Re-working the Slave Narrative ? Fictions of White Indentured Servitude in the Caribbean

Résumé 0

While the status of white indentured servants in seventeenth and eighteenth century British West Indian plantation society was different to that of enslaved Africans, the treatment of both was brutal and dehumanizing. Accordingly, historical sources mentions alliances between these two oppressed groups and, in particular, between anti-British Catholic Irish indentured servants and African and creole slaves, both of whom were relegated to inferior species within the dominant discourse of the time. Only recently has the history of white indentureship in the Caribbean received much attention from scholars, but a number of fictional accounts do attempt to re-construct the experience of this group, and their relationships with British masters and their fellow slaves. While not explicitly re-working the slave narrative, I argue in this paper that certain features of the fictions do reflect similar concerns, tropes and ambivalences. I am particularly interested in the accounts of white indentured women, and how they compare with, say, the “autobiography” of Mary Prince. Accordingly, the paper will explore some early (fictional) testimonies and a contemporary novel, Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl by Kate McCafferty, in relation to Prince’s slave narrative.