English Trader, Indian Maid: Representing Gender, Race, and Slavery in the New World. An Inkle and Yarico Reader (review)

Frank Felsenstein, ed. English Trader, Indian Maid: Representing Gender, Race, andSlavery in the New World. An Inkle and Yarico Reader. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. 317p. Peter L. Bayers 1-airpield Universu Y One of the most popular stories from the New World, Inkle and Yarico first appeared in Richard Ligon's.,4 TrueandExactHistoryoftbelsUndofBarbadoes (1673) and was later made famous by Richard Steele's account ofthe tale in TheSpectator in 1711. The original version of the tale, in short, recounts the liaison between Inkle, an Englishman, and an Indian maiden, Yarico. A castaway in theAmericas, Inkle is saved from death at the hands of "savages" by the tenderhearted Yarico. For her services, Inkle promises to takeYarico back to Englandwhere hewill marry her. However, upon his rescue from a passing English ship, he has a change of heart, selling Yarico into slavery — even upping his asking price when he discovers that Yarico is pregnant. In his book, English Trader, Indian Maid, Frank Felsenstein has gathered together full texts and extracts from major English versions of this tale up to 1839 in one tight collection. In addition to the English versions of Inkle and Yarico, Felsenstein's book includes a handful of other adaptations of the tale, including American, French, and Caribbean versions. In an appendix, he includes influences upon Steele's recounting ofthe tale, Petronius' "The Ephesian Matron," as well as another source for the legend, Jean Mocquet's Travels and Voyages. Finally, Felsenstein includes Wordsworth's "The Mad Mother" in order to suggest how Wordworth may have been influenced by the tale. Although the story ofInkle and Yarico is familiar to scholars in early American literature and 17th- through 19th-century British literature, Felsenstein's book provides a valuable primary resource for illustrating the ways in which the tale was appropriated and manipulated for different ideological purposes. As an anthology which traces the development ofthe tale, Felsenstein's book helps to situate the story as an unfolding historical and cultural narrative, particularly in regard to representations of race, gender, and slavery in 18th- and 19th-century England. In most versions ofthe story, in fact, Yarico has morphed from a Native American into a black slave who has been cruelly rejected by her white lover. As Felsenstein points out in his introduction, "it is significant that [the tale's] period of greatest currency was when the issue [of slavery] was so much the subject of national debate" (40). And as this collection ofprimary sources underscores, slavery cannot be separated from representations ofgender and how these representations were played out within and against the discourses of empire. Felsenstein IOB + ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW % FALL 2000 includes in his book examples from multiple genres of the story — narrative, epistle, poem, comic-opera — effectively buttressing his argument that this story of imperialism was a central trope in the production ofmanifestations ofEnglish identity in the 18th and 19th centuries. In fact, in his introduction, Felsenstein makes the case that this tale must be seen not onlyas awritten story, but onewhich existed as part ofan oral tradition in British culture. In perhaps his boldest and most intriguing critical maneuver, the fact that Felsenstein includes Wordsworth's "The Mad Mother" — a poem which never directly alludes to Inkle and Yarico — - helps to iterate the possible influences ofthe tale on the origins of British Romanticism . After all, Felsenstein argues, in Wordworth's "enthusiastic pursuit of oral literature and its traditions, the tale could be construed as an ideal source for Wordsworth's art" (34). While Felsenstein is cautious in his reading ofWordworth, his reading offers a point ofdeparture for further study ofWordsworth and Romanticism in general. Felsenstein's "Introduction," drawing from the wealth ofcriticism on the tale, offers a clear critique and thorough overview of the different manifestations of the story and their cultural significance. Ofparticular help is Felsenstein's introduction to each version ofthe tale. Unlike some introductory material in anthologies which give little insight or context for the primary texts, depending on the version ofthe tale, Felsenstein summarizes the origins ofthe version, its relationship to other versions ofthe tale, the author's life, and, when appropriate, modern critical debate surrounding the particular version ofthe tale...