Title: Colonialism and gender relations from Mary Wollstonecraft to Jamaica Kincaid : East Caribbean connections /
Authors: Ferguson, Moira.
Publisher: Columbia University Press,
Year: 1993
Subjects: English literature Caribbean influences; English literature Women authors History and criticism; Women and literature Caribbean Area History.; Women and literature Great Britain History.; Slavery in literature; Race relations in literature.; Imperialism in literature.; Colonies in literature.; Sex role in literature; Caribbean Area In literature.
Abstract: "Focusing On Antigua, Dominica, and England, this book contributes to post-colonial and cultural studies by juxtaposing British and Caribbean writers of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries." "Ferguson highlights usually veiled intersections between the texts of Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Anne Hart Gilbert, Elizabeth Hart Thwaites, Jean Rhys, and Jamaica Kincaid, and underscores their feminist agendas in the context of slavery and colonialism." "Beginning with a discussion of Wollstonecraft's polemic for women's rights in the metropolitan center, Ferguson shows how that polemic linked colonial slavery to female subjugation and male desire. In the very different social context of Antigua, Gilbert and Thwaites engaged in struggles on behalf of literacy and abolitions." "In the doubled context of England and Antigua, Ferguson then examines the centrality of slavery to Austen's Mansfield Park, and concludes with a lively reading of texts by Jean Rhys and Jamaica Kincaid which display differing views of the British imperial project." "Colonialism and Gender from Mary Wollstonecraft to Jamaica Kincaid traces a discourse of struggle between writers and activists at the metropolitan center and those at the political periphery. "The continuum of their writings," notes Ferguson, "further suggests that during 150 years of slavery, emancipation, and postcolonialism, recognition of the link between gender and colonial relations became commensurately more clear.""--Jacket.
Contents: Mary Wollstonecraft and the problematic of slavery -- The Hart sisters : early African-Caribbean educators and the "thirst for knowledge" -- Mansfield Park : plantocratic paradigms -- Sending the younger son across the wide Sargasso Sea : the new colonizer arrives -- A small place : glossing Annie John's rebellion.