THE FICTION OF ZEE EDGELL: MEMORY, GENDER, AND THE LEGACY OF TRANSATLANTIC SLAVERY JESSICA HAMLIN A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Brighton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, July 2018 ABSTRACT This thesis critically assesses the specific ways in which the past is reworked, remembered, buried and forgotten in the Central American country of Belize through engagement with fictional texts by Belizean author, Zee Edgell. Identifying Belize as a neglected colonial site, the project interrogates the ways in which Edgell’s imaginative literature confronts the country’s heavily mythologised past. The production of this mythologised past – most notably, the national ‘‘myth of origin’’ - is critically analysed in order to understand how it has prevailed in Belize from the colonial to the postcolonial period. Developing an interdisciplinary analytical framework that draws on memory studies, postcolonial literary theory and historical studies, the project considers how Edgell’s novels challenge dominant historical narrative in Belize, whilst addressing the marginalised voices of Belizean women as a counter to dominant patriarchal nationalist discourses. Through contrasting analyses of colonial and postColonial histories, and a detailed inquiry into the gaps and omissions present in the colonial archive, this project demonstrates the pervasive power of the origin myth and investigates the ways in which a dominant version of history has been produced and maintained. The thesis argues that Edgell’s novels give voice to difficult and traumatic memories about the past, specifically those connected with the legacy of transatlantic slavery. At the same time, Edgell redresses the marginalised position of women in Belize and their absence in national cultural narratives. The project is significant for its interdisciplinary interrogation of colonially-derived cultural memory in a hitherto neglected Caribbean site. Whilst Belize is beginning to come to terms with the less palatable aspects of its past, this engagement is relatively recent, and the origin myth which has come to define Belize’s history continues to be ideologically, politically and socially powerful. This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge through its exploration of the ‘myth of origin’ through the analysis of literature, a project which has previously been unexplored by Belizean historians and Belizean/Caribbean literary critics. The project also broadens the relatively small field of critics who have addressed Edgell’s fiction, 2 and critically assesses Edgell’s novels through the lens of memory and slavery. It is also one of the first to assess Edgell’s novels as a body of work and represents an original investigation into an under researched aspect of the canon of Caribbean women’s writing. 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ 6 Declaration ............................................................................................................. 7 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 8 Chapter One - The Battle of St George’s Caye: Myth-Making and Memory in Belize ................................................................................................................... 32 Defining Cultural Memory ................................................................................. 36 Belizean Historiography and The Archives of British Honduras ....................... 40 The Production of History ................................................................................. 49 The Early History of Belize ............................................................................... 58 The Consolidation of the ‘‘myth of origin’.’ ....................................................... 66 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 76 Chapter Two - Slavery in Belize: Challenging the Myth of Benevolence ............. 79 Slavery in Belize ............................................................................................... 82 The Gendered Experience of Slavery in Belize ............................................... 88 Resistance ....................................................................................................... 95 Rebellion ....................................................................................................... 96 Desertion and Runaways ........................................................................... 100 From Colonel Arthur to the Labour Movement: A Counter-Narrative to the Origin Myth ..................................................................................................... 105 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 119 Chapter Three: Locating Zee Edgell: Caribbean Women’s Writing and Novels of Nation ................................................................................................................ 122 Cultural Texts, Collective Texts and Fictions of Memory ............................... 124 Caribbean Identity and Creolisation ............................................................... 131 Caribbean Women’s Writing .......................................................................... 136 Nation, Identity and Narrative ......................................................................... 148 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 159 Chapter Four - Colonial Resistance and Colonial Legacies: Memory, Gender and the Nation in Beka Lamb ................................................................................... 162 Beka Lamb: National Allegory ........................................................................ 165 Sites of colonial resistance in Beka Lamb ...................................................... 171 “I Don’t Want to Remember”: Silencing the Traumatic Past .......................... 178 Gendered Legacies of Colonialism in Beka Lamb ......................................... 188 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 198 Chapter Five - Gendering the Nation: Female Subjectivity and Selfhood in In Times Like These .............................................................................................. 202 Critical Reception and Feminist Frameworks ................................................. 204 In Times Like These and Belizean Race Politics of the 1960s and 1970s ..... 210 Motherhood and the Nation ............................................................................ 218 “Changing the Subjects:” Writing Women’s Stories of Nation ........................ 225 Burying the Past: Colonial Legacies and the Failures of Independence ........ 235 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 242 Chapter Six – Recasting the Belizean ‘‘myth of origin’’: Slavery, Trauma and the Literary Imagination in Time and the River ........................................................ 245 4 Critical Reception ........................................................................................... 248 Time and the River as Neo-Slave Narrative: Challenging the Belizean Narrative of Slavery ....................................................................................................... 251 The Belizean Slave Experience: Two Perspectives ....................................... 259 The Female Experience of Slavery in Time and the River ............................. 265 Traumatic Legacies: Rewriting Belize’s cultural memory of slavery .............. 273 Dismantling the ‘‘myth of origin’’: The Battle of St George’s Caye Through Will’s Eyes ...................................................................................................... 279 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 285 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 288 Bibliography ....................................................................................................... 296 5 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors, Anita Rupprecht and Cathy Bergin, for their support, understanding and insight over the past eight years. The journey to get to the point of submission has been a long one, with more than its fair share of ups and downs. I’ve appreciated your advice, patience, and good humour very much. Thank you for pushing me, questioning me and developing my writing. Thanks also for bearing with me as we transitioned to Skype supervisions – I think we finally got the hang of it! I would also like to thank my parents – Rhondda and Greg – who I dedicate this project to. Thank you for instilling in me a love of reading and learning, and for always believing I was capable of doing this project. Your support and love mean the world to me. Thanks also to my siblings, Kylie and Paul, my extended family – Sally, Louis, Greg and Sarah, and my friends, Nathalie, Alice, Sarah, Debbie, Lindsay, Violet, Sarah, Elise, and Kara. Your encouragement, support and love has kept me going - from the earliest days to the final stretch. You