Slaves to Servants: What it means to Mary Prince in "The History of Mary Prince"

Slaves to Servants: What it means to Mary Prince in "The History of Mary Prince"

Mary Prince was a Bermudian woman who was very unfortunate and born into slavery. Her story, "The History of Mary Prince" was the first account of the life of a slave to be published. It is written in first-person, which gives the reader a different feeling than if it were written by someone else. The grammar and syntax are all well written and this is because it was actually written down by Susanna Strickland. Readers might think because of this that the story has been changed in some way or things left out but that is up to the reader to decide that. It is easily believable to think that these things Mary Prince talks about are true because of the great detail she explains them.

"I have been a slave myself-I know what slaves feel-I can tell by myself what other slaves feel, and by what they have told me. The man that says slaves be quite happy in slavery that they don't want to be free-that man is either ignorant of a lying person> i never heard a slave say so. I never heard a Buckra man say so, till I heard tell of it in England. Such people ought to be ashamed of themselves. They can't do without slaves they say. What's the reason they can't do without slaves as well as in England? No slaves here-no whips-no stocks-no punishment, except for wicked people. They hire servants in England;" (279)

Whats the difference between a slave and a servant? Most people can probably answer this themselves. Servants get paid and voluntarily complete their tasks whereas slaves don't get paid and are forced to complete harsh tasks. On page 297 of our text, written by an anonymous writer on Thoughts on the Slavery of Negroes, as it Affects the British Colonies in the West Indies (297), he/she states that Africans have always been represented as perfidious, lazy, lascivious, faithless people who are thieves, without morals, and without any just notion of any one religious duty. On the contrary, Mary Prince states that they don't mind hard work. All they want is proper treatment and wages like the English servants do. (279) Liberty is something they long for, but their masters will not give it to them. They make them work day and night, hour after hour, sick or abused, never receiving a break. Prince was constantly beaten by her owners and their was nothing she could do about it. She would be stripped naked, hung up by the wrists and beaten with cow skin until her body was raw with gashes. "Yet there was nothing very remarkable in this; for it might serve as a sample of the common usage of the slaves on that horrible island." (271)

That same person mentioned above stated that if they could show that slaves are happy and better off than the low orders of people in Britain, than slavery can be justified. He states that when the Europeans first went to Africa it was a barbaric state and taking these people and giving them a place to live is helping them out. Helping them out is the complete opposite of what was going on.

It's not helping them out when they don't care about whether or not they lived or died (269). Another poem our class had read entitled "The Sorrows of Yamba", details the life of a slave woman who travels with her daughter. Her daughter had died and the mother was happy that she did because she wouldn't have to be beaten or starved or go through any of the hardships they went through. For someone to long for death and be glad that their child is dead shows the atrocities the slaves were going through. 

Mary Prince's story is believable because she credits some slave owners for being good owners. It makes it compelling to see that she didn't equate all the slave owners as the same, making it more convincing. Throughout the story she was dehumanized, raped and beaten. As she speaks for all slaves because she has been through the worst of it, they want to have what the servants do in England. If they aren't liked in England, they get sent away and the owners cannot beat them. Prince states that they are far better off than slaves. "If they get a bad master, they give warning and go hire to another. They have their liberty. That's just what we want." (279) 

The above picture, "Am I not a man and a brother?" compels its audiences. It uses pathos, or emotional appeal, to get its point across. It fits perfectly with Mary Prince's story. From what we know now, growing up in the past 2 decades, everything to do with slavery is wrong. Yes, we know they are human beings and are our brothers and sisters but back in that time, with the mindset of a slave owner, they wouldn't give the slaves any justice. Prince, of course like many others, wanted her freedom, but would settle for the rights and proper treatment that the servants in England were receiving. Their owners wanted nothing to do with this and would beat them at the thought of doing so.

Her story opened the gate for other narratives to follow.  Eventually, people started to become aware of slavery and its horrid characteristics to go along with it and it was abolished in Britain in 1833 under the Slavery Abolition Act. For more information on the abolition of slavery, go to http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/slavery/.

To hear the voice of Mary Prince (or an actor of her character) read aloud passages from the biography, go to http://abolition.e2bn.org/people_37.html.