Stepping Out from the Periphery: Enslaved Girls and the Jamaican Plantation Complex

Source material for any study of girlhood can be limited, as girls traditionally find themselves on the fringes of historical discourse.  Source material for a study of enslaved girls is even more elusive.  Already part of a marginalized group of historical agents, enslaved girls are hidden within the traditional treatments of Atlantic World slavery—treatments that categorically depict the enslaved as victims or voiceless statistics.  Unfortunately, as a result, enslaved girls largely remain silent players in the annals of history.  These girls were anything but silent, however, and that becomes increasingly obvious when one enters the archives and begins searching for them.  

By using enslaved girls in Jamaica as a case study, I will discuss how to find enslaved girls’ place, voice, and agency within the narrative in an effort to bring their experiences to the forefront and out of the shadows of the periphery. Whether African-born or creole, these girls lived in an environment that constantly reinforced their status as chattel, a status defined by the nature of their work itself.  Meanwhile, enslaved girls struggled for survival in a world that refused to acknowledge and protect their childhood and girlhood.  So, while I discuss how enslaved girls in Jamaican reacted to their enslavement through acts of resistance, I will ultimately discuss the various ways in which enslaved girls as a whole coped with the hardships of slavery and the realization that they were slaves by considering how they developed physically and psychologically within the plantation complex.