Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery, 1670-1834

Subject to Others charts the emergence of a colonial discourse in the anti-slavery writing of white British women over two centuries, and analyzes the customarily unheard of and invisible resistances of slaves that resound in every text. Moira Ferguson argues that these women gendered abolitionist arguments by forcing a reevaluation of such familiar anti-slavery thematics as family love, separation, and sexual abuse. She theorizes that this intersection of a feminist impulse with anti-slavery agitation helped secure political self-empowerment for white women while doing fundamental damage to future race relations in Britain. Strong in research and argument, Subject to Others offers a fresh interpretation of abolitionist literary and cultural history.