Department of English
Writing the Journey: June 1999
"The Gothic Aspect of Slavery: Matthew Gregory Lewis's Journal of a West India Proprietor"
Catherine Sears
Graduate School in English, City University New York
catherinesears@hotmail.com
Matthew Gregory Lewisís Journal of a West India Proprietor is the journal Lewis wrote during two trips to his Jamaican plantations in 1815 and 1817 and published posthumously. His intention surrounding these voyages was to ensure that slaves belonging to his two Jamaican estates were well treated, and as such his journal contains ample discussion of slavery as an institution, laws surrounding slavery and the particular events on his and neighboring plantations that he encounters during each trip. His narrative contains complex and often contradictory views of his slaves themselves, alternately praising their tractability, and abusing them for disloyalty. He initially views the state of his plantation as an utopia, but later hints at an underlying, darker truth, particularly on his second voyage when he visits his second estate, Hordley, located at the far end of the island of Jamaica.
Lewis is not the only Gothic writer connected with slave owning in the West Indies; William Beckford also benefitted from plantations there. While the Journal would seem to be the antithesis of the Gothic writings for which Lewis is well known, the novel, The Monk (1796), and dramas The Castle Spectre and The Captive. It also functions as a Gothic tale in its own right, with his own identity serving as a primary protagonist. I will show that it contains both a Gothic narrative form, and basic elements and themes of the Gothic. In terms of form, the Journal contains within it numerous other tales, including verse that he writes, oral tales related by slaves themselves, and even a Gothic romance, The Isle of Devils, which was written during his travels. The effect of this layering of narratives is akin to numerous Gothic novels which notoriously contain a tale within a tale within a tale, as exemplified by the consummate Gothic novel, Melmouth the Wanderer, published in 1820. Gothic elements include the presence of decaying nobility, the supernatural, a gothic space, Christianity versus evil, arduous journeys, etc. It even has a Gothic ending, as Lewis dies of yellow fever on return from Jamaica and is dramatically buried at sea. As Gothic novels are fundmentally about unequal power relations between particular individuals and injustices that therein arise, so too is Lewisís Journal. However, it lacks the simplicity of Gothic plots which generally contain clear-cut villains and victims, which are usually inscribed (in the pre-Victorian period) by gender. The Journal has a plot centrally concerned with the power relations surrounding racial identity and slavery, and Lewis inscribes himself through a series of complex and ambivalent identifications within these power relations.
Catherine Sears
676 Driggs Avenue,
Brooklyn, NY 11211.
catherinesears@hotmail.com
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