"He told me to hold my tongue" : de la violence physique à la subjectivation politique dans The History of Mary Prince
The History of Mary Prince was the first autobiography published in Britain by a coloured woman. Born in Bermuda some time about 1788, Prince had been sold to one John Wood, on the island of Antigua, where she started attending non-conformist meetings. During a stay with the Woods in London, Prince...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Presses Universitaires du Midi
2010-09-01
|
| Series: | Anglophonia |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/acs/2014 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | The History of Mary Prince was the first autobiography published in Britain by a coloured woman. Born in Bermuda some time about 1788, Prince had been sold to one John Wood, on the island of Antigua, where she started attending non-conformist meetings. During a stay with the Woods in London, Prince pushed the door of The Anti-Slavery Society in November 1829. She was then taken under the protection of Thomas Pringle, who would soon edit Prince’s autobiography, typed by a friend of his, Susanna Strickland.In this essay, I try to demonstrate that Prince’s narrative—through Strickland’s mediation—uses rhetoric to transfigure herself, from an animal into a British lady, thus challenging the classic distinction between the savage slave and the civilized European. The cooperation between Prince and Strickland has been analysed as one the very first instances of a deep convergence betwen feminist and postcolonial interests. I argue that it would be even more infesting to include Pringle himself in the play of this ’interval’ between Prince’s martyred body and her voice. The implicit polyphony of the History is its democratic signature; it also turns a simple testimony of inhuman treatment into a major literary artifact. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1278-3331 2427-0466 |