Violence, Gender, and the Politics of She-Tragedy in British Abolitionist Literature

Abstract

ABSTRACTBritish abolitionist literature, much like abolitionist politics generally, struggled to imagine a post-emancipationist world in which freed Africans and former white slave owners could co-exist peacefully within the British Empire. In this essay, I will explore how Peter Newby’s The Wrongs of Almoona (1788) and William Hutchinson’s The Princess of Zanfara (1789) sought to resolve this racial tension by imagining freed African men reconciling with their white counterparts. Specifically, I will argue that to that end, these writers appropriate the conventions of “she-tragedy,” a dramatic genre that not only focuses on the plight of a female victim but also on rapprochement between male characters. However, this attempt to infuse “masculine” values of nobility, restraint, and egalitarian fraternity into abolitionist literature can provide only a partial response to anxieties over emancipation, since this racial rapprochement depends on first excising the presence of the African woman from the plantation.