1	Mary Prince AAS 399 Coker College
2	Important Dates 1772 Mansfield Decision PC 1783 Equiano / Zong / Granville Sharpe PC1786 Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor PC 1787 The Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade PC 1788 Mary Prince is born in Bermuda HW
3	"1807 Abolition of the slave..." 1807 Abolition of the slave trade in England PC 1826 Mary Prince marries Daniel James in Antigua HW 1831 Mary Prince’s narrative is published HW 1838 Abolition of slavery in the British Colonies PC
4	CONTEXT OF THE WORK The work is published after the abolition of the slave trade BUT before the abolition of slavery in the British colonies. The work is part of the ongoing effort to persuade Parliament to abolish slavery. The work engendered two articles and two court cases KT
5	MAP West Indies
6	UNIQUENESS First female slave’s narrative HLG Describes situations unique to her as a woman (HW) but shared by female slaves in general (HLG) use of oral narration allows previously silent voices to be heard KT
7	"“The genre of oral..." “The genre of oral narration empowers Prince even more in her political mission. Although she is unable to write her memories herself, she can share them with the general public by telling her story to Strickland. In this way oral history promises a ‘more democratic history’ because it gives the floor to stories about previously dismissed areas of social life (McClintock, 310). Moreover, oral history preserves much of the immediacy of a life told by the person who lived it and which, in contrast to the impersonal empirical facts of history, cannot be articulated by anyone else” KT 289
8	MOTIVE To persuade Parliament to abolish slavery in the British colonies MP To make readers aware of the horrors of slavery MP To earn money for Mary Prince to support herself BB
9	AUDIENCE “the good people of England” MP white middle and upper-class
10	DOUBLE CHALLENGE to prove her credibility as a narrator HW problem: she did not physically write the story as a woman, she had to prove her sexual purity HW
11	"“the antislavery society that..." “the antislavery society that sponsored the publication of Prince’s narrative had to present slave women as victims whose moral stature was beyond reproach in order to win public support for them and to turn sentiment against slavery” HW 143
12	TECHNIQUES Use of EMOTION to combat image of slave as a beast BB Use of ANIMAL imagery to depict whites’ treatment of the slaves “OMISSION and DEFLECTION regarding all matters related to sex” BB 262
13	THEMES The BODY as narrative technique BB as resistance BB SEX abuse of slave women presence of mulattoes / jealous wives RACIAL HIERARCHY SOCIETY as a restraint on whites / KEEPING UP APPEARANCES
14	THEMES LITERACY RELIGION work of the Moravian Church SUBORDINATE ROLE OF ALL WOMEN SLAVERY as a PAN-AMERICAN phenomenon FREEDOM
15	MORAVIANS “The church started its conversion work in the West Indies during the eighteenth century...Missionaries from Central Europe and North America journeyed to islands throughout the Caribbean, although travel was risky and the danger of fever high. Despite the difficulties they faced, the Moravians were very active in the British West Indies during the slave era; like other missionaries their primary aim was to convert the salves to Christianity and then train certain talented and devout men and women to become what they called native assistants or helpers. The idea was to establish a self-sufficient religious community with schools and churches that would administer to the spiritual needs of the black residents. The Moravians were proud of their work, and missionary writings were filled with stories of individuals who excelled in pious tasks” AC 266
16	WORDS OF NOTE Buckra = word for a white person in black West Indian speech AND in Gullah speech N***** “No one knows precisely when or how niger turned derisively into nigger and attained a pejorative meaning. We do know, that by the end of the nineteenth century, nigger had already become a familiar and influential insult” RK
17	Resources PC = Penguin Classics Edition of Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative HW = African-British Writings in the Eighteenth Century: The Politics of Race and Reason. Helena Woodard. Westport Connecticut, Greenwood Press:1999 “Reading the History of Mary Prince: The Politics of Race and Gender” p133-148 MP = The History of Mary Prince BB = “The Body as Evidence: Resistance, Collaboration, and Appropriation in The History of Mary Prince” Barbara Baumgartner. Callaloo 24.1 (2001) 253-275 HLG = Henry Louis Gates’ Introduction to The Classic Slave Narratives. Signet Publishing. AVAILABLE THROUGH WILSON WEB KT = “’I Will Say the Truth to the English People’: The History of Mary Prince and the Meaning of English History” Kremena Todorova. Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 43, No. 3, Fall 2001 AC = “African-Caribbean Narrative of British America.” Resources for American Literary Study, volume 19, issues 2; 1993; 260-274. Angelo Costanzo RK = Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. Randall Kennedy. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.