Historical Context: Marlon James’ The Book of Night Women begins on a Jamaican sugar cane plantation in 1785 with the birth of the novel’s main character Lilith. Along with more than half of Jamaica’s population at the end of the eighteenth century, Lilith is born a slave. Christopher Petley describes how although “[w]hites were in a minority in Jamaican slave society, slaveholding was widespread amongst white settlers” and that “all white men experienced privileges in a society organised around racialised boundaries of rule” (93). He furthermore describes white Jamaican slave-owners as “a group committed to a social order based on ideas of racial inequality, determined to protect their own position of economic and social privilege” (94). British abolitionists describe, “Caribbean societies under the planters as being cruel, irreligious and morally debased” (100). As England and other European nations moved toward abolition at the end of the eighteenth century, Jamaican slave-owners clung tightly to the institution of slavery, the source of their vast wealth. Slave-owners defended the institution of slavery forcefully because their “upward social and economic mobility was predicated upon the forced labor of enslaved people. Their wealth and the products they sent to Britain were made at the expense of others” (108). The only real way to express wealth in eighteenth century Jamaica was the number of slaves a person owned. Petley writes, “it was not possible to earn true wealth and independence by working for others in exchange for cash, [and] settlers aimed to acquire land along with enslaved people” (95). Furthermore, many of the most wealthy estate owners were not men who worked hard to gain upward mobility, but men who inherited their estates through “a pioneering ancestor” who “established their family’s fortune” (97). However, white Jamaican slave-owners weren’t as almighty and powerful as they thought. Slaves “outnumbered European settlers by a ratio of at least ten to one” and it was “shared fear therefore [that] helped to bind white society” (99). In order to maintain their semblance of power, and “[o]utnumbered by their own slaves, Jamaican whites relied on British [military] protection” (102). With slave revolts growing in numbers and the rest of the world moving toward abolition, life in late eighteenth century Jamaica was extremely tense and unstable as white slave-owners grappled to maintain their power and wealth.

Montpelier Cave of the Night Women Montego Bay

Maroons Coulibre

“Black smoke fly out the window like house spirit fleeing. Fire crackling like lightning and like laughter. So much in white man house to burn. Carpet and curtain and book and letters, and chairs and tables and flesh. Fire hop out a window and climb up on the roof. A cloud of black smoke make the noon dark” (232).

“as stable as gunpowder in a kitchen”: Late Eighteenth Century Jamaica and the World of The Book of Night Women

ENG 4460, Literature of Conflict, Wright State University Chelcie Hinders

The Book of Night Women in History: James’ depiction of late eighteenth century Jamaica in The Book of Night Women holds true to the historical information remaining from that time. One of James’ major themes is the rising tension between slaves and their masters. The novel’s core conflict revolves around the Night Women’s plot for another major slave revolt following the success of the Haitian slave revolt in 1791. Lilith, the novel’s protagonist and a member of the Night Women, nonchalantly describes the increasing frequency of slave revolts, “1738: Rebellion. 1739: Rebellion. 1740: Rebellion. 1745:The plot to kill all whites. 1746: Rebellion. 1758: Rebellion. 1760: The worsest rebellion under Tacky—sixty whites and four hundred blacks get killed. 1765:Rebellion. 1766: Rebellion” (261). Robert Quinn, the slave overseer at Montpelier, describes Jamaica as “about as stable as gunpowder in a kitchen” (139) because of the rising tension between slaves and masters. Although the slaves ambushed and outnumbered their masters, the Night Women’s revolt fails when the British regiment arrives. “The ground shake with the best of horses. Redcoats. His Majesty’s regiment coming in from Spanish Town. There be fifty or sixty but they all on horseback, making a noise like thunder and whipping up dust. With they red jacket and shiny sword and brown musket and big black horses, they look like an infantry just rise up from hell” (409). At the end of James’ novel, in 1801, the revolt fails, surviving participants of the revolt are killed or punished severely, and the institution of slavery continues. It is not until 1834, 33 years after the revolt in James’ novel , that slavery is officially outlawed in Jamaica.

Works Cited: James, Marlon. The Book of Night Women. New York: Riverhead, 2009. Print. Paton, Diana. “Gender, Language, Violence and Slavery: Insult in Jamaica 1800-1838”. Gender & History 18.2 (2006): 246-265. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16 Apr. 2015. Petley, Christopher. “Slavery, Emancipation And the Creole World View of Jamaican Colonists, 1800-1834.” Slavery & Abolition. 26.1 (2005): 93-114. Caribbean Search. Web. 16 Apr. 2015.