Domestic Captivity and the British Subject, 1660–1750

Catherine Ingrassia

Description

In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain, captivity emerged as a persistent metaphor as well as a material reality. The exercise of power on both an institutional and a personal level created conditions in which those least empowered, particularly women, perceived themselves to be captive subjects. This "domestic captivity" was inextricably connected to England’s systematic enslavement of kidnapped Africans and the wealth accumulation realized from those actions, even as early fictional narratives suppressed or ignored the experience of the enslaved. Domestic Captivity and the British Subject, 1660–1750 explores how captivity informed identity, actions, and human relationships for white British subjects as represented in fictional texts by British authors from the period.

This work complicates interpretations of canonical authors such as Aphra Behn, Richard Steele, and Eliza Haywood and asserts the importance of authors such as Penelope Aubin and Edward Kimber. Drawing on the popular press, unpublished personal correspondence, and archival documents, Catherine Ingrassia provides a rich cultural description that situates literary texts from a range of genres within the material world of captivity. Ultimately, the book calls for a reevaluation of how literary texts that code a heretofore undiscussed connection to the slave trade or other types of captivity are understood.

Prologue: Reading Captivity
1. Cultures of Captivity
2. Captivating Farce: Aphra Behn's Emperor of the Moon
3. Domesticating Captivity in Richard Steele's Conscious Lovers
4. Barbary Captivity, Penelope Aubin, and The Noble Slaves
5. "Indentured Slaves": British Captivity in Colonial America
Afterword: Domesticating Captivity

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Irish
• English
• European
• Welsh
• Scottish

Informations

• Publié par: University of Virginia Press
• Date de parution: 29 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780813948102
• Langue: English

Extrait

Domestic Captivity and the British Subject, 1660–1750
Domestic Captivity and the British Subject, 1660–1750
Catherine Ingrassia
University of Virginia Press
Charlottesville and London
University of Virginia Press
© 2022 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia
All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper -->
First published 2022 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 -->
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ingrassia, Catherine, author.
Title: Domestic captivity and the British subject, 1660–1750 / Catherine Ingrassia.
Description: Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022008343 (print) | LCCN 2022008344 (ebook) | ISBN 9780813948089 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780813948096 (paperback) | ISBN 9780813948102 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: English fiction—Early modern, 1500–1700—History and criticism. | English fiction—18th century—History and criticism. | Captivity in literature. | Master and servant in literature. | Women in literature. | Authority in literature.
Classification: LCC PR769 .I54 2022 (print) | LCC PR769 (ebook) | DDC 823.4/09—dc23/eng/20220318
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022008343
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022008344
Cover art: Marriage A-la-Mode: 1, The Marriage Settlement, William Hogarth, ca. 1743. (The National Gallery, London, NG1130)
For my parents
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Reading Captivity
1. Cultures of Captivity
2. Captivating Farce: Aphra Behn’s The Emperor of the Moon
3. Domesticating Captivity: Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers
4. Barbary Captivity: Penelope Aubin and The Noble Slaves
5. “Indentured Slaves”: Eliza Haywood, Edward Kimber, and British Captivity in Colonial America
Afterword: Domesticating Captivity
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
The initial drafting of this book took place during a residential fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Humanities Research Center. The semester of that fellowship enabled weekly meetings with my co-fellows Shermaine Jones, Brooke Newman, and Oliver Speck; their suggestions and insights formatively shaped this book at an early stage. Additionally, I appreciate the support and comments from then-HRC director Richard Godbeer. A semester of research leave from VCU also helped advance the progress of the manuscript and I value the support of then-dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences Montse Fuentes.
At Virginia Commonwealth University, I am fortunate to have many colleagues who work in the early modern period and participate in our longstanding working group. I have benefitted from lively discussions with Carolyn Eastman, Eric Garberson, David Latané, Mary Caton Lingold, Sarah Meacham, Bernardo Piciché, Catherine Roach, Sachi Shimomura, Ryan Smith, and Rivka Swenson. I am also thankful for the generous readings of individual chapters by colleagues including Paula R. Backscheider, Lance Bertelsen, Sean Moore, Laura Rosenthal, Jonathan Silverman, and Manushag Powell. Julian Neuhauser offered essential assistance at the British Library at a crucial moment. Wayne Bodle’s capacious knowledge of Colonel William Cosby and all things colonial remain an invaluable resource. Madge Dresser provided a wonderful tour of Bristol and insights into the city’s amazing M Shed Museum. The intellectual support of Jennifer Keith and Laura Runge (who have probably read the entire manuscript in some form) during our biweekly meetings has been, and continues to be, a lifeline. I treasure their wisdom, friendship, and careful reading of my work. The project was enriched by interactions with colleagues at ISECS and regional and national ASECS conferences. Working in such an invigorating, vital field is to be reminded of the persistent relevance of work on race, gender, and power. Similarly, the students at Virginia Commonwealth University with whom I have explored these ideas have sharpened my thinking. I finished this book while chair of the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University. The extraordinary skill, generosity, and high level of performance of the department’s core staff make that job a daily pleasure and also made balancing administration and research possible. The entire staff—Kelsey Cappiello, Thom Didato, Gregory Patterson, and Margret Schluer—has my deep gratitude and affection. Equally important, the amazing people at VCU Libraries make everything possible and VCU Libraries remains the sine qua non for all of us in the humanities at this institution. Although I rarely get to meet the wonderful individuals in interlibrary loan who regularly help me get the books and articles I need, they have my boundless thanks. Earlier versions of chapters 1 and 5 were published in Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700.
At University of Virginia Press, Angie Hogan has been a fantastic and supportive editor to work with every step of the way. The comments, suggestions, and insights of the two anonymous readers of the manuscript definitely strengthened the book. Marilyn Campbell was a valuable copyeditor. Closer to home, I always cherish the good humor, boundless support, and camaraderie of my life partner, Miles, and our children Sophia and Pablo, but particularly during the completion of this book.
Domestic Captivity and the British Subject, 1660–1750
Prologue
Reading Captivity
What happens when scholars read literary texts from the early eighteenth century through the lens of captivity? If we better understand how the language of confinement, restraint, and subjection operates not (just) as metaphor but as a representation of material practices and cultural attitudes, might we interpret popular literary texts of the period differently? The short answer is yes.
When we recognize the often-coded markers and shared references to what I term “domestic captivity”—the captivity of white British subjects—we gain an enriched understanding of the anxieties of the period and their manifestation in literary texts. Domestic captivity’s intimate connection to Britain’s investment in the enslavement of Africans and their use as unfree labor in colonial sites is undeniable. Emergent and escalating concerns about the limitations placed on the British subject or about the consolidation of power by agents of control also become clear. And, once legible, these representations of captivity, these expressions of anxiety and fascination, complicity and fear, change how we read the texts in which they appear. As this book argues, these representations reveal such texts—many of them among the most popular of the era—emerge foundationally from a culture defined by diverse forms of captivity.
This book considers fictional texts by British authors from the Restoration and first half of the eighteenth century in which captivity informs identity, actions, or human relationships for white British subjects. During the period this book explores, the exercise of power on both an institutional and personal level could create conditions in which those least empowered—the poor and the dispossessed, the young and unprotected, and women both married and single—perceived themselves to be captive subjects. “Domestic captives” might include individuals held in indentured servitude or British subjects restrained by other forms of power (and the people manifesting that power) emanating from institutional, economic, social, or legal structures and their agents—a workhouse warden, a parish official, the military, a press gang, a landlord, a plantation owner, or even a spouse. The inequities institutionalized within England’s socioeconomic structure created asymmetrical power relationships, assumptions of privilege, and the objectification of entire categories of people. These factors contributed to a “culture of captivity”—a culture with a persistent awareness of and anxiety about the presence and possibility of captivity and confinement in various forms. 1 Individuals across different ranks and genders lived in a world in which their identities were shaped by their connection to domestic captivity—a captivity that shaped those in a position of subjection but also those holding the power to constrain others.
My book focuses primarily on white subjects whose captivity originated or occurred in England; I give particular attention to forms of domestic captivity affecting women. To be clear, those I discuss as “domestic captives” did not occupy the permanent and inheritable status of people who endured a system of racially based enslavement. To use the term “captivity” in connection with the confinement of Irish, English, or European subjects is in no way to equate their captive condition to the bondage of enslaved Africans in a colonial site. The captivity of Britons and Europeans was a contingent not a perpetual state, a temporary not inheritable condition. But forms of domestic captivity and colonial enslavement are mutually reinforcing, reflecting the worst assumptions and possibilities about power and subjugation.
Domestic captivity cannot be understood separately from England’s substantial involvement in the systematic enslavement of kidnapped Africans or the wealth accumulation realized from those actions, even as early fictional narratives elide or ignore the experience of enslaved people. These texts largely deny Black subjects humanity, voice, or sustained examination; their presence, though alluded to or assumed, is counterintuitively marked by their absence. The erasure of Black subjectivity in texts from the period explored in this book denies access to the interiority of nonwhite fictional subjects even as those texts and characters within them implicitly (and at times explicitly) summon the experience of the enslaved. This narrative pattern replicates a cultural pattern wherein enslaved people are “seldom represented as