Date Published:

Abstract:

Mary Seacole’s memoir Wonderful Adventures is recognized for its negotiation of various genres of Victorian writing, including autobiography, travel writing, the slave narrative, and a burgeoning Caribbean tradition of letters. It is a text which is usually interpreted through conventions of Empire, or through the lens of Postcolonial studies. Attempting to bridge this either/or approach, this article focuses on Seacole’s construction of narrative commonalities: I ask, why would a woman so clearly bent on defying the limitations placed on her by gender and race, and whose achievements appear so exceptionally individual, undergird her narrative with constant references to collective identities — often in their most stereotypical abstractions? To answer this question, I engage in close readings that explore the tension between the typical and the specific though Seacole’s use of terminology, focalization and passive voice, and the repeated use of antiphonal structures such as an AAB pattern. I show how Seacole’s self-representation, and her reference to black communities and individuals, draw on trickster sensibilities, thus expanding previous readings of her text that consider her either subversive or complicit in the imperial project. I suggest that Seacole injects Jamaican and black Atlantic sensibilities into her text, even as she uses Victorian rhetorical devices, making the two traditions complementary — as they seem to be in her life.

March 2021: Ruth S. Wenske is a postdoctoral researcher at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she also serves as head the Africa Unit at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace. Her main research area is contemporary Anglophone African realism with a focus on self-writing, having published articles on the novels of Chimamanda Adichie, Chinua Achebe, and Binyavanga Wainaina. Her secondary research focus is on the connection between literature and literacy in questions of language and pedagogy, including a joint research project with Makerere University on the implementation of the Mother Tongue reform in Ugandan primary schools. She has taught courses on African literature and culture at the Program of Cultural Studies at the Hebrew University, and at the University of Haifa, where she completed her PhD at the English Department. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2246-6867

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