'Sugar coated, a novel' : an interdisciplinary exploration of seventeenth and eighteenth century Afro-Caribbean slave women and Irish indentured women being accidentally narrated in Barbados' pre-emancipation archives

This dissertation presents a new research methodology called accidental narration. Accidental narration occurs whenever references or comments embedded within the artefacts of a dominant culture serve to unintentionally expose, animate and/or narrate the physical presence, social interactions, and/or social successes of a subordinate or minority person or group. For the purpose of this study, accidental narration is achieved when the archived documents of elite white males who ran the British slave trade reveal incidences of Afro-Caribbean slave women and poor Irish women either speaking out, acting out-or in a few cases, displaying in their lifetimes-a measure of social success that mimics the wealth and lifestyles of members of the plantocracy. In pre-emancipation Barbados in particular, both groups of women existed at the very bottom of slave society and they had no access to education and publishing. Thus, very few of their personalized narratives exist today. This dissertation employs accidental narration to challenge the practice of approaching women's narratives from the consciousnesses of slavery's elites, and suggests instead that researchers target the elites' unconscious recordings to unearth plausible, non-patriarchal female 'voices'.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo