Questioning the ‘Necessary Order of Things’: Maria Edgeworth’s ‘The Grateful Negro’, Plantation Slavery, and the Abolition of the Slave Trade

Abstract

When Maria Edgeworth published her seemingly simple moral tale, ‘The Grateful Negro’ (1804), she introduced a text that critically engaged in an ongoing and contestatory conversation about the slave trade.1 ‘The Grateful Negro’ has evinced a variety of contradictory textual interpretations, even in discussions that make use of much of the same supporting material. George Boulukos, for example, has argued persuasively that Edgeworth was a ‘Iukewarm, ameliorationist supporter of slavery’.2 By contrast, I locate her firmly in the progressive, abolitionist camp. In this chapter, I examine the web of intertextual references that Edgeworth weaves throughout ‘The Grateful Negro’, references ranging from Bryan Edwards’s pro-slavery discourse to Aphra Behn’s protofeminist voice, and I argue that the tensions between these texts resist and subvert the notion that Edgeworth’s tale relies upon and contributes to discourses unambiguously supportive of slavery and the slave trade.KeywordsSlave TradeWoman WriterWoman AuthorPeasant UprisingViolent AgitationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.