"To BE FREE IS VERY SWEET:" RACIALISED REPRESENTATIONS OF SLAVERY... 75

whites asserted and enjoyed hegemonic dominance over the mass of
coloured and black classes below them.14
 It was against this socio-economic and political background that the
Nugents began their residency in Jamaica. Throughout their four year
sojourn, Mrs. Nugent kept a daily journal of her experiences. She was a keen
and articulate observer and her journal remains an invaluable, if not unbiased,
source on social, gender, race and class relations as they shaped the contours
of Jamaican slave society. As governor's wife, Mrs. Nugent enjoyed the
position of First Lady of elite white Jamaican society, and her perspectives
were undeniably informed by her status as a privileged imperial subject.
Mrs. Nugent herself was clearly conscious of her own rank as a member of
the English ruling class, and constantly made reference to what she suspected
to be the degeneracy of white Creoles.
 Governor and Mrs. Nugent both accepted and subscribed to the racialised
social order that rendered Africans the social and cultural inferiors of whites.
Indeed, the Jamaican plantocracy justified the enslavement of Africans
through recourse to racist ideology that depicted Africans as primitive
savages, in need of the civilising influence of whites, a belief shared by Maria
Nugent who regarded slavery as the natural fate of uncivilised and unchristian
Africans. Receiving the news of her husband's appointment to Jamaica, Mrs.
Nugent dryly assessed her own forthcoming role: "I am," she wryly
commented "to play Governor's Lady to the Blackies" (Wright 2). This was
her own imperial burden, to be dutifully borne for the sake of country and
empire. Playing 'Governor's Lady' to the "Blackies," with all its maternalist
overtones, constituted an acceptable, indeed, dutiful, role for a white woman
of Nugent's status. As a newcomer to Jamaica, Mrs. Nugent admitted little
knowledge of slavery, but resolved to become educated on the subject, even
going so far as to read Wilberforce's anti-slavery essays. From neighboring
whites, enslaved peoples, and her regular evening levees with groups of
mulatto women, she acquired a variety of perspectives on slavery and
conditions of the enslaved. Her observations and discussions soon led her
to feel sufficiently well-informed about the 'truth' of slavery. In her opinion,
members of the anti-slavery lobby were sadly misguided and misinformed
in their assertions of the inhumanity of West Indian slave-owners. In April
1802, Nugent writes,

 [I] amusedd myself with reading the Evidence before the House of Commons
 for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. As far as I at present can see and hear
 of the ill-treatment of the slaves, I think what they say upon the subject is
 greatly exaggerated. Individuals, I make no doubt, occasionally abuse the

14 For an in-depth analysis of the development of Jamaican slave society, see
Brathwaite (2005).