Reconciling Virtue and Commerce in The History of Sir George Ellison: Evangelical Stewardship in the Pre-abolition Jamaica Slave Plantation
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In The History of Sir George Ellison (1766), Sarah Robinson Scott extends the prequel A Description of Millenium Hall (1762)’s discussion about restoring virtue amidst the advances of a liberal commercial society. If in the prequel Scott demonstrates virtue in a female community detached from the corrupted economic realm, she confronts the rampant economic rationale head on in Sir George Ellison to test the viability of her proposed virtue. This paper investigates the novel’s opening Jamaica sequence which centers on the virtuous protagonist George Ellison’s problematization of colonial slavery and his efforts to reform the inhumanity and cruelty on the Jamaica slave plantation. Many critics focus on Ellison’s failure to actualize abolition and thereby dismiss Ellison’s antislavery didacticism to collapse in the face of economic interests. I seek to reconsider the Jamaica sequence in the context of the pre-abolition period in which the novel is dealing with slavery and of Scott’s larger novelistic endeavor to demonstrate a virtue that can effectually curtail economic motivations. This article first delves into the novel’s philosophical discussion about Evangelical stewardship, which the prequel’s ending briefly discloses as the motivation for virtue, prompted by Ellison’s divergence from colonial mentality. Upon establishing that Ellison is motivated not by self-interest but Evangelical stewardship, this paper further elucidates his reformative meaures’ radical repositioning of slaves to ultimately assume the status of free servants within a colonial plantation. In so doing, I argue that by testing her proposed stewardship-based virtue first and foremost in the heart of commercial empire, wherein the worst atrocities in human history were committed in the name of commercial advancement, Scott effectually establishes Evangelical stewardship as that which can guarantee a truly virtuous England that ultimately reconciles virtue and commerce.
Abstract
In The History of Sir George Ellison (1766), Sarah Robinson Scott extends the prequel A Description of Millenium Hall (1762)’s discussion about restoring virtue amidst the advances of a liberal commercial society. If in the prequel Scott demonstrates virtue in a female community detached from the corrupted economic realm, she confronts the rampant economic rationale head on in Sir George Ellison to test the viability of her proposed virtue. This paper investigates the novel’s opening Jamaica sequence which centers on the virtuous protagonist George Ellison’s problematization of colonial slavery and his efforts to reform the inhumanity and cruelty on the Jamaica slave plantation. Many critics focus on Ellison’s failure to actualize abolition and thereby dismiss Ellison’s antislavery didacticism to collapse in the face of economic interests. I seek to reconsider the Jamaica sequence in the context of the pre-abolition period in which the novel is dealing with slavery and of Scott’s larger novelistic endeavor to demonstrate a virtue that can effectually curtail economic motivations. This article first delves into the novel’s philosophical discussion about Evangelical stewardship, which the prequel’s ending briefly discloses as the motivation for virtue, prompted by Ellison’s divergence from colonial mentality. Upon establishing that Ellison is motivated not by self-interest but Evangelical stewardship, this paper further elucidates his reformative meaures’ radical repositioning of slaves to ultimately assume the status of free servants within a colonial plantation. In so doing, I argue that by testing her proposed stewardship-based virtue first and foremost in the heart of commercial empire, wherein the worst atrocities in human history were committed in the name of commercial advancement, Scott effectually establishes Evangelical stewardship as that which can guarantee a truly virtuous England that ultimately reconciles virtue and commerce.
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