On the Edge of Chaos: Space and Power in Maria Edgeworthʼs ʻThe Grateful Negroʼ (1804)

Abstract

ʻThe Grateful Negroʼ (1804) is one of Maria Edgeworthʼs less well-known childrenʼs stories. Set on a Jamaican plantation, it concerns the differing attitudes of two white plantation owners, Mr Edwards and Mr Jefferies, towards enslaved people and a rebellion provoked by Mr Jefferiesʼs cruelty, later averted by Mr Edwardsʼs apparent kindness. The tensions among the characters are made legible through spatiality. We identify the origins of the text in Edgeworthʼs involvement in debates about the transatlantic slave trade and, particularly, her visit to a slave ship while living in Bristol. However, her story shows ambivalence and avoids condemnation, something that may contribute to scholarsʼ lack of interest in the tale. Drawing on discussions of power and space in childrenʼs literature, this essay examines the ways that space encodes, reflects, and problematizes power in ʻThe Grateful Negroʼ. We consider the text in its political and historical context and draw on Bradfordʼs work on liminality in postcolonial theory, and Stephens and McCallumʼs theory of borders as liminal spaces between meanings to frame our comparison of Ireland and Jamaica in the 1790s, and especially the Edwards and Edgeworth plantations that stood on the threshold between order and rebellion. We argue that while the Jefferiesʼs house initially appears as a clear site of power and the slave cabins a clear site of powerlessness within the text, this binary is complicated by the presence of the forest—a locus for magic, rebellion, and alternative might—and by the spectre of Britain, the centre of colonial, imperial, and administrative authority that haunts the narrative. Edgeworth puts these spaces in uncomfortable proximity, creating a textual landscape that teeters on the edge of chaos.

Keywords

• Maria Edgeworth
• Space
• Power
• Liminality
• Colonialism
• Slavery