Wide Sargasso SeaSLAVERY AND THE

CARIBBEAN

West Indies

History of Slavery in the Caribbean

1807

28/8/1833

Abolishment of slavery:

Emancipation Act passed

1/8/1938

Full emancipation granted ahead of schedule in

Trinidad

Abolishment of slave trade

Society for the Abolition of Slavery

formed 1787

1735

Start of major slave rebellions

EMANCIPATION ACT IN 1833• The Emancipation Act abolished slavery throughout the British colonies on

August 28th 1833.

• 20 million pounds was paid as compensation to slave-owners.

• The final Act, which came into effect on 1 August 1834, stipulated that: (1) Immediate and effective measures would be taken for the abolition of slavery throughout the

British colonies.

(2) All children born under the passing of the Act, or under the age of six shall be free.

(3) All slaves over the age of six years would have to serve an apprenticeship of six years in the case of field slaves, and four years in the case of others.

(4) Apprentices should work for not more than 45 hours per week without pay, and any additional hours for pay.

(5) Apprentices should be provided with food and clothing by the plantation owner.

(6) Funds should be provided for an efficient stipendiary magistracy, and for the moral and religious education of the ex-slaves.

(7) Compensation in the form of a free gift of 20 million English pounds should be paid to the slave owners for the loss of their slaves.

EMANCIPATION ACT IN 1833

• It must be noted that attached to the Emancipation Act was the condition which bound most of the freed slaves to their former masters until 1840 and which required them to work on the masters' estates seven and a half hours each day for six days each week of the year. On news of their emancipation, the slaves were either too overjoyed to note this binding condition, or did not fully understand what it meant.

• Their masters, who were generally bitter about it, and in opposition to emancipation, avoided all discussions and preparations for the changed status of the slaves on August 1, 1834.

• condition of the Emancipation Act - an Apprenticeship period of six years - where the freed slaves were compelled by law to serve their old masters just as they had done when they were slaves.

• The masters were required to provide moral and religious education for the ex-slaves, but the planters' hostility to the Emancipation Act as a whole really meant that they would treat this six year period as an extension of slavery, even though the working hours were greatly reduced to seven and a half hours a day instead of the nine and ten hours they formerly demanded of each slave.

• Demand for slaves to cultivate sugarcane and other crops the triangle trade. • Slaves were exchanged for sugar, rum, salt, and other island products.

• An estimated 8 to 15 million Africans reached the Americas from the 16th through the 19th century. Only the youngest and healthiest people were taken eventually. Conditions aboard the ship were dreadful.

• Slaves faced more abuses on the plantations.

• Families were split up, and the Africans were not allowed to learn to read or write. African men, women, and children were forced to work with little to eat or drink.

• • The African slave population quickly began to outnumber the Europeans and Native Americans.

Slave rebellions grew even more frequent, and European investors lost money. The costs of maintaining slavery grew higher when the European governments sent in armed forces to quell the revolts.

• Many Europeans began to pressure their governments to abolish slavery. The first organized opposition to slavery came in 1724 from the Quakers, a Christian sect also known as the Society of Friends.

• Great Britain outlawed slavery in all of their territories in 1833, but the practice continued for almost fifty years on some of the islands of the Caribbean.

Slavery in Wide Sargasso Sea

Slavery in the context of WSS

• Ex-slaves who worked on the sugar plantations of wealthy Creoles are prominent in Part One of the novel.

• Although the Emancipation Act has freed the slaves by the time of Antoinette's childhood, compensation has not been granted to the island's black population.

hostility and resentment between servants and their white employers.

• Annette is particularly attuned to the animosity in many employer-employee interactions.

Antoinette and Annette

• After emancipation- Antoinette and her mother, do not share the purely racist views of other whites on the island. Both women recognize their dependence on the black servants who care for them, feeling a respect that often borders on fear and resentment.

Themes

• Slavery and Entrapment- seen in the title. • Sargasso Sea: almost lifeless area

located between the Caribbean and Europe where there are no ocean currents, often with a complete lack of wind = ships trapped.

It is symbolic of Antoinette being trapped lifeless, suspended between the two worlds.

• Enslavement shapes many of the relationships in the novel E.g. Between the whites and the blacks, Antoinette and

Rochester Annette feels helplessly imprisoned at Coulibri Estate after the

death of her husband, repeating the word “marooned” over and over again.

Themes

• Ownership• white masters on black slaves• Rochester on Antoinette: name-changing• asserting his authority• Displacement -Antionette is not only displaced is society (belonging

nowhere), but she is also exiled within her own family. To her servants, she’s a “white cockroach”. She is also an oddity in her husband’s eyes.

Effects of Names

Sargasso Sea: almost lifeless area located between the Caribbean and Europe where there are no ocean currents, often with a complete lack of wind = ships trapped.

It is symbolic of Antoinette being trapped lifeless, suspended between the two worlds.

Creole Culture

• Creoles are the native-born descendants of early French, Spanish, and Portuguese settlers in Latin America, the West Indies, and the southern United States.

-16th century to distinguish persons born in the New World colonies of European parents from New World residents of European birth

-Later, the term designated persons of European descent.

• In the West Indies, the term is applied to descendants of any European settlers.

• As landowners and slaveholders during the antebellum (before war) period, they were perceived as aristocrats who took pride in gracious living and courtly manners.

Mulatto Culture• slave society regarded the African slaves as mules and even referred to

the offspring of a European and an African female slave as a "mulatto", meaning literally a "young mule".

• Mulatto- person who has one white parent and one black parent/ person with both black and white ancestry.

• On the sugar plantations of Latin America, in several Caribbean colonies, and in southern and western Africa, where white masters faced an overwhelming number of black workers in bondage to them, the mulatto and his or her descendants formed a buffer zone between blacks and whites that was indispensable for maintaining the authority and prosperity of the Europeans.

• Colonial masters assigned members of this group certain tasks that they would not themselves assume, but could not entrust to blacks, and in exchange granted to mulattos privileges which were denied to black workers on principle.

such ‘half-breeds’ lost almost any incentive to ally themselves with blacks, while at the same time they sought to move closer to the white ruling class.

Differences between Creole and Mulatto CultureCreole Mulatto

• native-born descendants of early French, Spanish, and Portuguese settlers in Latin America, the West Indies, and the southern United States.

• landowners and slaveholders during the antebellum (before war) period, they were perceived as aristocrats

• one white parent and one black parent/ person with both black and white ancestry.

• workers of slave owners. Colonial masters assigned members of this group certain tasks that they would not themselves assume, but could not entrust to blacks

“Otherness”

• the state or fact of being different or distinct.• Antionette- “othered” as Bertha by

imperialistic and patriarchal oppression loss of her identity

• Rochestor- had to deal with the strange otherness of the West Indies and cope with the rejection by his father and brother (Pg39, L29) he feels out of place and without power in foreign land.

Analysis

• Please refer to your WSS book part II, page 61, lines 4-31.

• Do a close analysis on the passage given, making close references to the passage as much as possible.

• discuss the degeneration of slavery with close references to the passage

• discuss the use of biblical allusion in the passage and its effects

Analysis• “white cockroach”: someone like Antoinette, a white born in a black community. Basically a black other than her skin colour.

•Unruliness of servant to Antoinette just because she is a ‘white cockroach’. “‘I hit you back,’ said Amelie. And she did.”

•Rejection by the black community because she’s a white when she is actually as ‘black’ as anyone of them, being brought up there and thus deeply influenced by their culture.

•Rochester’s rejection of Antoinette. “‘Antoinette, for God’s sake,’”. Even after seeing the whole episode where it was obvious that Amelie was clearly stepping over the line, Rochester still sided her over his wife, Antoinette.

•Biblical allusion: “devil”, which is denoted as a slanderer, the arch-enemy of man's spiritual interest, God

by comparing Amelie to “the devil”, Antoinette painted her as a heartless, cruel woman who deliberately opposes her.

References

• http://www.gatewayno.com/culture/Creoles.html• http://www.enotes.com/wide-sargasso/q-and-a/significance-slavery-entrapment-wide-

sargasso-sea-3057• http://caribbean-guide.info/past.and.present/history/slave.rebellion/• http://www.answers.com/topic/mulatto• http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/sargasso/themes.html• http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com/cgi-bin/res.pl?keyword=Emancipation+Act&offset=0