The Wondrous Body of Mary Seacole: Mobility, Subjectivity and Display in a Transatlantic Life
Open AccessThis dissertation explores the fashioning of Mary Seacole's public image as seen in Seacole's narrative, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, and the periodical press in the British mainland and the Jamaican colony. Central to my examination is a contextualization of the precise historical moments Seacole details in her narrative as well as those moments during which Seacole achieves her greatest celebrity: the South American Republic of New Granada in the early 1850s; the Crimean War and its aftermath (1853-1860); Seacole's death (1881); the death of Seacole's sister Louisa Grant (1905); and Seacole's modern rise to fame in Jamaica and in the United Kingdom (c1990 to the present day). Through this contextualization I argue that the fashioning of Seacole's public image reflects notions of race, nation, gender and colonial power throughout British history. The first chapter uses the language of Wonderful Adventures to explore the manner in which Seacole and the editor of her narrative construct Seacole's early life in the Caribbean and South America so as to appeal to the prejudices of her English audience and its fear of expanding American cultural and political imperialism. Chapter 2 continues this examination of Wonderful Adventures reading it as a Crimean War memoir that constructs Seacole's image as a reflection of the current political climate and contemporary notions of gender, race and nationhood. Chapter 3 shifts to an analysis of the construction of Seacole image as seen in British periodicals. I place Seacole in conversation with fellow black women who achieved some degree of fame in England in the mid-nineteenth century, reading Seacole's public image as a reflection of existing roles available to the public black woman. Chapter 4 continues an analysis of the periodical construction of Seacole's public image, aligning Seacole with the Irish celebrities Lola Montez and Catherine Hayes and arguing that while all three women achieve a great degree of fame in England they are denied complete access to Englishness. I conclude my work with an exploration of the continuing fashioning and consumption of Seacole's public image in the modern United Kingdom and Jamaica.
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