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A Respectable Trade by Philippa Gregory
Book Type: Paperback
Published: 03 January 1998
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
RRP:£7.99
Best Discount: £3.80 (48%)
Cheapest price: £4.19
Prices last checked: 05/01/2009 20:11:39
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A Respectable Trade by Philippa Gregory
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Review:
This is, rightfully, an angry book that uncovers the British slave-trade and the inhumanities upon which empire is built. Gregory is clearly incensed, both politically and personally, about this hidden history and uncovers the ignorance and wilful self-deceit which underpins any kind of prejudice, whether racial, sexual, gendered etc.
However I felt that her very anger made this a very unsubtle book, unsophisticated precisely because of its polemic and didactic stance. Characters became representatives of political view-points: the ambitious lower-middle class tradesman determined to rise socially; his bitter and inhumane sister; the wife sold into a different type of slavery and yet unwilling to set herself free, and the noble, good, humane black slaves...
... and here is the crux of the problem: Gregory allows herself to fall into the trap of inverting and so sustaining the racial differences that allow slavery in the first place: while the `baddies' see the Africans as animals, she portrays them as saints. They are all completely noble, intelligent, loving, nurturing, unselfish, with an inbuilt sense of music and dance and an instinctive feeling for the earth and nature - the opposite of most of the white characters. And so rather than breaking down barriers and finding a common humanity between both groups where people are a mix of good and bad, selfish and giving regardless of their skin colour, Gregory insidiously (and I would guess unintentionally) maintains the difference, sustaining the `us' and `them', even if `we' are on the sides of the slaves.
This is a flaw in other novels I have read about slavery: Diana Norman's A Catch of Consequence, and Jane Stevenson's Astraea trilogy come to mind. By making the black characters completely morally and ethically `white', the structures of racial difference are not collapsed but actively re-built and maintained. By making the black characters completely `other' (and the instance of Mehuru's clairvoyance is a good example), they are still marginalised, still `orientalised' (in Edward Said's words), and still not like `us' (whoever `we' might be...)
So, overall, this is a brave novel, heartfelt and with good intentions, but ultimately, for me, an unsettling one in ways the author probably didn't intend.
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