UNDERGRADUATE

enslaved individuals and in essence defines them by their
“otherness” to the point where they are stripped of any
markers of autonomy. Whereas other citizens were given
rights to employment for pay, property, and representation
in politics, slaves were socialized to endure brutal
treatment from birth in a process called natal alienation,
where young children were taken from their families and
forced to labor as individuals without the support of a
community of origin.
Another right denied to the enslaved was marriage, and
most romantic relationships between slaves were classified
as illegitimate unions by social mores. The History records a
few notable relationships that Prince had with men living in
her immediate context in Antigua, including a ship captain
and a merchant (both unnamed); Adam White, who was
a free man and a cooper; and her husband, Daniel James.
Prince records how during the tumultuousness of her time
with the Wood family in Antigua, she would ask her male
companions to purchase her freedom from Mr. Wood. She
recalls how after one particularly intense argument with her
mistress, her master “flew into a passion: but he did not beat
me then; he only abused and swore at me; and then gave me
a note and bade me go and look for an owner” (Prince 71).
However, when Prince’s companions offer to pay Mr. Wood
for her freedom, he point-blank refuses to do so, which
then calls into question the reasons for his threatening her
sale; these were not genuine offers but rather cruel forms
of punishment and social control. In reference to the same
incident, Prince asserts that “he did this to please his wife
and to frighten me” (Prince 71). This push-and-pull approach
that Mr. Wood employs when dealing with Prince becomes
a theme throughout the narrative; all through the rest of
The History, and afterwards as the supplementary material
attests, Mr. Wood continues his policy of threatening to
undermine the relationships she has with the people around
her by selling her to a random merchant.
As Prince creates these relationships with other people for
whom there is mutual gain in working for her freedom, she
thereby forges a support network that directly undermines
the oppression of the Woods. Prince demonstrates in the
narrative the ability to produce a community not only among
people who are enslaved alongside her, but also with many
who are free, befriending free whites and free blacks living
in the colonies alike. In aligning herself with the enslaved,
she emphasizes a sense of community drawn from mutual
experience of surviving oppression; in gathering allies
from among the free, she situates herself in an intermediary
position between the free and the enslaved, which suggests
a commitment to establishing a community whose ingroup
included a far wider spectrum of experience than was
culturally practiced in traditional mores.
When Prince arranges her official sale to someone she
trusts, this action becomes an example of her exercising
autonomy and power over her situation despite being
still legally considered in bondage. Wood’s refusal to
acknowledge potential buyers whom he sees Prince trust
and who evidently would be far better to Prince than he
and his family had ever been, makes clear how Wood tries
to leverage this community bond against her. The threat
to tear a person away from his or her family or community
is a method of social control that, even if only a threat and
not followed through, is devastating. This is especially true
for the enslaved, whose very status in society made them a
target for abuse without reprisal. The dependence on a local
community that would protect an individual slave as much
as possible was therefore used to manipulate slaves into
compliance, for if slave masters knew they could punish
someone by punishing her family, her friends, or even just
other people she knew, the masters would hold this fact
over their slaves and torture others in order to hurt someone
else. This problem becomes complicated many times over
after Prince leaves the Wood household after they travel
to London, and despite her no longer living with them as a
slave, Wood’s refusal to grant formal manumission renders
Prince effectually in exile from her husband and community
back in the West Indies.
In a striking example of her oppressor’s irascibility, the
narrative describes how Wood animatedly rejects the offer
48 CREATING KNOWLEDGE