Colonialism and Gender From Mary Wollstonecraft to Jamaica Kincaid

by Moira Ferguson

"Focusing On Antigua, Dominica, and England, this book contributes to post-colonial and cultural studies by juxtaposing British and Caribbean writers of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries." "Ferguson highlights usually veiled intersections between the texts of Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Anne Hart Gilbert, Elizabeth Hart Thwaites, Jean Rhys, and Jamaica Kincaid, and underscores their feminist agendas in the context of slavery and colonialism." "Beginning with a discussion of Wollstonecraft's polemic for women's rights in the metropolitan center, Ferguson shows how that polemic linked colonial slavery to female subjugation and male desire. In the very different social context of Antigua, Gilbert and Thwaites engaged in struggles on behalf of literacy and abolitions." "In the doubled context of England and Antigua, Ferguson then examines the centrality of slavery to Austen's Mansfield Park, and concludes with a lively reading of texts by Jean Rhys and Jamaica Kinca