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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Jamaica's Complex Race Relations in Wide Sargasso Sea


Within the first section of Wide Sargasso Sea, the reader is bombarded with the dynamics of the complex race relations on the island of Jamaica following the emancipation of the slaves. From Rhys’ dialogue early on in the novel, the reader observes first-hand the newly empowered black population on the island. I was intrigued by Tia’s insults of Antoinette in the first section, Rhys writes, “Plenty white people in Jamaica. Real white people, they got gold money. They didn’t look at us, nobody see them come near us. Old time white people nothing but white nigger now, and black nigger better than white nigger” (14). Clearly, Tia is inferring that Antoinette is a member of the “old time white people”. It seems that former slaves are already considering themselves superior to their ex-slave owners. From Tia’s commentary it is apparent that the accumulation of wealth is the distinguishing factor between ‘real white people’ and ‘white n*ggers’. It is interesting to see that the former slaves of Jamaica are not used to seeing whites that weren’t affluent.
Following emancipation, ex-slave holders had a hard time converting their former slave force to a force of free laborers. Despite the money that was paid to them by the English government for their lost work force, many fell on hard times. Because of this swift decline, freed slaves felt the need to realign their views of race since money no longer separated them from their ex-masters .  For many ex-slave owners and their families, racial prejudice was used against them due to their poverty, past transgressions upon Jamaican slaves, and their minority status in terms of population (whites were outnumbered by freed slaves twenty to one).

This link has some pretty interesting facts about Jamaica and the Emancipation of 1838: http://www.jis.gov.jm/special_sections/This%20Is%20Jamaica/emancipation.html

3 comments:

  1. I like and agree with your post. I also wrote about the quote on page 14. An interesting point about this whole dynamic of power in this book is that Antoinette was not part of slavery, the same way that little girl was not part of it. They are both living the after math and falling into stereotypes that are being newly created for them, "All Coulibri Estate had gone wild like the garden, gone to bush. No more slavery--why should anybody work? This never saddened me. I did not remember the place when it was prosperous" (11).

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  2. The race relations involved in the novel were very complex. Reading your post gave me a deeper look into the complexities of the relations. It also gave me a look at how the emancipated slaves dealt with their newly found freedom.

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  3. It is easy to become sympathetic to all of the characters in this novel. I feel sympathy for all of the freed slaves, the ex slave owners, and the family/wives of the ex slave owners. But, as always, I think the most sympathy should lie with the ex slaves. They are the ones who suffered for generations, not getting paid for their work, most likely lived in harsh conditions, and many were most likely separated from their loved ones because they were not free.

    My other great amount of sympathy lies with the wives and children of the slave owners. I feel as though they did not choose their life, it was chosen for them. And if the wives and children of the ex slave owners decided they wanted to rebel against having slaves they would have found themselves in a lot of trouble, trouble I can only imagine about.

    But then, the ex slave owners were children themselves once. So it was taught to them that it was acceptable to have slaves. They were probably told that the slaves were not human beings like them, that life was supposed to be that way, and a number of other excuses as to why it was okay to have slaves.

    So it is hard to point fingers in this sort of situation.

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