The Omission of Repetition in The History of Mary Prince

Jessica Allen

Critical discourse surrounding The History of Mary Prince (1831) has been primarily concerned with the presence and/or absence of Mary Prince’s voice in her own narrative. Part of the trouble stems from the fact that Thomas Pringle, secretary of the British Anti-Slavery Society, served as editor to Prince’s History. Sara Salih, for example, argues that although Pringle stifles Prince’s voice in the anti-slavery pamphlet, his editorial decisions transformed her oral narrative into “a more effective political tool.” Pringle’s changes, she claims, were driven by the propagandistic goal to convince as many readers as possible of slavery’s horrors, experienced not only by an individual slave, but by all slaves. Pringle himself admits in the preface to the History that he removed much of Prince’s repetition in order to, as he puts it, “prune” her redundancies. Yet repetition holds substantial meaning within Caribbean Creole languages and African-derived cultural forms. From Prince’s framework of communication, repetition is often employed linguistically and thematically for emphasis, humor, and connection with the audience. This paper argues that by dismissing Prince’s repetition, Pringle overlooks Prince’s ability to make certain narrative choices and thus violates her subjectivity as narrator. In doing so, he fails to fully acknowledge the very humanity he hopes the pamphlet will affirm as abolitionist propaganda.

This paper first sets up a context for Prince’s use of repetition in her oral narrative by briefly describing the significance of repetition in Creole linguistic and narrative patterns. Subsequently, the paper shows how Pringle’s “pruning” of Prince’s History produces tension between anti-slavery propaganda and Prince’s assertion of subjectivity and narrative control. Finally, I show how Pringle’s propagandist editorial decisions, in effect, contradict his aims of arguing on behalf of Prince’s humanity and the necessity of abolition.