Politics of Agency in The History of Mary Prince

Abstract

The History of Mary Prince explores into the experiences of a slave woman who is repeatedly sold, victimized and used as sex partner by white masters. Account on her autobiographical description reveals that she is forced to suffer throughout her life due to the extreme forms of domination, brutality, extortion and biases. Despite the resistance and protests, she is unable to get freedom until she willingly sells herself to the service of Thomas Pringle, the white editor. However, Prince has an agency that she appears as the master of her story which comes in her own first person point of view. The text not only reiterates colonial assumptions but also the traditional patriarchy, compasses subaltern and bourgeois class consciousness. This feminist text focuses on women characters trapped in the social and cultural problematic voicing their frustration voices for social change. Thus, this thesis tries to show how the historical and cultural determination of gender complicates those of race, which crates the new humanity through building a national identity, promote national culture and allow for a process of perpetual renewal. So, for innumerable times, Mary Prince represents the extreme form of colonial exploitation imposed upon a slave woman. Her continuous resistance against colonial domination to achieve her own state of self-determination, decolonization, agency and freedom makes her story not only a feminist text but a typical slave narrative that cuts across the boundaries of gender, race and nation.