"Talking Too Much English": Languages of Economy and Politics in Equiano's "The Interesting
Narrative"
Author(s): Tanya Caldwell
Source: Early American Literature, Vol. 34, No. 3 (1999), pp. 263-282
Published by: University of North Carolina Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25057168
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"TALKING
TOO MUCH
ENGLISH55
Languages of Economy and Politics in
Equiano's
The Interesting
TANYA
Narrative
CALDWELL
Georgia State University
A
under which
and in which
survey of the titles and publications
on
Olaudah
The
have ap
essays
Equiano's
Interesting Narrative
as an
peared indicate that it has not only been institutionalized
African work but has indeed become, as
Ito
to
"crucial
the
claims,
Akiyo
African American
(83). Inclusion of bits of the Narra
literary tradition"
tive in anthologies of American
literature has further reinforced its status
as a work that even "initiates the tradition of African-American
slave nar
for Frederick Douglass's well
rative," serving as it does "as a palimpsest
known
This
is not, of course, to say that the
autobiography"
(Murphy 553).
British
of
elements
tale
have
been ignored. To the con
clearly
Equiano's
on
if
the
one
commentaries
it
have
in common it is a struggle
feature
trary,
over the contradictions
of a work written
"both within
and against the
terms of the dominant culture"
whether
ob
(Murphy 553). Nonetheless,
serving the influences upon Equiano of Scripture and traditional Christian
patterns of life, of forces of trade and commerce, or of such literary modes
and works as the spiritual
and Robinson Crusoe, critics see
autobiography
both the narrator and his tale
in
the way Caretta sees the figure
ultimately
in the
to
attached
the
first
nine
editions:
"an indisputably Afri
frontispiece
can
in
dress"
(xvii).
body
European
This tendency inevitably to present
as "indis
Equiano and his Narrative
extent
to
African
reveals
the
which
are
text
of
the
putably"
readings
shaped
a
discourse. To read or categorize
by current colonial and postcolonial
work as colonial or
is
it
under
the
former
that
The
(and
postcolonial
flag
is to see it invariably in terms
Interesting Narrative has been appropriated)
of confrontation
of self and other, victimizer and victim.
Equiano entices
his late twentieth-century
a
to
such
so much
because
supporters
reading
of the Narrative
is devoted to his efforts to
his
freedom
from
white
buy
slave owners. Two crucial factors are forgotten in the attention
paid to the
as
an
suffered
black
however.
man,
hardships
by Equiano
First,
oppressed
263
264 Early American
Literature,
Volume 54,1999
most critics com
mode?which
Equiano's choice of the autobiographical
ment on?involves
not
of
that
mode
for
appropriation
twentieth-century
means
and ends but as it was employed by eighteenth-century
British
writers of nonfictional,
and fictional lives. Perhaps the most
semifictional,
common feature of these
a
rec
literary lives is struggle by the subject to
oncile within traditional English cultural or political structures some kind
of
otherness,
whether
gender-based,
rank-based,
economy-based,
or
race
based, and whether
story
temporary or long-term. Singling out Equiano's
as one that can best be discussed and
the language and
explored within
therefore, means
paradigms of colonialist and postcolonialist
scholarship,
a
same
con
work
that
reflects
the
differentiating
essentially
problems and
flicts as its contemporaries.
Second, as colonialist scholarship itself stresses,
the essential self is formed by the culture inwhich one is immersed, not by
a single feature such as poverty or gender or color that might force one
peri
to the margins of the
odically
society whose basic principles the self has ab
sorbed as its own. From the beginning of his Narrative Equiano shows both
even
and indirectly, yet unmistakably,
the native
directly,
painstakingly,
contours
his
features
and
takes
of
and
mind,
every opportunity
European
to
repudiate any fundamental difference between himself and the culture in
ten
which he developed as a self-conscious
social being. The (postcolonial)
on skin color rather than examining shades of
con
to
focus
thought
dency
from, or at least distorts, its eighteenth
sequently displaces the Narrative
In large part, this twentieth-century
century English contexts.
betrayal of
both author and work is related to Equiano's choice of literary mode.
For a twentieth-century
is the means by which
reader, autobiography
establishes
himself
inside
society and on its periph
Equiano
simultaneously
in
"I
the
the
from the constraints
for
liberates
author
ery,
autobiography
from his blackness, yet by giving him a "voice" and so a
of corporeality,"
the literary mode also enables him to challenge
legitimate social position,
his readers to "scrutinize" that very "social structure" that keeps him on
its margins.1 This optimism over the flexibility and power of autobiogra
not
English views of self and of
eighteenth-century
phy
only misrepresents
but it distorts the historical mood of the
the function of autobiography,
time and what Equiano actually says about himself and the Eboe. Rather
the space to mount "a
than facilitating a liberation of self and providing
of
conservative
habits
revolution
against
thought that accomplish
quiet
[the black self's] social annihilation,"
eighteenth-century
autobiography
concedes and affirms traditional social structures and the individual's place
own
them (Marren 95). Equiano
within
signals clearly the nature of his
contem
the
he
views
and
the
he
intends
himself,
way
way
autobiography,
tone of the opening of
porary readers to view him in the self-deprecatory
the Narrative. Here he apologizes
for his temerity in offering "the history
a saint, a hero, nor a tyrant" (31). As Caretta points out, such
of neither
"Talking too much English"
in Equiano's
Interesting Narrative
265
seen in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen
histories were "increasingly
turies as the proper subject for autobiography,
biography, and the novel"
no
In
his
readers
effect,
(240).
option but to see his life in the
Equiano gives
context of the many lives with which the eighteenth century was flooded.
as a
in this way insidiously
heavily codified literary mode
Autobiography
and fundamentally denies the black author any access to an authentic Afri
can self even if he wanted
it, for any recorded life was necessarily presented
as part of a
pinpoints two of the major diffi
paradigm. Felicity Nussbaum
culties for writers and readers of the eighteenth-century
autobiographical
subject when she observes, first, that "the crisis of the eighteenth century
in terms
self reflects, in large part, the attempt to render secular experience
of paradigmatic
biblical models"
and, later, that the group among whom
"extended most widely" was restricted by the
writing
autobiographical
"economic terms" that defined it (21, 51). Equiano's concern that his life
be seen within
the biblical paradigm that indeed shapes it is evident even
from the prefatory address, where his humility, which
signals both his
its confines, is embraced
chosen mode and his intentions to work within
in
religion," which
by his deference to "Providence" and "the Christian
terms.
turn signals his intention to offer his life for scrutiny on Christian
has been well docu
The degree to which Scripture shapes the Narrative
a
concern
extent
to which both
to
is
of
show
the
this
mented;2
essay
major
and the mind behind it are permeated by the economic and
the Narrative
Britain.3
political imperatives and strictures of late eighteenth-century
use of
an eighteenth
is
Behind the eighteenth-century
autobiography
sense of self. Leo
is not a twentieth-century
century sense of self, which
"the foundation
that
this
difference
Damrosch
highlights
by arguing
key
to the then
of most eighteenth-century
is a commitment
British writing
current social system": "there is no such thing as an autonomous
indi
vidual, and . . . the alternative to the established hierarchy is not indepen
of persons"
dent persons but new and more dangerous combinations
(56).
As this essay will demonstrate,
Narrative
both
reflects and af
Equiano's
firms this eighteenth-century
perception of self, for rather than struggling
for autonomy the narrator gradually and subtly eradicates that otherness
which he saw as a threat to his own security and to his abolitionist
argu
ment but which critics see as the basis of his challenge to English govern
ment, traditions, and ways of thinking. Far from establishing himself and
black Africans against Britain as a potential "new force," Equiano sees the
danger of being perceived in this way and reveals the thoroughly European
nature of his mind most convincingly when he proposes strengthening
the
system of which he is part by offering up Africa to the forces of British
at the climax of his
in his final crucial pages?and
trade.4 This happens
abolitionist argument.
The dictates of eighteenth-century
aside, Equiano him
autobiography
266 Early American
Literature,
Volume 54,1999
self sees his body in a way that embarrasses or upsets those who attribute
his supposed quiet rebellion to a black identity and who feel that in his
use of a "white cliche" [sic] like "my cheek changes colour," "Equiano can
do better" (Mtubani 92). Yet Equiano's view of himself as fundamentally
to end of the Narrative.
Soon after his
white is consistent from beginning
arrival in England, he tells his readers, his awareness of his color was a
source of horror; observing that when his little friend's mother washed her
face "it looked very rosy; but when she washed mine it did not look so; I
therefore tried oftentimes myself if I could not by washing make my face of
was all in vain; and I
the same colour as my little play-mate
(Mary), but it
our
now began to be mortified
at the difference in
(69). The
complexions"
not the child but the adult narrator, who, far from being
is
here
speaker
it a vivid episode in his Narra
apologetic for his childish response, makes
tive. He also provides itwith an equally vivid parallel in his adult life when
he reports the question asked of him by an Indian prince he tries to con
vert during a voyage to Jamaica: "How comes it that all the white men on
board, who can read and write, observe the sun and know all things, yet
swear, lie, and get drunk, only excepting yourself?"
(204). Equiano does
not even comment on being counted among "all the white men,"5 a cate
gory inwhich he had subconsciously
placed himself before beginning such
as narrator to scrub his face white
an
for his
His
desire
autobiography.
readers is also indicated by the care he takes in the first section to stress the
comparative
nature
of
skin
color.
Arguing
that
proximity
to
the
sun
not
natural inferiority is responsible for skin color he angrily asks, "Surely the
minds of the Spaniards did not change with their complexions!"
(45).
This insistent and consistent repudiation of the feature that brands him
as an outsider reveals the depth of his identification with the culture by
which he has been shaped. The Equiano of the entire Interesting Narrative,
from childhood to marriage and pros
the self who sets down his memoirs
the laws,
perity in England has, after all, been formed and educated by
not
of
his
land
of
of
the language, and the habits
birth, of
English culture,
con
more
no
of
his
than
detailed knowledge
which he has
any
European
that
surely recognized
temporaries. Quite practically, however, Equiano
so
the
while
his apparent otherness,
his color and
ostensibly
providing
Marren
and
other
in
it.
fact threatened
basis for his abolitionist argument,
critics who argue that Equiano uses an insider's vantage point ultimately
to position himself against English
and society focus
law, government,
on the "limited social change" that, the parliamentary
enquiries into the
slave trade testify, was favored by the "climate of late eighteenth-century
view overlooks what
such an optimistic
(Marren 97). Again
England"
not to mention:
of the eighteenth
last
the
is
himself
careful
quarter
Equiano
century, when the Narrative was composed, was rocked by revolutionary
were
and are everywhere evident
ubiquitous
activity. Fear and instability
"Talking too much English"
in Equiano's
Interesting Narrative
267
eco
in the period's literature?whether
the focus is human relationships,
is fiction, the press, or social
the medium
nomics, or politics, and whether
tract. No matter what the author's political beliefs or leanings the anxiety
is the same. Just as Richard Price admits trepidation over his defense of the
so Edmund Burke (in support of American
American Revolution,
indepen
dence) warns that the "British Empire is in convulsions which threaten its
to American
in
dissolution"
(181), and so Samuel Johnson (in opposition
declares that the "madness of independence has spread from
dependence)
to
colony
colony, till order is lost and government despised, and all is filled
and confusion"
with misrule,
(438). In such an atmo
uproar, violence,
movements
to
to
in political and
writer
sensitive
seismic
had
be
sphere, any
economic ground, especially if that writer was aware of being seen as one
a work
an
like Equiano's
who might precipitate
earthquake. Obviously,
as
the
The Interesting Narrative,
just
enquiry into
parliamentary
published
the slave trade was getting underway, had to steer carefully, especially if it
was to procure the support sought
crown,
by the author from parliament,
and public.
The enormous popularity of the Narrative
among all ranks of English
readers indicates that Equiano was quite successful in reassuring his con
not rock the boat. In part this success can be and
temporaries that he would
has been attributed to his humility, his praise of the English as an enlight
ened race, his conversion, and his numerous examples of his obedience and
faithfulness. Yet Equiano's
ingratiating tactics are not merely the obsequi
ous flatteries of a
out on behalf of his fellow Afri
African
hopeful
speaking
cans in
To
the
dress.
the
power and appeal of his Narra
contrary,
European
tive derive from its confrontation
of problems at the heart of British empire
of solutions that will, Equiano proposes,
and its pinpointing
strengthen
the infrastructure of traditional British institutions by allowing political
and economic progress within
those institutions. These solutions are not
those offered by an outsider, someone who manages finally to align him
self against the culture he has infiltrated; they are the solutions of someone
whose own success derives from the political and economic opportunities
as much to gain as any white
provided by Britain and who has
subject born
in Britain. Consequently,
the struggle of this narrator, like that of so many
narrators of lives, is not primarily a struggle for freedom
eighteenth-century
the
established
r?gime. It is a struggle for freedom through social
against
and political inclusion: the struggle of any Homo economicus negotiating
the
success
economic
battle
between
and
the
individual's
age's
personal
place
institutions. That the mind behind the work
within established
is wholly
that of a European?not
of an African in European dress?is
revealed not
more im
structures
in
of
the
the
and
details
rhetorical
Narrative,
but,
only
in
in
of
and
conviction
the
the
social,
recognition
portantly,
political, and
economic
in the late
individual
lives
and
that
writing
imperatives
shaped
268 Early American
Literature,
Volume 54,1999
involves a self-alignment
eighteenth century. For Equiano this necessarily
en
not with but against the "African brethren" whose
liberty he defines
terms
economic
British
of
the
imperatives
eighteenth-century
tirely upon
and whose origins and identity he reconstructs rather than represents.
denies his
The means by which he simultaneously
(and paradoxically)
is
his
of
otherness and establishes his abolitionist
argument
manipulation
and fixed to principles
codes and language that are at once multifarious
and ideas that have deep roots in English history. This process begins even
before the Narrative does, as his address to parliament reveals a mind and
sense of self and nation that are as much a part of the status quo as any of
the subscribers to his book might hope to be. Here he begins his appeal
against the slave trade not by focusing on liberty for the slaves but by evok
ing the fundamental codes and catch phrases of British imperialism. First
at
reminding his readers of the humanitarian mission of empire, Equiano
a
sense
to
for
the
in
of
"excite
assemblies
your August
tempts
compassion
the
the heights to which
miseries"
of the slave trade. He then associates
its
risen
freedom
of
with
has
nation
(7). By
government"
"glorious
English
focusing on the notion of freedom as it is interwoven with imperial gov
ernment and mission,
of
Equiano
immediately broadens the application
the word, so that his argument must be seen in the context of larger late
or even
as
eighteenth century debates and problems?not
solely
primarily
concerned with the slave trade itself.
The issue of liberty was central to debates about empire. In his Taxa
tion no Tyranny, for example, Samuel Johnson draws attention to the way
in which calls for "liberty" came from all corners when he asks, "how is
it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"
(454). His sarcasm is equally heavy as he echoes the arguments of the
is
revolutionaries:
"Liberty is the birthright of man, and where obedience
answer is
no
Government
is
The
there
liberty.
equally simple.
compelled,
is compelled,
there is no gov
is necessary to man, and where obedience
ernment" (448). In placing the question of "liberty" so strategically in this
in the period as he points both to
essay, Johnson reveals its importance
the slipperiness of the term and the threat it posed to national stability as
a
linchpin for grievances. Equiano's deliberate extension of the language
the Slave Trade has entailed" in his
of liberty beyond the "miseries which
at once acknowledges
the problem
lamented by Johnson
opening appeal
it. First, he addresses the need for stability and assures
and manipulates
to the might and glory of the British
his own efforts for it by genuflecting
freedom and government
its
and
Second, by making
government.
empire
can
as
he
synonymous
Johnson did, that stability
only be
essentially argues,
as established
laws
those
achieved through submission to government
by
later in the Narrative, he knows better
and traditions that, he demonstrates
than most of his white contemporaries.
Yoking "freedom" to government
"Talking too much English"
in Equiano's
Interesting Narrative
269
to
to his own ends the
also enables him later in the Narrative
employ
notion attacked in Taxation no Tyranny and put forward again and again
that the policies and practices of the English government would
inevitably
is important
"enslave" the British people as well as their colonies. What
"unlettered African"
here is that there is no evidence of the self-proclaimed
an
are
voice
of
those
From
the
and
the
mind
start,
(7).
adept
exceptionally
Homo economicus confronting
the problems of empire and contemplating
the individual's role within established systems.
is a product of social and
the life here presented
The extent to which
of his chosen lit
economic forces is reinforced by Equiano's consciousness
tone
to
of
the
address
The
mode.
erary
parliament, which
self-deprecatory
mass
on
of
the
his
with
life
great
eighteenth-century
equal footing
places
at the beginning of the Narrative, where the voice
literary lives, is resumed
to literary and social codes. Here
is comfortably
familiar in its conformance
involves recognition of difference between
Equiano's humility necessarily
Imight
himself and his white readers: "did I consider myself an European,
a
assures
were
that
disclaimer
readers
Such
say my sufferings
great" (31).
the black African they see on the frontispiece poses no threat. Even while he
puts his readers at ease over his otherness, however, Equiano reinforces his
to his vulnerability at the same moment as he speaks
sameness
by pointing
out as a self-made man. In this way he places himself in the same position
as large numbers of his readers also subject to the blows of fortune in a
market economy constantly swaying with the political winds. More subtly,
however, the details and structure of his opening work to erase the differ
ence between Equiano's battles and those of his white contemporaries
by
drawing a strong analogy between his life and one very familiar to British
his self-made success and acknowledges
the
readers. As he contemplates
in his life before going on to recount his humble ori
hand of Providence
gins, Equiano in effect places his life alongside that of the period's arche
typal and best known Homo economicus: Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.
In the most extended of the critical commentaries on Equiano and Defoe,
S. E. Ogude not only points out that details and concerns of Equiano's pre
sentation of Africa have close parallels in several of Defoe's works, but ar
gues irrefutably that both Defoe and Equiano drew heavily for their infor
mation on Africa from the same source: Anthony Benezet's Short Account
"became a very im
of that Part of Africa inhabited by the Negroes, which
serve as a re
tract"
observation
should
(80). Ogude's
portant anti-slavery
minder that the adult Equiano had no more first-hand knowledge of Africa
than Defoe did. Torn from Africa as a very young child in a traumatic kid
an England
swamped with travel narratives and
napping and educated in
tracts concerning Africa, he would have been an extraordinary
individual
to retain unadulterated memories
of his first eight years. The significant
then, iswhy of all the accounts of and attitudes towards Africa
question,
270 Early American
Literature,
Volume 54,1999
available to him by the second half of the eighteenth century, Equiano was
an author who, as
so influenced
by
Wylie Sypher puts it of Defoe, "has such
a matter-of-fact
to
approach
slavery" (260). The opening of the Narrative
and its underlying economic argument surely provide the answer: Equiano
saw himself as a Crusoe-figure,
a self-made man in the middle state of life,
success
to
economic dexterity and submission
whose
his
depended upon
the terms not only of the Providence he had embraced but of late eighteenth
of which, his
century political and economic imperatives, the manipulation
Narrative ultimately argues, is the only means to any real freedom.
is
Equiano's desire to have his life read on the same terms as Crusoe's
evident even in his title page, which, Ogude remarks, is almost identical in
its wording
and layout to Defoe's
title for Crusoe
the
(78). Significantly,
BY HIMSELF"
last lines of Equiano's title, "THE AFRICAN
/WRITTEN
are made to echo Defoe's
last lines "OF YORK, MARINER
/ Written
as
In
Himself."
this
of
"African"
himself
way, Equiano's designation
by
works as a filler in a formula (I am x, born in y) rather than as indica
tor of fundamental otherness. The title page simply underscores
the many
exist
that
between
narrative
and
Crusoe's
Equiano's "interesting"
parallels
a
adventures."
is
Like
wanderer
Crusoe, Equiano
"strange surprizing
lonely
to
who overcomes obsolete beginnings,
slavery, and spiritual backsliding
find peace and to achieve prosperity
accumulation
through painstaking
in
of capital. Even his conversion closely parallels that of Crusoe. While
it is the exile's
Defoe's
tale both Crusoe and Friday undergo conversion,
experience, not that of the black native, that Equiano identifies with. The
obsessive guilt and self-reproaches
he endures during the conversion pro
cess are profoundly Crusoan. When,
for example, his hopes of gaining his
freedom from Captain Doran by means of his wages and prize money are
shattered and he is plunged "in a new slavery," Equiano recollects, "that
on the morning of our arrival at
I had rashly sworn that as soon
Deptford
as we reached London Iwould
the
spend
day in rambling and sport. My
conscience
smote
me.
...
I therefore,
to God,
with
contrition
of
heart,
acknowl
and poured out my soul before him with
edged my transgression
This
and other such outpourings
could be
(95-96).
unfeigned repentance"
matched with any number of passages in Crusoe's account of his spiritual
progress and regression and hopes for deliverance during his first voyages,
his slavery in theWest Indies, and his imprisonment on the island.
Most
and Equi
telling, however, are the similarities between Defoe's
ano's attitudes toward slavery and the conservatism
both
they
display in
As
themselves
threaten.
their impulses to uphold those institutions
they
an
one?to
"is
view
Defoe's
of
slavery
entirely practical
Sypher observes,
or manage
slaves is to many of his heroes a commercial project;
buy, sell,
matters of fact to be estimated
consequently
slavery is among the countless
coarse thumb" (259). The same
the
tradesman's
practical attitude not
by
"Talking too much English"
in Equiano's
Interesting Narrative
271
a slave trader himself but to view Euro
only allows Equiano to become
pean treatment of slaves from an economic
standpoint. His description
abuse of slaves, which he witnessed
of the cruel and unnecessary
during
is undeniably
his time in the West
Indies, for example,
strengthened
by
con
as a
to those who call themselves Christians
and,
piece,
reproaches
stitutes an humanitarian
argument. Yet at the center of his tale of rapes,
severed limbs, beatings, burnings, and neglect are careful economic calcu
for the British
lations that point to the eventual destruction of prosperity
so the British
masters who neglect and mistreat
colonies?and
empire?by
their slaves. Remarking on the poor living conditions ofWest Indian slaves,
causes "a decrease in the births as well as
Equiano notes that such neglect
in the lives of the grown negroes," while those estates that employ "judi
cious treatment need no fresh stocks of negroes at any time" (105). He goes
on to calculate both life expectancies
of slaves under abusive conditions
and the economic deficit such neglect and abuse create. Of the oppression
that the de
suffered by slaves in Barbados he observes, "it is no wonder
new negroes annually to fill up the vacant
crease should require 20,000
1000 negroes
annually
places of the dead," while theWest Indies "requires
So that the whole term
to keep up the original stock, which is only 80,000.
of a negro's life may be said to be there but sixteen years" (106). His utili
tarian case is backed by his own experience as a slave owner: "Imyself, as
an estate, where, by those attentions,
shall appear in the sequel, managed
cheerful and healthy, and did more work by
the negroes were uncommonly
half than by the common mode of treatment they usually do" (106).
then, is not to the institution of slavery per se, but
Equiano's objection,
to the cruelties which dehumanize
those forced into slavery and in so doing
threaten the economic and political stability of Britain's colonial empire.
stance in fact supports his political and economic
That his humanitarian
argument rather than vice versa becomes clearest at the end of this chap
ter. Throughout
the Narrative Equiano tends to highlight the breaching of
social codes and manners by those who mistreat him rather than to com
own sufferings. The conclusion of this episode inMontserrat
plain of his
discloses the (English) mind-set
behind such responses, for here the prob
the
lems of the slave trade are laid out in the language of civic humanism,
codes of which were so important to a society driven by commercial com
more useful,"
Equiano finally asks, "by
petition and enterprise. "Are slaves
to
the condition of brutes than they would be if suf
being thus humbled
fered to enjoy the privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health
and prosperity throughout Britain answers you?No. When you make men
slaves you deprive them of half their virtue. . . .You stupify them with
a state of ignorance. . . ."
stripes and think it necessary to keep them in
(in). Since he has just promised a "sequel" in which he will describe his
treatment of his own slaves, his condemnation
of those who "make men
272 Early American
Literature,
Volume 54,1999
seems odd. Yet, as in his
opening address to parliament, his lan
an
and
guage
appeal through virtue to the fundamental principles of En
indicate that his concern extends beyond the slave trade
glish government
In
itself.
"men" also deprives
concluding that a slavery which dehumanizes
them "of half their virtue," Equiano in fact argues the dangers to the
politi
cal and economic status quo of denying any individual a function within
the social order. As J. G. A. Pocock points out, under the dictates of civic
humanism, which dominated political and economic debates in eighteenth
century Britain, an individual's virtue lay in his performance of civic duty.6
seems to be reminding his readers of the
Equiano
delicacy of the social
and political balance, reiterating as he does so the
point from his address
to
are
that
and
freedom
the basis of
parliament
stability
synonymous?and
comments
In
to
his
final
he
that
this
balance by
suggests
prosperity.
upset
on
a
and
rest
able-bodied
burden
the
the popu
of
strong people
making
lation will result in the slavery of all. In his strategically placed lines from
Paradise Lost, he employs Beelzebub's
to stress the
complaint ostensibly
a
of
in
of
"an
insurrection":
"No peace
dangers
society constantly
danger
is given / To us enslav'd, but custody severe; / And
and
stripes
arbitrary
inflicted?What
peace can we return" (112). On the surface
punishment
slaves"
the "us" stands for negro slaves. Yet the lines have political connotations
that recall English self-enslavement
during the civil wars. In this way, the
"us" can stand equally for the English who have in the past and can again
wear
"stripes"
as
prisoners
of
their
own
oppression.
As he contemplates
his own position and that of black Africans within
English society, Equiano also reveals impulses like those of Crusoe to con
form to a system of English government
shrouded with nostalgia by the
late eighteenth century. His continual search for a father figure in his mas
ters has a parallel in Crusoe's recurring guilt over his disobedience
to his
father. In both cases, the heroes as participants
in an impersonal, commer
and lonely world recognize the importance of fatherly
cially competitive,
an issue embedded
in the historical foundations of English gov
authority,
ernment. The
to the nation
of
commitment
in whose
Equiano's
depth
a part is apparent in his references to "Old
wants
he
history
England,"
which run like a refrain through the Narrative. Not only does Equiano?
like Crusoe ultimately?continually
desire to return "to England, where
my heart had always been" (147), but he indicates that it is only within
the embrace of "Old England" that he can be free. After gaining his lit
eral freedom he desires immediately to "see Old England once more," only
amidst such "reveries" claiming that he was now "as in my original free
African state." The same association
of freedom and the old country had
in the same breath, "determined
to make
been made earlier as Equiano,
every exertion to obtain my freedom, and to return to Old England" (122).
Within
such a framework, Equiano's "dreams of freedom" can be read
"Talking too much English"
in Equiano's
Interesting Narrative
273
in terms of
in terms of Crusoe's yearnings on the island and, by extension,
the eighteenth-century
individual caught between the opportunities
offered
an idealized stable
a market-driven
intense
and
for
present
nostalgia
by
the parallels Equiano's
shares
Interesting Narrative
past. In other words,
with Defoe's novels, especially Robinson Crusoe, ensure that eighteenth
century readers encounter Equiano not as a being fundamentally different
the same: an individual who has had to
from themselves, but fundamentally
struggling for survival in an unstable world where lives must be negotiated
between God's plan and economic demands and restrictions. Accordingly,
the Narrative
is only about freedom in so far as it can be achieved within
existing English traditions and institutions, and it is only about personal
struggle in so far as the personal has public relevance. These points and the
En
significance of Equiano's perception of himself and his people?both
glish and African?as
Narrative's
closing
cogs
in economic machinery
become
clearest
in the
remarks.
Here Equiano speaks out unabashedly as an entrepreneur and, still look
as
ing to the British government
"dispersers of light, liberty and science"
to the world, argues for the establishment
in Africa of a "system of com
merce" that would require the adoption there of "British fashions, man
to the Narrative
has embar
ners, customs, &c."
(233). This conclusion
rassed critics more than any other part, yet here Equiano demonstrates
most fully his appreciation of the problems of empire and his own thinking
as a successful economic man, the stance from which
the entire Narra
tive is written. As he does in his opening address, Equiano employs the
as he expresses his
hope of "seeing the
catchphrases of British imperialism
renovation of liberty and justice resting on the British government"
and
claims his designs are "suitable to the nature of a free and generous gov
suited to
ernment; and, connected with views of empire and dominion,
the benevolence
and solid measure of the legislature" (232). Once more he
and
ostensibly argues that imperial strength depends upon humanitarian
Christian principles, for his call for the "vindication
of] the honour of our
common nature" uses as its springboard charges made against Jamaican
to the treatment of their slaves," directs itself to
"every
planters "relative
man of sentiment," and is
laws as Equiano cites
supported by Christian
the books of Proverbs, Isaiah, and Job (232-33). Much more subtly, how
ever, Equiano recognizes and works through political and economic con
siderations. In going on to recommend
in Africa of "British
the adoption
he is careful to point out that "the
customs, &c,"
fashions, manners,
interest is equal, if not superior, to the landed interest, as
manufacturing
to the value, for reasons which will soon
appear" (234). Both the language
and rhetorical structure of this final section indicate that the real thrust
and fabric of his argument derive not from an appeal to the general public
based on common humanity but from an appeal to the interests of the two
274 Early American
Literature,
Volume 34,1999
most
ad
and merchant
powerful social groups: "the British manufacturers
venturers," whom he directly addresses here, and the "landed interest,"
to whom the Narrative
comprised by the "Lords Spiritual and Temporal"
as a whole
is first addressed.
of the demands of merchant
and
This simultaneous
acknowledgment
aristocrat consolidate what is overall a Burkian argument. Pocock points
out how Edmund Burke, like "Hume before him" and "Coleridge after
him" viewed "English history as an ongoing dialogue between conserva
tors based on the land and innovators based upon commerce"
Virtue
101).
(
The specific challenge Burke confronted was how to safeguard the stability
of British
traditional English government
against
empire by safeguarding
the ever-growing
and ever-more-complex
forces both of a market econ
omy and of American and French revolutionary
activity. His ultimate goal
was the accommodation
of political and economic change into institutions
rooted in "the ancient maxims
and true policy of this kingdom"
(181).
A stance like Burke's "progressive conservatism,"7 which underscores
the
an age craving
some
of
riven
and
sheds
light
stability
by change,
complexity
on those tactics of Equiano condemned
sensibilities
by twentieth-century
as his
betrayal of his "true" identity and his fellow Eboans. As his final
pages directly tackle problems at the heart of the British empire, Equiano
rounds up an argument and a world view that, far from establishing
the
want
critics
him
kind of (African) self- and national
that
today
identity
to have,
reveal
Burke or Adam
a mind
and
sentiments
operating
on
a common
plane
with
Smith.
that the Eboans be incorporated as a free people
Equiano's proposal
into the English empire on English terms would result, he claims, in "trad
intercourse with Africa opens an
ing upon safe grounds," for "commercial
source
to
interests of Great Brit
the manufacturing
inexhaustible
of wealth
ain, and to all which the slave-trade is an objection"
(234). Here he reveals
a
situations:
and political
of the nation's economic
deep understanding
a
consonant
with
solid and benevolent
liberty and justice of government,
have less to do with an
legislature and crucial to empire and dominion,
cause than with plentiful capital and the smooth operation
humanitarian
econo
of established mercantile
systems. For him as for any hard-headed
true
not
in
mist of the day, accomplishment
of
freedom lies
the abolition of
of empire from the scarcity
slavery but in the liberation of the machinery
threatened all. The issue he pinpoints here is that
and inefficiency which
Britain as its commercial
and imperial
which plagued eighteenth-century
the colonies Smith,
power grew: chronic shortage of capital. In discussing
for example, simply echoes the worries of his contemporaries when he ob
serves that "Great Britain having engrossed to herself almost the whole of
what may be called the foreign trade of the colonies," has not increased "her
... in the same
as the extent of that trade" (532). This
proportion
capital
"Talking too much English"
in Equiano's
Interesting Narrative
275
need for a fresh source of capital is addressed by Equiano when he points
out that "Population,
the bowels and surface of Africa, abound in valuable
and useful returns; the hidden treasures of centuries will be brought to light
and into circulation"
(234). Yet he also recognizes that the problem is one
not just of lack of capital. In stipulating that the Africans
of management
into the British empire as a free people in order to allow
be incorporated
"commercial
intercourse" between Africa and Britain, he offers a solu
tion to the dilemma outlined by Smith's admission that English monopoly
over colonial trade has "rendered" the "whole system of her
industry and
. . . less secure" (541).
commerce
and
that
"moderate
Arguing
gradual re
laxation of the laws which give to Great Britain the exclusive trade to the
colonies, till it is rendered in a great measure free, seems to be the only ex
pedient which can, in all future times, deliver her from this danger" of loss
of capital, Smith concludes that "perfect liberty necessarily establishes" a
situation, "which perfect liberty can alone preserve"
"natural, healthful"
This
kind
of
(542).
liberty, the kind that frees the English themselves from
own
the evils of their
imperial system, iswhat Equiano too is clearly con
cerned with, for while his own proposal does elevate the Africans
from
slave status to that of colonial subjects, it also reduces them to capital, to
property surrendered to a social contract.8 Here,
ironically, is where they
do achieve equality with the English, on English terms, since such a fate is
essentially that of most English subjects, especially those of the mercantile
class who were slaves to an empire threatening to collapse upon itself.
Equiano's genius lies in offering what seem like real solutions to prob
lems that stumped his contemporaries.
Smith goes on to point out the im
own
"To
of
his
propose that Great Britain should
suggestion:
practicality
over
all
her
colonies, and leave them to elect
voluntarily give up
authority
to enact their own laws, and to make peace and
their own magistrates,
war as
as
they might think proper, would be to propose such a measure
never was, and never will be
in
nation
the
world"
(552).
adopted by any
Yet, he persists, if Britain were follow his advice, those colonies liberated
from present oppression
"would become our most faithful, affectionate,
and generous allies; and the same sort of parental affection on the one
side, and filial respect on the other, might" be created between "Great Brit
ain and her colonies"
(553). Again he ismerely repeating commonplaces:
the language of parent-child
of En
relationships
permeated discussions
to
to the
both
those
she
had
and
gland's relationship
peoples
conquered
American
colonies. Feeding upon such thinking, Equiano's recommenda
tion at the end depends upon the actual natural bonds he has already cre
ated between the Eboans and the English at the beginning of his Narrative,
where he outlines a history and a genealogy not of the Eboans but for them.
Of all elements of the Narrative, Equiano's opening account of his child
hood and his description of the Eboe have been seen as the most compelling
276 Early American
Literature,
Volume 54,1999
evidence of his ultimate refusal to devaluate "his birth culture" (Nelson
252). This premise ignores crucial factors about the rhetorical design and
details of the Africa chapters. First, as Davis notes, Equiano's points in
facts
this opening section provide a checklist of what were well-known
about Africans: neat and spacious villages, class and family distinctions,
established patterns
children's closeness to their mothers, polite manners,
so as to
this
material
of trade (465). More
shapes
importantly, Equiano
create for the Eboans a genealogy and a history that work for his political
in two crucial ways: by discovering
bonds that
and economic arguments
"commerce" as the parent
establish a basis for smooth and uncomplicated
sources of capital provided by the child,
nation draws from the boundless
of the Africans would
involve
that the assimilation
and by demonstrating
on
ancient
which
from
the
traditions
fortification of, not movement
away
was built.
England
Most obviously, the biblical paradigm behind his portrayal of his native
land and people indicates that Scriptural readings create rather than jolt
his ten-year-old memory as he later claims when he records his surprise, on
see "the laws and
being taught for the first time "to read in the Bible," to
I believe
rules of my country written exactly here; a circumstance which
tended to impress our manners and customs more deeply on my memory"
(92). His description of Eboan ways reaches a climax when he "cannot for
bear suggesting what has long struck me very forcibly, namely, the strong
as it is, appears to
even
prevail in
analogy which
by this sketch, imperfect
and those of the Jews, before
the manners and customs of my countrymen,
the patriarchs while
they reached the Land of Promise, and particularly
were
state
in
in
is
Genesis"
which
described
that
(43). In a
yet
they
pastoral
move akin to his childhood attempt to scrub his face white, Equiano now
ancestors from "Abraham
supersedes his "analogy" by actually tracing his
a descent which
of
liberates
Keturah":
course, from the curse
them,
by
of Ham
(44). The details included in his picture of Eboan culture and
immedi
traditions are carefully arranged to support his conclusion. Most
a simile that has
is
followed
assertion
about
descent
the
already
by
ately
of the organization
of Eboan
been prepared for in Equiano's description
our gov
society. He claims that like "the Israelites in their primitive state,
ernment was conducted by our chiefs, our judges, our wise men and elders;
and the head of the family with us enjoyed a similar authority over his
household with that ascribed to Abraham and the other patriarchs"
(44).
the
rather than the details themselves dominate
Since these comparisons
account, the author's immersion in Scripture surely contributes more than
to the account just given of the arrangement of an
childhood memories
is hierarchical,
Eboan family estate, where the arrangement of buildings
the "principal building" being reserved for the "sole use of the master,"
and slaves having their allotted quarters (36).
and other family members
"Talking too much English"
in Equiano's
Interesting Narrative
277
is doing here, then, as Adam Potkay argues convincingly,
What Equiano
so
is "literally retrae[ing] the course of the Bible from patriarchal mores"
as to provide grounds for reading and rendering his life as "mirroring the
movement
of Biblical history from Old Testament to the New"
(681).
to the Eboans as
In attributing a martial and agricultural background
he excludes them from the biblical curse and incorporates them into scrip
tural history, however, Equiano also creates parallel histories and common
for them and the British. As he traces Eboan ancestry through
genealogies
mores to a
can still be seen in the
"pastoral" biblical world that
patriarchal
world maintained
and simple
by their nobility, manners,
pastoral-martial
a "microcosm
into
ancien
is
writes
that
them
the
r?gime
lifestyle, Equiano
of the history of Europe." As Pocock sums it up, this ancien r?gime is
and founded upon "feudal conquest and chivalry, clerical
agrarian-based
and cultural growth," all "orga
and political organization,
commercial
nized around a historical edifice of manners"
(Virtue 199). Each of these
in
features
of Eboe. In a
figures prominently
key
Equiano's description
footnote to his main argument, Potkay remarks on Equiano's
"fluency in
as he observes that
the idiom of civic humanism"
Equiano "presents his
native people not only as the descendants of Abraham, but as the true heirs
of Cincinnatus?small
farmers and militia-warriors,
utterly unacquainted
with the 'luxury' of modern Europe." Potkay points to such lines as "our
our luxuries are few," "Agriculture
manners are
is our chief em
simple,
a kind of militia"
em
is
"Our
district
whole
(685).
ployment,"
Equiano's
on manners,
a crucial part of this language of civic humanism,
is
phasis
of Eboan procurement,
reinforced by his careful depiction
employment,
and
treatment
of
slaves,
a consideration
which
also
suggests
that
Eboan
culture is controlled by feudal and chivalric codes now gone from Euro
pean culture but the basis of patriarchal structures (40). His observation
that the only slaves traded by the Eboe were "prisoners of war, or such
as had been convicted of
or
or some other crimes
kidnapping,
adultery,
which we esteemed heinous" also places his people in a classical tradition.
Sypher draws attention to the "classical theory" referred to from Aristotle
to Francis Hutcheson,
to Thomas Hobbes
from Thomas More
and John
Locke that "slaves are 'those taken inwar' or those condemned
for crime"
(77). In this way, Equiano again presents the Eboans not as inferiors but as
a dignified
people who have historical traditions, customs, and genealogy
in common
with
European
readers.
is significant is the way Equiano's underlying structures and strate
gies reflect the current political situation and support the economic theory
he puts forward at the end. By the time he suggests that African adoption
of "British fashions, manners,
customs, &c." will lay "open an endless
to
field of commerce"
the good of "general interests" he has anticipated
and addressed the most perplexing
of England's economic and political
What
278 Early American
Literature,
Volume 54,1999
dilemmas
(233). Implicitly arguing the benefits of replacing the inefficient
slave trade with a commerce between England and a new bountiful
not
ensure colonial
colony, he has
only uncovered natural bonds that will
to
the
but
has
demonstrated
while
the Eboans
mother
nation,
that,
loyalty
can
at least are at an earlier stage in their economic development,
they
trace their roots back to a common heritage. The
and
genius
importance
of such a case really only becomes clear in light of the current perceived
threat to the historical traditions which were seen both to derive from the
ancien r?gime and to protect the precarious balance on which English com
merce
depended. Lamenting that the French Revolution was in the process
African
of destroying this "structure of European civility" Edmund Burke for one
claimed that "commerc? can only flourish under the protection of manners,
and that manners
of religion and nobility,
the
require the pre-eminence
natural protectors of society" (qtd. in Pocock, Virtue 199). In demonstrat
ing that Eboan society is naturally protected by the same kind of nobility
as maintains English
commerce and is founded upon the same
society and
historical structures, Equiano turns a potentially
into
threatening proposal
an
for
and
and
stabilizing
opportunity
fortifying England commercially
to incorporate the Eboans into the
politically. More than that, inwanting
an ancient tradition,
British empire as distant ancestors within
Equiano
to the British conviction
as
Burke
that,
puts it in his Reflections on
appeals
the Revolution in France, British laws and charters have always been built
on those already existing so that "we derive all we possess as an inheri
. . . [and] have taken care not to inoculate
tance from our forefathers
any
nature
to
the
the
of
alien
cyon
original plant" (qtd. in Pocock, Politics 205).
Both Equiano's commercial and political argument are strengthened by
the emphasis he puts on the Jewish analogy. That the British were in the
habit of thinking about their history in terms of Judaeo-Christian
history is
in
seventeenthand
works:
countless
apparent
eighteenth-century
Dryden's
Absalom and Achitophel and Smart's Jubilate Agno are just two examples.
Of utmost significance in this mode of thinking were the benefits to British
trade and therefore to British imperialism of Britain's Jewish connections.
illuminates this aspect of British history, he points
As Howard Weinbrot
out that Britain's definition of herself as an economic,
and
intellectual,
so
a
that
"Hebrew
included
Hebraic
genealogy
political power actually
sums up the
is truth not metaphor"
British genealogy
(419). Weinbrot
of British Jews by citing what he calls "an implied
trade":
"trade is essential for liberty, Jews are essen
syllogism regarding
tial for trade; therefore Jews are essential for liberty" (416). Christopher
in British culture these British
Hill highlights
just how deeply embedded
were.
as
As
bonds
he
1615,
Jewish
points out, the argument had been
early
economic
importance
made that the conversion and naturalization
the political and economic might of Britain,
of the Jews would strengthen
and in 1655, in his Declaration
"Talking too much English"
in Equiano's
Interesting Narrative
279
to Parliament, Menasseh
ben Israel claimed that Jews and Christians alike
time for our nation into their native country is
restoration
"believe that the
near
at
hand." This seventeenth-century
argument continued through
very
the eighteenth century with an emphasis on English commercial enterprise
the coming of which the admission of Jews
rather than on the millennium,
In
into England and their conversion would
(theoretically) have expedited.
come
not
Hill
when
the
Second
did
and
the
fact,
observes,
Coming
Jews
had been unofficially admitted to England, emphasis on their conversion
was
in which
the conversion of
displaced by "secularized millenarianism
is central"
the Jews plays little part, and English commercial
enterprise
to
intentions
and
the
which
his
While
(290-91).
merging
degree
Equiano's
of Eboan and Jewish history cannot be known, as an outsider and strug
gling entrepreneur he must have been at least acquainted with British views
the amount of detail in the
the Jews. Certainly,
and debates concerning
section
his
Jewish-Eboan
opening
analogy is remarkable. His
supporting
attention to the uncorrupted Eboans as a "nation of dancers, musicians,
and poets," for example, makes even more plausible the ties he discovers
between them and the ancient Hebrews, who, asWeinbrot
demonstrates,
"were thought part both of ancient and modern Britain" (408). As Aaron
Hill puts it in 1720 and Weinbrot
recalls, "God 'taught Poetry first to the
"
to
in general'
and the Hebrews
Mankind
Hebrews,
(410). By attributing
to "our dances a spirit and variety which
I have scarce seen elsewhere"
language God
Equiano underscores Eboan kinship to the Hebrews whose
spoke (34).
Another
seemingly innocuous detail which may support the yoking of
roots and nobility through Jewish genealogy
and
Eboan and European
is Equiano's comparison of Eboe dress to "the form of a High
metaphor
land plaid" (34). A little earlier he had commented
that the "manners and
government of a people who have little commerce with other countries are
generally very simple" (32). Here the focus, style, and details correspond
ap
closely to (for example) Samuel Johnson's empirical, anthropological
proach in his Journey to theWestern Islands of Scotland. As Equiano does of
as "part of the national character
the Eboe, Johnson highlights
"civility"
as
of the Highlanders,"
and,
Equiano
implies of his people, Johnson also
declares that because of their isolation the Scot's patriarchal
laws and feu
dal codes have remained pure. Since Equiano would have known that the
defenders of theWhig
the ancient citizen
commercial order characterized
as an
if he is drawing a
being, his purpose,
economically
underdeveloped
to
is surely
parallel between Eboans and Highlanders,
place the African
and European peoples on equal ground at an earlier stage of economic
support for this is supplied by current theories
development. Historical
about Celtic-Jewish
genealogy and the fact that, as Nicholas
Phillipson
points out, for the Scots "the road to wealth and national greatness lay in
28o Early American
Volume 34,1999
Literature,
the assimilation of their patterns of economic life to those provided by the
trading world inwhich they were placed" (448).
More
than once in his Narrative
slave
Equiano points out to white
owners his rights
too
is
law
and
that
he
much
told
"talks
(94,
English"
by
itself reveal the
159). The structure, rhetoric, and details of the Narrative
extent of his fluency in the languages of law, politics, economics,
and lit
erature of eighteenth-century
Britain. What
is important here, however, is
not a question of excess?the
charge also leveled at Equiano by those crit
his African identity in order to acquire a
icswho see him as compromising
a
the
voice?but
legitimate
profoundly British nature of work that has be
come a such a focus of interest in African and African American
studies.
success in Great Britain, where
That the Narrative
it
enjoyed phenomenal
went through five editions in five years, but was
in
received
colonial
poorly
America
readers that their per
should not only remind twentieth-century
an
on
not
Narrative
is
the
one, but should also
spective
eighteenth-century
serve as a marker of the accuracy with which
Equiano gauged the concerns
In remarking on the rise of Equiano's
and interests of his contemporaries.
tale to such a position of importance in the African American
literary tra
was
Ito
that
the
"Narrative
when
first
dition,
expresses surprise
published
in the United States it left little, if any, impression on American
readers"
more
Even
she
those
first
American
readers
goes on,
(83).
surprisingly,
were those least
a narrative written
an ex-slave":
to
"to
subscribe
likely
by
"many
men,
makers,
of
the New
York
cabinetmakers,
tanners,
subscribers
carpenters,
masons,
hatters,
were
tailors,
artisans?bakers,
watchmakers,
perfumers,
and
grocers,
blacksmiths,
so on.
This
is
cart
shoe
surprising
because artisans have been thought the group of people the most reluc
tant to emancipate slaves" (89). Viewed
in light of the problems facing the
individual living in the late eighteenth-century
British empire, however,
to this
not at all surprising. His
is
Equiano's appeal
readership
problems
as a struggling entrepreneur
are
and challenges
the same as
essentially
readers for they involve countering and ducking
those of his first American
the blows of fortune in an age which offered great opportunities
yet was
was riven
and
gross
by instability. Equiano's Inter
plagued by
inequalities
a
in
is
other
document of the eighteenth
Narrative,
words,
esting
wholly
British
and
of
embraces
many
century
empire's fundamental prob
empire,
to offer scholarship on
lems. For this reason it does indeed have much
itself shares the world, the
those works that succeeded it, yet the Narrative
and the language not of Frederick Douglass
but of Johnson
experiences,
and Burke, Smith and Defoe.9 To see it on its own terms, it is necessary
to grant Equiano the full British voice and British identity he himself con
sidered his own. In doing so, the Janus-faced nature of the work becomes
new light on facets of
literature.
truly apparent, shedding
early American
"Talking too much English"
in Equiano's
Interesting Narrative
281
NOTES
i. The
makes
that Marren
claim
2. For
a
case
ren's
liminality
word" of Scripture "will at least within
the
and
racial
linguistic
in any
implicit
see
Mar
Potkay.
the "authoritative
[Equiano's] own narrative, free him from
and maintained
created
hierarchy
overlooks
(102). Such an argument
so
as
shows
convincingly.
Potkay
about
argument
in British society (95).
use of
of Equiano's
Scripture
rests on the
that
assumption
discussion
comprehensive
about Equiano's
is
outright
Equiano's ambiguous and dual position
the way
Scripture
master"
the white
by
affirms
structures?
patristic
3. Joseph Fichtelberg recognizes the significance of the economic forces working
upon Equiano and his Narrative, but his argument too is curbed and shaped by his
that
conviction
fact about
the "signal
an African in English" (463).
In this
4.
Wild
Tom
he
his
reveals
and
interest
whose
Evelina,
to such
varied
is that
historical
it was
written
as
figures
by
Jonathan
and to such diverse literary figures as Robinson Crusoe,
and Phillis Wheatley
Jones,
sameness
Narrative
Equiano's
as
to the
is attributable
individuals
social
struggles their lives illuminate and to their reconciliation of their differences within
the established order. In other words, their affirmation as individuals depends upon
to
in not their challenge
inclusion
society.
makes
the same point
5. Marren
(103).
2 of Virtue,
and History.
6. See
Commerce,
chapter
their
7.1 use Stephen Miller's
description of Burke (563).
who
8. I'm using here the words
of Nussbaum
as
as
is imagined
the 'self
Locke
property
capital,
contract"
(50).
9. To
provide
that
it
willingly
"for Mandeville
surrenders
and
to a social
can in any way
Narrative"
like "Douglass's
that a work
therefore,
argue,
... of
or
Ham
"a kind of
grid for the fuller reading
Wheatley,
template
his Narrative
to
and
look
terms.
American
is to deny the forces shaping both Equiano and
andWalker"
mon, Equiano/Vassa
century
observes
at an
See Lee
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