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Analyzing the relationship between transatlantic slavery and motherhood in The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave Narrative. Related by Herself
Reyes Roman, Jessica E.
Reyes Roman, Jessica E.
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Abstract
This thesis begins by exposing the lack of literary study of female slave narratives. It then moves
to analyze The History of Mary Prince in the following order: 1) Outline of Prince’s life: who
she was and her origin; 2) A discussion on the development of a slave’s identity, specifically
Prince’s; 3) Prince, a slave who gained empowerment through her role as a maternal figure; 4)
Prince’s history as a text that displays autobiographical tendencies; 5) The public sphere’s role in
introducing Prince’s slave narrative to English society; and 6) The importance of Prince’s history
in the twenty first century. Different theories were used as reference within this thesis such as
Paul Gilroy’s theory of the Black Atlantic to present how Mary Prince’s life experiences as a
slave formed her identity along with Patricia Hill Collins’s theory of the othermother to situate
Prince as an empowered, respectable woman in the eyes of British society. Hill Collins’s theory
of the othermother is particularly important in this thesis because it allows the reader to perceive
how Prince used her role as an othermother to request ultimately her freedom and expose her
experiences to the English public. I also rely on James Olney’s essays outlining the conventions
for a slave narrative to point out how the manner in which Prince’s History was edited displays
autobiographical tendencies. Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere helps to explain how
Prince and Thomas Pringle introduced her History into the public sphere in order to gain
nineteenth-century British society’s acceptance of herself and of other enslaved peoples.
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Date
2015
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Keywords
Slavery in literature, Slavery in fiction, Slavery and women