of Lucy’s mother and the role that she plays in the text. In the nineteenth chapter, the Levite’s concubine leaves her lover and goes to her father’s house. The Levite journeys to find her and when he does, he spends time with her and her father. They eventually leave, but on the way home they run into trouble. No one is willing to let the couple stay with them overnight.

Eventually, an older man agrees to let them stay with him and his daughter. That night, the men of the town come to the house and “beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him” (King James Study Bible, Judges 19:23). In Biblical terms, “to know him”

means to have sex with him, and the old man will not allow the men of the city to rape

the man. Instead, he offers his own daughter and the concubine to the men who take the

concubine: “and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and

when the day began to spring, they let her go” (King James Study Bible, Judges 19:25). In

the morning, the concubine goes back to the house and falls down where she is later

discovered by her lover. What follows is quite disturbing. The verse reads: “And when

he was come into the house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and

divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts

of Israel” (King James Study Bible, Judges 19:29). Through her dismemberment and

dispersal, the concubine “served as a bloody summons to all the tribes to come to his

[the Levite’s] aid” (King James Study Bible, 440).

The concubine’s dismemberment and subsequent dispersal to the tribes is

reminiscent of Oroonoko’s death. Behn’s narrator details Oroonoko’s execution saying:

The executioner came, and first cut off his Members, and threw them into

the Fire; after that, with an ill-favoured Knife, they cut his Ears, and his

Nose, and burn’d them; he still Smoak’d on, as if nothing had touch’d

47 him; then they hack’d off one of his Arms, and still he bore up, and held

his Pipe; but at the cutting off the other Arm, his Head sunk, and his Pipe

drop’d, and he gave up the Ghost, without a Groan, or a Reproach. (Behn

64)

After Oroonoko’s execution, his body is quartered and sent to the major plantations to serve as a warning to the other slaves that the penalty for rebellion is death. Similarly, the death of Lucy’s mother, though not as bloody as the death of Oroonoko or the concubine, and the dissemination of her death through Orderson’s text serves as a warning to black women that the penalty for miscegenation is death.

Though Lucy’s mother is the only concubine in the novel, concubinage was a common practice during slavery. Many white men had concubines, so much so that the process was seen as natural. For many black women, the only way they could improve their social status was through becoming a white man’s concubine, or in West Indian terms, a housekeeper. In Slave Women in Caribbean Society, Barbara Bush explains

English historian Thomas Babington Macaulay’s ideas on white men’s desire for black women. Bush writes that Macaulay “astutely observed that it was in the interests of the defenders of slavery for the English public to believe white men were physically repelled by black women” (17). Bush goes on to say: “Strongly against this calculated moral whitewashing, he stressed how in reality white men ‘in torrid zones’ frequently preferred black women to white women” (17). According to Macaulay, “white men have never found black women too ugly to be concubines, only wives” (qtd. Bush 17).

Since most black women had no avenues available for social mobility, in order to gain the privileges that “elite slaves” gained, many became concubines (Bush 38). The reasons for concubinage were many, but Bush notes that a lack of white women coupled with an overabundance of available black women may have been one reason concubinage was so prevalent in the Caribbean. Bush writes: “Black concubinage was regarded as an integral part of plantation life, inextricably woven into the social fabric.

48 Undoubtedly, the scarcity of white women in contrast to the availability of black

women contributed to this situation” (111). Bush, however, is quick to point out that

this could not have been the only reason for concubinage in the Caribbean because

concubinage “also occurred on a wide scale in the Southern USA where a stable white

family structure and an even balance of white men and women existed” (111).

Although in many cases black women were exploited by white men, we have

seen through the examples of Thomas Thistlewood and John Stedman that “many white

men from all social ranks had fond and enduring relations with black and coloured

women” (Bush 114). Additionally, “for many white men, black women were forbidden

fruit; sexual relations between black and white could create ‘perpetual spirals of power

and pleasure’ from which white women were excluded” (Bush 111). This may be one of

the reasons that Lucy’s mother is conspicuously absent from the text. Orderson clearly

does not want to portray interracial relationships in a positive light, so by making the

only reference to Lucy’s mother a Biblical reference to a scripture about a concubine

who is violently erased from the text, he does not have to show the more positive

aspects of interracial relationships. Orderson can not, however, deny the fact that these

interracial relationships often led to manumission. He writes: “In conformity with this

decision, his first care was to manumit his paramour, securing to her £6 per annum, in

addition to the interest on deposit he had made, according to law, in the parochial

funds” (27). Unfortunately for Lucy’s mother, she soon dies and is not able to enjoy her

freedom. She has, however, given birth to a daughter, Lucy, who plays a vital role in the

rest of the novel.

In stark contrast to Lucy’s mother stands Fairfield’s wife. Whereas we only get a brief and unflattering mention of Lucy’s mother, Orderson goes to great pains to paint a

favorable picture of Fairfield’s wife. He writes of her: “Mr. Fairfield had about two

years previous to that event married a Miss Wortly, a young lady who, educated under

the immediate eye of truly virtuous and religious parents, was herself a bright example

49 of prudence, circumspection, and amiability” (24). In the first mention of Mrs. Fairfield

we get information about her parentage and her characteristics. We never hear any of

this about Lucy’s mother. This early juxtaposition of Lucy’s mother and Mrs. Fairfield

foreshadows the in-depth juxtaposition of the snow white Caroline Fairfield and her

mulatto half-sister Lucy, whom Mr. Fairfield brings into the family as Caroline’s maid.

From the very first time that we are introduced to Caroline and Lucy, Orderson

makes it clear that despite their close familial relationship, they are complete opposites,

one good and one bad. The first mention of Caroline describes her accomplishments:

Before she had attained her fifteenth year, she could write a fine Italian

hand, had acquired a competent knowledge of arithmetic, could net, knit,

and embroider, work her sampler with great neatness, play with some

science and harpsichord, dance with much grace, and was also skilled in

the domestic arts of a frugal housewife. (Orderson 24)

From this initial description of Caroline, and throughout the novel, Orderson

emphasizes her potential for being a good housewife, a point I will develop more fully below. For now, suffice to say that Orderson’s depiction of Caroline – “the heroine of

our tale” - as smart and talented is vastly different from his first description of Lucy.

Orderson first writes of Lucy as a seeming afterthought, but as someone he must

introduce because she is “deeply, and in some measure criminally, involved in [the

story’s] progress” (25).

It may seem odd that Orderson introduces the idea of Lucy as a criminal, but as

we learn more about her behavior, the criminal reference to her makes more sense. Lucy becomes involved with a white man. Moreover, that white man, Mac Flashby, is

engaged to her sister Caroline. This makes her actions even more criminal. Ironically,

though, the “criminal act” that Orderson attributes to Lucy is the one thing that paves

the way for Caroline to become a heroine. Without Lucy’s tryst with Mac Flashby,

Caroline might have married before realizing his immorality. One can only wonder

50 what Caroline’s fate would have been had not Lucy exposed Mac Flashby for the fraud

that he was.

After alerting his readers to Lucy’s criminal potential and Caroline’s inherent

virtues, Orderson moves on to physical descriptions of the two, clearly linking

Caroline’s virtue to her white complexion. He describes Caroline’s countenance as “the

true index of a soul replete with intelligence, benevolence, and tenderness; her

complexion of the most transparent whiteness tinged with a delicate roseate hue” (32).

Lucy, on the other hand, aside from being “the result of the unhallowed connexion”

(Orderson 26), has a “tolerably fair complexion, regular features, and all those

endearing witcheries which sparkling eyes, dimpled cheeks, and an ever-smiling face

render so fascinating in the innocence of infancy” (Orderson 26). Because Lucy is half black, a sure sign of evilness in much literature of the time period, her “tolerably fair

complexion” can’t compete with Caroline’s “transparent whiteness.” Additionally,

whereas Caroline is described in terms of her domestic accomplishments and virtue,

Lucy is accused of being bewitching. Furthermore, Orderson writes that Caroline:

“possessed of a natural archness of manner, blended with great good humour, her

countenance gave an expression of mirth and simplicity to all she said” (33). Where

Orderson sees Caroline as simple, and he definitely means that as a compliment, he sees

that “the great error of her [Lucy’s] conduct, and which required correction, was that of

too much flippancy and a habit of familiarity unbecoming her situation” (Orderson 33).

Lucy’s “situation” is something that becomes more and more clear as the novel

progresses. Orderson believes that any one born in her position and living through her

situation is doomed from birth, and in Lucy’s case, he’s right.

Orderson’s juxtaposition of Lucy and Caroline continues when he praises

Caroline for being quiet and chides Lucy for being wild. In discussing the behavior of

the Fairfield ladies at a meeting between the Fairfields and the Staffords, Orderson

writes: “she [Mrs. Fairfield] was rather more reserved than her spouse; and as to Miss

51 Fairfield, she sat all the while exceedingly mute” (40). Caroline is a good woman, because like a child, she chooses to be seen and not heard. While Caroline is being

complimented for her silence, Lucy is being derided for being “giddy and wild”

(Orderson 43). Orderson goes so far as to refer to Lucy as “inmate of the Fairfield

family” (43). In referring to Lucy as an inmate, Orderson continues with his criminal

references to Lucy. In a historical context, the word “inmate” would have an innocent

connotation, but because of Orderson’s earlier suggestions of criminality, the word is

striking here.

When Caroline is being wooed by Mac Flashby, she tells everything to Lucy.

After all, Lucy is her servant and the only real companion that she has to confide in.

Orderson says of the situation:

Lucy had at this time so far ingratiated herself into the confidence of her

mistress (who with all her circumspection and prudence was not proof

against her wiles – a salutary caution of young ladies in general, not to

repose confidence in their menials) that she confessed to her that “she

thought Mac Flashby a charming man!” (53)

By saying that Lucy “ingratiated” herself into Caroline’s trust, Orderson implies that

Lucy deliberately sets out to gain Caroline’s trust and through her “wiles” sheias able to

do so. From this quote we see that not only can Lucy not be trusted, no “menials” can be trusted. Lucy, in keeping with the narrator’s characterization of her as untrustworthy, goes back to Mac Flashby and tells him everything that Caroline says about him. Feeling that he has Caroline already won over, Mac Flashby seduces Lucy.

After MacFlashby’s seduction of Lucy but before their seduction is revealed to the other characters, Lucy becomes tragically ill. In a scene reminiscent of the narrator in

Oroonoko fleeing down the river during the slave revolt and Oroonoko’s subsequent lashing, Caroline is sent to visit family friends during Lucy’s illness. In order for

Caroline to remain pure, she must be removed from Lucy’s contaminating presence.

52 Lucy, after all, is not only sexually active, but she’s pregnant! The only way that

Caroline’s innocence can be protected is for her to be absent during Lucy’s illness and

subsequent death. Orderson justifies Caroline’s departure by privileging the suffering

she would experience from an exposure to Lucy’s “punishment”: “Caroline, whose

sympathizing heart would have deeply felt for poor Lucy, was spared the anguish of

the scene, as she was from home on a visit in a distant part of the country to two elderly but amiable ladies, who were sisters” (62). Since Orderson has built Caroline up as a

pinnacle of righteousness, he must find a way to make her absent for Lucy’s demise.

Being righteous, Caroline would have to feel for Lucy and wish her well, even if she

was sleeping with her fiancé. If Caroline forgave Lucy, however, that would make Lucy

a sympathetic character, and that obviously isn’t what Orderson wants. Therefore,

Orderson has Caroline visiting friends because it serves as a good excuse for why she

isn’t trying to help Lucy get better. This is very similar to Behn sending her narrator

down the river so that she can justify the narrator not stepping in to help Oroonoko in

his time of need.

Although Lucy’s premature death renders further descriptions of her pointless because Orderson succeeds in removing her from the text, it is important to continue to analyze Orderson’s depictions of Caroline. From these descriptions we discover the values Orderson prides in a woman and we gain an understanding of why Lucy, with her unhallowed conception, could never have these values. It is also clear from these descriptions that Caroline is the heroine of the tale only because she has all the qualities of a good housewife.

It is worth noting that the description Orderson gives us of Caroline is very different from European accounts of Creole women. J.B. Moreton, in West India Customs and Manners, writes of Creole women that:

Though guarded and cooped up in their chambers by their parents, or

friends, they will find ways and means to get to men, - their eyes, their

53 looks, and fondling actions, all betray wantonness and love: their little

hearts are a fort of tinder, that catch fire from every spark who flatters

their vanity, and whispers them soft nonsense: - they are pliable as wax,

and melt like butter, and though naturally delicate in their texture, they

are fondest of strong, stout-backed men. (109)

Lady Nugent also discusses Creole women whose language disgusts her. Of these women she comments: “Many of the ladies, who have not been educated in England, speak a sort of broken English, with an indolent drawling out of their words, that is very tiresome if not disgusting” (98). Caroline does not fit either of these descriptions.

Orderson’s awareness of these stereotypes about white/Creole women’s predisposition to sexual activity and black language is another reason he must remove her from Lucy’s negative influences.

The ultimate protection for Caroline against the corrupting influences is, of course, a proper marriage. But in order for Caroline to get married, she must first gain a beau. With her sparkling whiteness, good family name, and undisputed virtue, this is not a problem. Orderson comments that: “The accomplishments of Miss Fairfield, or rather, the grace and elegance of her person and manners, did not fail to attract the attention and admiration of the whole circle of young men of any consequence or respectability in the parish, and of all who knew her” (33). Whereas Lucy’s attractions were attributed to her witchery, men are attracted to Caroline’s “grace and elegance.”

One of the young men who loves Caroline, but who is not one of “the whole circle of young men of any consequence or respectability in the parish,” is Jack

Goldacre. Jack’s mother and father often argue over what they each feel is best for their son. In one of their arguments we see that Caroline is seen as a trophy, more so than an actual person. Orderson writes:

The arguments used by Mrs. Goldacre to satisfy her husband on the score

of their son’s want of ‘book learning’ were, as he used to say, ‘knock-

54 down blows’; but still their impression led him to wish ‘that he could see

Jack make a figure in the world,’ and he would sometimes add, ‘then we

might hope to see him married to that nice young woman at Staffords

[Caroline].’ (36)

In this sense, Caroline is placed on the same level as an education and money. Although the Goldacres have a thriving estate and are well respected, they feel that in order for them to solidify their place in Barbadian society, their son needs to marry Caroline.

In order for Jack to be with Caroline, Orderson must first get Mac Flashby out of the picture, a feat that he leaves up to Lucy. Mac Flashby’s incessant drunkenness, his seduction of Lucy, and his lewd public behavior leave Caroline no choice but to end her relationship with him. Orderson comments that:

From the character of Miss Fairfield, it will create no surprise that she

should have peremptorily ‘desired Mac Flashby to discontinue his

attentions to her!’ but when it is added that he vulgarly attempted to kiss

her in the presence of several of her young associates, we need scarcely

ask whether any lady of sentiment and delicacy, under analogous

circumstances, would have acted otherwise than the lovely heiress of

Staffords. (89)

Orderson praises Caroline for not giving in to Mac Flashby’s ways, but one can only wonder if Caroline would have been able to resist Mac Flashby if Lucy had not uncovered the truth about him. Once again, Caroline is being praised for something that would not have been possible had it not been for the role that Lucy plays.

Despite the fact that it takes place relatively early in the novel, Lucy’s death is the most important event in the Creoleana. Without it, the novel cannot progress. Although her death was unfortunate, it was not unexpected. Throughout the novel Orderson foreshadowed that harm was going to come to Lucy when he made references to her station in life. Being born a mulatto, it was almost impossible for Lucy to survive the

55 novel. In terms of historic representations of mulattoes, such characters always seem

doomed. This can be seen from looking at Janet Schaw’s and Maria Nugent’s journals.

Both women depict mulattoes as sickly and doomed from birth. Consequently, we

shouldn’t be surprised when poor Lucy dies.

Additionally, historical representations of mulattoes should have made it clear to

Orderson’s readers that Lucy would not survive. Janet Schaw believes that mulattoes

are useless because they can’t work in the fields with the same intensity as blacks. She

comments that: “The young black wenches lay themselves out for white lovers, in

which they are but too successful. This prevents their marrying with their natural

mates, and hence a spurious and degenerate breed, neither so fit for the field, nor

indeed any work, as the true bred Negro” (112). Schaw believes that white men like

Mac Flashby and Mr. Fairfield are helpless victims who are seduced by black women.

Schaw has two main problems with miscegenation. First, she believes that white men

are being seduced by black women. Second, she believes that the results of these

relationships are leading to a weakening of the labor force. For Schaw, mulattoes are ill

equipped for the duties expected of slaves. They can’t work in the field, which is what

most female slaves were expected to do, nor can they work in the house. Consequently,

they are idle and cause trouble. Also, like Orderson, Schaw does not believe that whites

and blacks should have sex. This is one reason she gives for black women not being able

to marry their “natural mates.” This was surely the case with Lucy, whose sexual

relationship with Mac Flashby prevented her from marrying Joe Pollard. For Schaw, black men are the only “natural mates” for black women. In Creoleana, Joe Pollard

would meet Schaw’s standards for Lucy because he “had not only gained the esteem

and encouragement of the gentry and proprietary body of the parish, but had also

realized sufficient wealth to enable him to purchase five acres of land with a neat

cottage” (Orderson 44).

56 Schaw goes on to talk about how black women do not want to be burdened with

children, even mulatto children. Therefore, they kill them. She writes: “Besides, these

wenches become licentious and insolent past all bearing, and as even a mulatto child

interrupts their pleasures and is troublesome, they have certain herbs and medicines,

that free them from such an incumbrance [sic], but which seldom fails to cut short their

own lives, as well as that of their offspring” (Schaw 112-13). Here, Schaw implies that black women should not feel burdened by their mulatto children when she says that

“even a mulatto child interrupts their pleasures and is troublesome.” This makes it seem

as if a black woman should be happy to have a mulatto child, but this totally contradicts

everything else she has said about mulattoes. This quote also gives insight into why

Orderson doesn’t condemn Mr. Fairfield for his relationship with Lucy’s mother as

much as he condemns Mac Flashby for his relationship with Lucy. Schaw says that black women often kill their children, so perhaps since Mr. Fairfield stepped in and

saved Lucy from a quick death, he gets a reprieve.

The most obvious problem Schaw has with mulattoes is that they represent what

she considers an unnatural union. She comments:

Alas! my friend, tho’ children of the Sun, they [white men] are mortals,

and as such must have their share of failings, the most conspicuous of

which is, the indulgence they give themselves in their licentious and even

unnatural amours, which appears too plainly from the crouds [sic] of

Mullatoes [sic], which you meet in the streets, houses, and indeed every

where. (Schaw 112)

For Schaw, mulattoes are a constant reminder that white men have relationships with black women. In similar fashion, while alive, Lucy serves as a constant reminder to her

father that he had had a relationship with a black woman. In order for the Fairfield clan

to ever achieve perfect peace and purity, Lucy has to die so that her father will not have

to live with the dark secret of his past.

57 Like Schaw, Maria Nugent had an opinion on mulatto women and her depiction

seemed spot on in terms on Lucy. The rest of the comment, however, is not quite as

accurate. Nugent comments:

Nelly Nugent remarked, however, that it was astonishing how fast these

black women bred, what healthy children they had, and how soon they

recovered after lying-in. She said it was totally different with mulatto

women, who were constantly liable to miscarry, and subject to a thousand

little complaints, colds, coughs, &c. Indeed, I have heard medical men

make the same observation. (69)

Lucy does have a miscarriage, and if you believe Nugent, that was to be expected. Prior to Lucy’s miscarriage, she suffers from a serious illness, an illness that Deborah Wyrick argues is brought about by the guilt of her having slept with Caroline’s beau. Orderson details Lucy’s change from wild and giddy to sickly in the following way: “We have to record a great change in Lucy, whom we find in a delicate state of health, complaining of frequent headaches, and other nervous affections bearing hard upon her spirits, producing depression and languor unusual with her” (61). Unlike the mulatto women that Nugent discusses who were sickly from birth, Lucy’s ill health does not begin until after her relationship with Mac Flashby. According to Orderson, “Lucy continued in a succession of fits until the ‘great doctor’ (so the negroes called the physician or surgeon) arrived, who came but just in time to assist at the birth of a still-born infant” (85).

Although the death of Lucy’s child is sad, it is the only way that Orderson has for stopping the chain of interracial relationships in the text. Had Lucy’s child lived, she would have suffered the same fate as Lucy and her mother. Nugent’s comment about the ease with which black women breed is clearly false, however, because black women in the Caribbean had lower fertility rates than black women in the United States, so much so that some historians have postulated that black women found ways to prevent pregnancy, or in some cases even practiced infanticide.

58 The death of Lucy and her child is even more significant when one looks at the

debates on whether or not blacks were humans or animals that was going on in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Colonial Desire, Robert Young explains that “the generally accepted test for distinct species, formulated by the Comte de Buffon in

France and John Hunter in Britain, was the product of sexual intercourse between them was infertile” (7). This is one of the reasons Lucy is so problematic for Orderson. Her birth disproves the notion that blacks and whites are of different species. Mulattos in general disprove the notion of different species, thereby posing a threat to white superiority. Edward Long did not let the mulatto population keep him from his belief that blacks and whites were of different species, however. Long postulated that though mulattoes were obviously fertile, that fertility declined through successive generations.

Therefore, Long went out of his way to prove that two mulattoes could not have children. In The History of Jamaica, Long writes: “Some few of them [mulattoes] have intermarried here with those of their own complexion: but such matches have generally been defective and barren. They seem in this respect to be actually of the mule-kind, and not so capable of producing one another as from a commerce with a distinct White or Black” (335). Long continues his assertion when he writes:

Yet it seems extraordinary, that two Mulattos, having intercourse

together, should be unable to continue their species, the woman either

proving barren, or their offspring, if they have any, not attaining to

maturity; when the same man and woman, having commerce with a

White or Black, would generate a numerous issue. Some examples may

possibly have occurred, where, upon the intermarriage of two Mulattos,

the woman has borne children; which children have grown to maturity:

but I never heard of such an instance; and may we not suspect the lady, in

those cases, to have privately intrigues with another man, a White

perhaps? (335-336)

59 In the aforementioned quote, Long accomplishes two things. First, he validates the

claim that blacks and whites are of different species because the children born of

interracial relationships are barren. Secondly, he continues to perpetuate the stereotype

of black and colored women as promiscuous when he notes that mulatto women who

give birth to healthy children have probably been sleeping with white men. Young

argues that “if the hybrid issue was successful through several generations, then it was

taken to prove that humans were all one species” (9). Lucy’s death and the death of her

child prevent this interbreeding, thus making it impossible to prove that blacks and

whites are of the same species.

Progressing from the historical representations of mulattoes and how those

depictions are present in Creoleana, one can see the same kinds of foreshadowing in the text. From Lucy’s birth Mr. Fairfield feels that she is doomed. Although he steps in and tries to protect her, the circumstances surrounding her birth make her salvation impossible. After his liaison with Lucy’s mother, Mr. Fairfield decides that he wants to settle down and get married. To do so, he knows that he has to get rid of any connection to Lucy’s mother. For this reason, he manumits her. Even after he has gotten rid of

Lucy’s mother, Lucy is still an issue. The thought of the shame that she would bring to him and his future family makes him take her from her mother and place her in someone else’s care. Orderson writes of Fairfield’s decision to move Lucy saying of him:

“but from a conviction of the moral turpitude of his conduct, experienced much compunction mingling with his better feelings at having given birth to a child whose future life seemed bounded by the wretched prospect of inevitable prostitution, which consequently would bring shame and disgrace on himself” (26). From birth, Lucy’s father believed that she was destined to become a prostitute. Although this was a very real possibility as I will discuss later, it was not her only option. Lucy, however, had to live with this “fact” of life and one can only wonder if things would have been different if Fairfield had taken Lucy away from her mother in order to protect her instead of only

60 taking her away from her mother to save himself the disgrace of having a daughter as a

prostitute. The fate placed on Lucy from her conception may be one reason Orderson

claims “although we may censure, we yet must pity Lucy” (45). It does seem a pity that

Fairfield didn’t spend as much time molding Lucy as he spent molding the beautiful,

the perfect, the white Caroline.

Although Fairfield views Lucy’s inevitable prostitution as a bad thing there is

one person in the novel who used prostitution to her full advantage: Rachel Pringle, an

ex-slave who became a notorious brothel owner. Through Rachel’s role in prostitution,

she was able to not only acquire her own brothel, but respect as well. Orderson

introduces Rachel by saying: “Miss Rachel,’ as par excellence she was called (the prefix being then rarely given to black or coloured women,) was the daughter and slave of the notorious William Lauder” (76). Rachel’s situation was much different than Lucy’s.

Instead of her father coming to her aid and offering her a home, Rachel’s father kept her enslaved and raped her. In addition to Rachel’s situation shedding light on some of the many brutalities of slavery, “we also see here the timely interposition of Divine mercy rescuing an innocent and helpless victim from the hands of oppression” (Orderson 76).

After being rescued from her father, Miss Rachel uses a life of prostitution in order to better herself. Gilmore refers to Rachel as “an almost perfect representative of Anansi, the West African trickster hero, part spider, part man, whose often unscrupulous use of his wits to survive against stronger and more powerful enemies made him a popular figure in Caribbean folklore” (16). It is Miss Rachel’s wits and survivals skills that allow her to turn a negative (prostitution) into a life changing positive. Gilmore’s description of Rachel’s “unscrupulous use of her wits” is reminiscent of Orderson’s claim that Lucy used her wiles to befriend Caroline. Gilmore implies that Rachel Pringle lacks principles, but he concedes the fact that she is a powerful woman.

It is not a coincidence that prostitution plays such a large role in this novel. Mr.

Fairfield’s fear that Lucy would become a prostitute is the sole reason that he took her

61 from her mother in the first place. Prostitution was a huge part of Barbadian slave

culture. According to Hilary Beckles, slave prostitution was “an occupation which was

more common at Bridgetown than in any other city in the British West Indies” (694).

Also speaking of slavery in Barbados, Beckles notes that “In Bridgetown, organized

prostitution, and the formal integration of slave mistresses into white households, were

common enough, while on the sugar estates sexual access to slave women took more

covert forms and was less visible to outsiders” (694). Prostitution was vital to the

Barbadian economy because slave owners wanted to make as much money as possible

off of their slaves. Indeed,

Ideologically, slaveowners understood well that they were entitled to

commodify fully all the capabilities of slaves, as part of the search for

maximum economic and social returns on their investment. Properly

understood, this meant, among other things, the slaveowners’ right to

extract a wide range of non-pecuniary socio-sexual benefits from slaves as

a legitimate stream or returns on capital, and an important part of the

meaning of colonial mastery. (Beckles 692)

Prostitution was so lucrative in Barbados that many prostitutes did not engage in one

night stands, but more often entered into long-term relationships with their white

lovers. In keeping with the sexual and financial exploitation of the black woman in

Barbados, “many prostitutes were often the kept mistresses of white males, who also

encouraged them, from time to time, to have children so as to benefit financially from

the sale of the child” (Beckles 694). Additionally, Beckles writes that the money slave

owners received for their slaves’ sexual services was often more than the slave was

actually worth on the market (695). Through their roles as prostitutes and concubines,

many slave women in the Caribbean were manumitted or earned enough money to buy

their freedom (Beckles 699). Given these harsh realities that faced Lucy, it could have been a noble act by Fairfield in rescuing her from this impending fate. Instead, Orderson

62 creates a scenario in which Fairfield takes Lucy from her mother, not out of compassion, but out of a desire to preserve his place in society.

Barbara Bush also discusses the role of prostitution in Caribbean slavery. She

notes that “In contrast to British West Indian slave law, the French and Spanish codes

recognized, in theory at least, the necessity to protect women slaves in certain important

areas” (Bush 28). She goes on to say that “Under the Siete Partidas, female slaves could be compulsorily manumitted in compensation for abuse, violation or prostitution of a

woman by her owner” (Bush 28). From this statement we can see that prostitution in the

Caribbean was not confined to Barbados, or even to the British West Indies. It also

illustrates that black women in the British West Indies had fewer rights than other black

women in the Caribbean.

Fairfield’s desire to help Lucy escape a life of prostitution, however, is what

ultimately led to her death. Lucy’s untimely death leads Orderson back into his hellfire

and damnation roots. Orderson hopes that Lucy’s death serves as a warning to all that

interracial relationships are not sanctioned by God and that the children born of these

relations will come back and haunt the parents. Orderson preaches:

Ah! Poor deluded, wretched girl! Thus has thy melancholy and untimely

fate illustrated that maxim of the wise king, which saith, ‘Better is it to

have no children, and to have virtue; for children begotten of unlawful beds

are witnesses against their parents!’ Hear this, ye revelers in adulterous

joys, and hear further what Solomon also saith, ‘That the multiplying

brood of fornicators shall not thrive, nor take deep root from bastard slips.’

(87)

This is Orderson’s most harsh statement against Fairfield. Orderson makes it clear that

the mulatto children will live to bring shame to their parents. It doesn’t matter that

Fairfield tried to intercede and spare Lucy from a life of prostitution to spare him the

embarrassment. This statement warns all men considering relationships with black

63 women that the relationships will ruin them. Later, Orderson also blames Lucy’s demise

on her. He observes: “The remains of this will-fated girl, who thus early fell a sacrifice,

as much to her own levity as to the treacherous wiles of a vile seducer, were interred the

following evening in the parish churchyard” (87). Orderson’s description of Lucy as

“will-fated” is an interesting play on “ill-fated.” “Will-fated,” however, implies that

Lucy was at least partially responsible for her own demise, a fact that Orderson wants

to make very clear.

Unlike Lucy who is talked about negatively throughout the text, Joe Pollard is a black person in the text who Orderson treats respectfully. Joe is engaged to Lucy and

thinks the world of her. Mr. Fairfield approves of Joe and thinks that he would be a

great husband for Lucy. Orderson writes of Joe: “This [having white pall-bearers] was a

most unusual occurrence in those days, but it serves to show that even then, neither

complexion not descent precluded the virtuous and just man from respect and

attention” (44). Joe, because he is a man, can overcome the circumstances of his birth.

Lucy, because she is a woman, can’t. At places in the text, Orderson’s views on women

and their place in society outweigh his views on blacks and their place in society. This is

one clear example. Joe Pollard, because he is black, is also an example of what Orderson

considers a proper mate for Lucy. Had she married Joe instead of sleeping with Mac

Flashby, her life would have been spared.

The importance of Creoleana in Barbadian history cannot easily be measured. In

addition to being the first novel written by a Barbadian, the historical information in the

text is invaluable. What is more important, however, is that modern readers read

Creoleana with the understanding that Orderson had an agenda and that everything he

says cannot be taken at face value. This is especially true in the ways that he portrays

Lucy and her mother. Because Orderson disapproved of miscegenation, he purposefully

only showed the negative aspects of these relationships. Orderson used Creoleana to

spread his anti-miscegenation message and to warn white men not to have sex with

64 black women because their progeny would not only be doomed, but would more than likely make their parents’ lives a living hell. Deborah Wyrick measures the importance of Creoleana in terms of the indirect influence it had on later Victorian novels. She comments that: “Books like Creoleana, and their emancipation-inspired fantasies of ‘de-

hybridization,’ suggest that Victorian womanhood in England may have been

constructed partly in response to chaotic colonial domesticity and the anxieties induced by the official termination of slavery” (Wyrick 48). This connection between eighteenth

century literature dominated by slavery and later Victorian literature is something beyond the scope of this thesis, but that is worthy of further exploration.

In the introduction to the text, Gilmore gives Orderson credit for intimately knowing the things that he is writing about. Gilmore commends Orderson for being

“someone who lived in the Barbados of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and who in his old age sought to give younger readers an impression of a time and place which he had known intimately but which had already vanished” (1).

Although Orderson knew the history of Barbados well, the picture that he chose to paint for his readers was not a true history of what occurred on the island. In the slave communities in Barbados, just like slave communities elsewhere, black women and white men had long-term committed relationships. Orderson, however, used his position as a writer to try to re-write a history that he hoped would soon be forgotten.

65 EPILOGUE

He was an educated and eloquent gentleman; too eloquent, alas, for the poor slave girl who trusted in him. Of course I saw whither all this was tending. I knew the impassable gulf between us; but to be an object of interest to a man who is not married, and who is not her master, is agreeable to the pride and feelings of a slave, if her miserable situation has left her any pride or sentiment. It seems less degrading to give one’s self, than to submit to compulsion. There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment. -Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

There is an old proverb that says when faced with two evils, one should pick the lesser of the two. Unfortunately for Harriet Jacobs, she had to make the choice between two evils at an early age. Jacobs was born into slavery in North Carolina in 1813. She spent the first part of her teenage years trying to fight off the sexual advances of her master, Dr. Norcom. Faced with a master who was determined to make her his mistress,

Jacobs did the only thing that she felt she could do in order to protect herself; she started a relationship with a white man named Samuel Tredell Sawyer. Jacobs knew that as an enslaved black woman she could not keep Norcom at bay for much longer, so in search of “something akin to freedom,” she started a sexual relationship with another man in hopes that it would deter Norcom from pursuing a sexual relationship with her.

At a time when black women, both in America and the Caribbean, had no tangible power, Jacobs used the one commodity that she had, her body, to gain some measure of control over her situation. Though Jacobs was probably one of the first women to actually write about using her sexuality to gain power, enslaved women had been using sex to gain agency for years.

Although this thesis has focused on interracial relationships in the Caribbean, the sexual exploitation of women and the subsequent adaptation of this exploitation into something positive was not isolated to the Caribbean. And while it’s not within the

66 scope of this thesis to perform a comparative study, there are several distinctions between slavery in the US and in the Caribbean that are important to mention in

relation to my study. One of the main differences was the fact that most British slave

owners in the Caribbean did not consider the Caribbean their home. They would spend

a few years in Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, and so forth, but their aim was almost

always to go back to England or Scotland to live and start a family. This was not the

case in the United States. In America, most slave owners considered America their

home. As a result of this difference, I would expect that the relationships between

masters and slaves were different in America than in the Caribbean. I believe that

investigating the ways that black women in America used sexual relationships with

white men to better themselves and comparing it to what happened in the Caribbean

would be a fascinating extension of this project. Studying slavery in America would also

allow the opportunity for one to research how black men felt about sexual relationships between white men and black women. A study of slavery in the Caribbean simply does

not offer this same opportunity because there are few narratives written by enslaved

men in the Caribbean. Olaudah Equiano’s Narrative does not address the issue of miscegenation in depth enough to warrant further study. Slavery in America lasted longer than slavery in the Caribbean, hence more narratives and wider breadth of work from which to study.

Another potential avenue that this project could take would be to analyze the ways that slavery in eighteenth century literature influenced later Victorian ideals of morality. As literature moves from the eighteenth century to the Victorian period it becomes much more censored. Whereas slavery’s influence on eighteenth century literature caused novelists to write more openly about sexual promiscuity and non- traditional families, Victorian concerns with morality caused much of the literature of the time period to be didactic, clearly illustrating what it means to be a good wife and a

67 good mother. The chaos and uncertainty of slavery and eventually abolition created

Victorian literature mainly concerned with restoring order.

Though Victorian literature shied away from dealing with slavery, the themes and motifs present in eighteenth-century literature have continued. Even well into the twentieth century authors were writing about the same themes we have seen in

Oroonoko and Creoleana. In 1929 Herbert G. de Lisser published The White Witch of Rose

Hall, a novel set in Jamaica in the early nineteenth century. The White Witch of Rose Hall

complicates the traditional views of slavery by having a white woman as the plantation

owner. Not only is the white woman a ruthless slave driver, but she has connections

with obeah, or black magic. Just as in the novels I have analyzed previously, a black

woman is pitted against a white woman in a fierce competition for the love of a man.

Annie Palmer, the white plantation owner, is interested in Robert Rutherford.

Rutherford, soon after settling on the island, is pursued by Millicent who wants to become his “housekeeper.” The two women fight for his affections, but Millicent is no

match for Annie Palmer and her black magic. Quite expectedly, Millicent dies. Annie

Palmer’s dealing with black magic and her unproven blood lines, however, lead to her

demise as well. The continuing fascination with slavery and its consequences, as

evidenced by its prominence well into the 20th century, make the themes in this project well worth pursuing.

In The British Army in the West Indies, Roger Norman Buckley discusses what he calls the “housekeeper syndrome,” something that was prevalent de Lisser’s The White

Witch of Rose Hall. Buckley notes that

One of the great tragedies of West Indian slavery was the sexual

exploitation of black and colored women by white men. The sexual

licentiousness of white men ranged from relatively stable unions with

mistresses or concubines to highly transitory, debauched, even sadistic,

68 encounters with the most vulnerable women and girls in the slave and

freed populations. (342)

Buckley is clearly correct in his assertion that the level of sexual exploitation going on in the Caribbean was astounding. Though I don’t focus on the negative aspects of these interracial relationships in this project, I am not ignoring the fact that not all interracial relationships were as healthy and productive as the ones between Thistlewood and

Phibbah and Stedman and Joanna, or that these did not have elements of problematic relationships and levels of coercion. What I’ve done, however, is show that not all instances of sexual relationships between master and slave were rape and that some black women, when faced with two evils, chose the lesser of the two and entered into these relationships strategically.

69 WORKS CITED

Aravamudan, Srinivas. Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688-1804. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. Baumgartner, Barbara. “The Body as Evidence: Resistance, Collaboration, and Appropriation in ‘The History of Mary Prince.’” Callaloo, Winter 2001 v24 n1: 253-75. Beckles, Hilary. “Property Rights in Pleasure: The Marketing of Enslaved Women’s Sexuality.” Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World. Eds. Verene Shepherd and Hilary Beckles. Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers Limited, 2000. Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997. Buckley, Roger Norman. The British Army in The West Indies: Society and the Military in the Revolutionary Age. Gainesville: The University Press of Florida, 1998. Burnard, Trevor. Master, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Bush, Barbara. Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650-1838. Kingston: Heinemann Publishers, 1990. Coleman, Deidra. “Janet Schaw and the Complexions of Empire.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36.2 (2003): 169-193. Gilmore, John. Introduction. Creoleana. By J.W. Orderson. Oxford: Macmillan Publishers, 2002. Hall, Douglas. In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica, 1750-86. London: The MacMillan Press, 1989. Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in The Life of a Slave Girl. Classic African American Women’s Narratives. Ed. William L. Andrews. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Klepp, Susan E. and Roderick A. McDonald. “Inscribing Experience: An American Working Woman and an English Gentlewoman Encounter Jamaica’s Slave Society, 1801-1805.” The William and Mary Quarterly 58.3 (2001): 637-660. Long, Edward. The History of Jamaica. Vol. 2. New York: Arno Press, 1972. Moreton, J.B. West India customs and manners: Containing strictures on the soil, cultivation, produce, trade, officers, and inhabitants: with the method of establishing, and conducting a sugar plantation. To which is added, the practice of training new slaves. A new edition. London, 1793. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Group. http://galenet.galegroup.com/proxy.lib.fsu.edu,servlet/ECCO Nugent, Maria. Lady Nugent’s Journal of Her Residence in Jamaica from 1801 to 1805. Barbados: The University of the West Indies Press, 2002. Nussbaum, Felicity. The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race, and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

70 Orderson, J.W. Creoleana. Oxford: Macmillan Publishers, 2002. Prince, Mary. The History of Mary Prince. London: Penguin Books, 2000. Schaw, Janet. Journal of a Lady of Quality; Being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal, in the years 1774 to 1776. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1927. Sharpe, Jenny. Ghosts of Slavery: A Literary Archaeology of Black Women’s Lives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. ---.“Something Akin to Freedom: The Case of Mary Prince.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Spring 1996 v8 n1. Stedman, John. Expedition to Surinam. London: The Folio Society, 1963. The King James Study Bible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1988. Wood, Marcus. Slavery, Empathy, and Pornography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Wyrick, Deborah. "The Madwoman in the Hut: Scandals of Hybrid Domesticity in Early Victorian Literature from the West Indies." Pacific Coast Philology 33.1(1998): 44- 57. Young, Robert. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. New York: Routledge, 2000.

71 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Katrina Songanett Smith received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature from The

Florida State University in April of 2005. She graduated Magna Cum Laude. In August of 2007 Katrina was awarded her Master of Arts degree in Literature from The Florida

State University. She is pursuing her doctorate at The University of Miami.

72