Lost Voices of History, The Portrayal of Slavery in Andrea Levy's The Long Song

The historical novel has been extremely popular since its rise in the nineteenth century and to this day it is celebrated worldwide. With silences and gaps in our history, historical fiction provides a platform for a variety of untold narratives, enabling us to better comprehend the multicultural world we live in today. This essay explores the representation of slavery within historical fiction, exemplified in Andrea Levy’s novel The Long Song. Published in 2010, it is mostly set in early nineteenth century Jamaica, before and after the Baptist War. In the form of a memoir, the novel tells the story of the former slave July, as she looks back on her life on the sugar plantation Amity. This essay examines the narrative structure of The Long Song and discusses the significance of slave narratives and neo-slave narratives within the novel. Levy’s background and inspiration for The Long Song is reviewed, as is the novel’s relevance to modern times. In addition, similarities between other works of historical fiction are explored, including Tony Morrison’s Beloved and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. Moreover, Levy’s use of metaphor is analyzed regarding a painting in her novel. The painting can be seen as metaphor, symbolizing the untruths and erasure found in dominant accounts of history, as well as underlining the narrator’s centrality to the narrative and to history in general. Through historical fiction, Andrea Levy is successful in bringing forward the silenced yet significant voices of Caribbean slaves. In The Long Song, Levy brings attention to the erasure that has taken place within the British historical consciousness and sheds light on the centrality of slavery to British history. Moreover, the novel provides a form of legacy for Caribbean slaves and for their descendants, inspiring pride rather than shame in regard to their heritage