- What is the genre of this narrative? Does it resemble any other fiction or histories of its time?
- What are some notable features of the preface? Why do you think it was included? Do you think a testament to the text's authenticity was needed?
- What is significant about the date of publication? Ia ir important that the initial impetus for writing this came from Mary herself?
- Why is Pringle careful to stress that the History has been published by him rather than the Anti-Slavery Society?
- What do we learn about the actual writing of the text? What precautions have been taken to attest to its validity? What suspicions were these designed to preclude?
- Whom do you think was the intended audience for this book? Do you agree with the editor's decision to standardize the punctuation and spelling?
- What do you think may be features of Mary Prince's account designed to please a British abolitionist, largely religious audience?
- What were some significant facts of Prince's life? Under what circumstances was she first reared, and what were her relations with other family members and her first mistress? How do these recollections frame her experience for the reader? (reader knows she is capable of affection for a white person; also we see a loving family destroyed until the mother even loses her mind)
- Are there ways Prince's early years have influenced her later actions and plans?
- What status did she seem to hold in Jamaican society at her birth and afterwards?
- What were conditions of her life as a slave? What forms of work were forced on her, and under what conditions? (work in salt fields; very long hours at washing and other household tasks)
- What do you make of the fact that Mrs. Ingham is described as "of a very dark complexion" in the light of her severity and cruelties?
- What may have prompted her religious conversion?
- What factors may have helped motivate the cruelties perpetuated against her, in your opinion? What were unusual/important features of her life as a slave? (sexual assaults; repeated beatings)
- How does she characterize Mr. D, the Inghams, and the Woods? What instances are given of their treatment of others in addition to herself, and what is the effect of these records of additional incidents? (her situation not unique; cruelty to slaves widespread) Are there distinctions between her life in Bermuda, Turks Island, and Antigua?
- What do you make of the Wood family dynamixs? What may have helped prompt Mrs. Wood's cruelty to Hetty? Mr. Wood's cruelty? (jealousy)
- What do you make of Mrs. Wood's response to Mary's marriage? The fact that although slaves were forbidden to marry, she is accused of immorality?
- What prompts Mary's escape from the Wood residence in London? Why do you think they pretend that they wish her to leave? (assume she will be too frightened to do so) What were some factors in her situation which enabled her to escape from the Woods' control? (help of nearby family, Moravians, Anti-Slavery Society)
- What were Moravian attitudes and practices toward the treatment of slaves? (sought to teach them to write, to treat them as relative equals under god) How does this contrast with the response of the Anglican minister? (will not permit slaves to worship without letter of permission from employer)
- Do you think any important aspects of her life story may have been omitted? What things may she not be able to tell us explicitly? (rapes, forced sex)
- What are some special features present in the narratives of women slaves/former slaves? (instances of forced sex; need to hint at these with minimal explicitness; need to defend herself from charges of wrong behavior)
- What attitudes toward work and economics does Prince assert in her conclusion? Would these have been the expected views for a servant of the time? (values labor in a "free market")
- What are qualities of the narrative's style?
- Can you discern tensions in the narrative which result from its intended purpose as an anti-slavery treatise? Are some facts or opinions emphasized which might otherwise have been omitted, and facts downplayed which might otherwise have been included?
- What effect does Mary's account of her conversion experience and her increased piety have on the narrative? (provides climax and proof of respectability; offers her an inner life)
- Is it a feature of the slave narrative that the body of the slave is placed on display? Is this necessary for the sake of the argument, and are there possible tensions/complications which this can create? Do you feel that features of her experience are sensationalized?
- How does Mary frame her final appeal? To what values does she assume her audience will respond? Do you think she was likely correct? (appeals for a return to her husband; appeals to her audience's respect for freedom, their patriotism, and their religion)
- Why do you think she repeatedly assumes that English people/her audience do not know of the conditions she describes? (appeals to their sense of pride--they should eliminate these offensive practices)
- If you are using the University of Michigan edition, do you have comments on Moira Ferguson's introduction? What background information does she provide? What instances does she provide of occasions on which Prince was able to defend herself, and why may this have been the case? (father had some stature in the community; slave rebellions in area well known; notes contradictions in Woods' behavior, since they sold other slaves but not Mar)
- Can you discern what may have been features of Mary Prince's temperament? How may editing have influenced the final version of this text? What are some distinctive characteristics of Mary's speech, as preserved here in modified form?
- Do you think The History of Mary Prince is effective as a political argument? As a human document? As a memoir?
- If you have read Robert Wedderburn's accounts of his life, what are some differences between Mary Prince's and Robert Wedderburn's accounts of slavery? Which book do you think was more effective as an abolitionist tract? As a narrative?
Additional Documents:
- What is added by the additional documents at the back of the book? Who was Thomas Pringle, and what is added by his arguments against Mr. Wood and his citation of other witnesses?
- Which of Pringle's arguments do you think might have been the most successful? (If the Woods had truly thought Mary evil, why would they have been so determined to keep her and to place her in positions of authority?)
- What motives do you think caused the Woods to refuse payment to permit Mary her freedom? Did this involve them in difficulties of their own?
- What may have been some of the reasons for the repeated discussion of Mary Prince's personal conduct, respectability, and marriage? Are there inconsistencies in some of Mr. Wood's charges?
- What are some ways in which the conflicts and lawsuits over the representations of Mary Prince's character are related to the pro-slavery/anti-slavery debates?
- What is revealed by their outcomes? What effect may they have had on public opinion?
- What are some parallel or contrasting features in the testimony of Asa-Asa?
- How were the debates in these documents reflected in a 1994 controversy over a Bermudan travel brochure?