CECILY JONES


 Mary Prince was born into slavery, sometime around 1788, in Bermuda, a
British colony. Her early years were spent with her siblings and her mother,
in the household of their owner, Charles Myners. Mr. Myners died while
Mary was still in her infancy, and her family was sold to Captain Darrells.
His household was managed by Mrs. Williams, his daughter, and "a kind good-
hearted woman," who "treated all her slaves well." Mary and her siblings
played happily together with Miss Betsy, the young daughter of the house,
"with as much freedom almost as if she had been our sister." This was, as
Mary recalled, "the happiest period in my life, for I was too young to
understand rightly my condition as a slave." But adolescence bought with it
an end to this quasi-idyll, ushering in a new phase in which she came to fully
comprehend the meaning of her condition as a slave (Ferguson 57-58).
Straitened financial circumstances led Mrs. Williams to hire out Mary to a
Mrs. Pruden. Parting from Mrs. Williams and her young playmate Betsy was
a "sore trial," for as Mary confessed, next to her own mother she had loved
her mistress "better than any creature in the world." Mrs. Pruden proved to
be a "passionate" though "not unkindly" woman, and Mary enjoyed her role
as nursemaid to Mrs. Pruden's young children; indeed, it was from Miss Fanny
that Mary acquired elementary literacy skills (Ferguson 58-60).
 This "happy state" came to an end with the death of Mrs. Williams, her
former mistress. The widowed Mr. Williams, intending to remarry, recalled
Mary's family to his household, and sold them to raise funds for his
forthcoming nuptials. No doubt the young Mary was conscious of the
paradox that in seeking to rebuild his family, Mr. Williams brought about the
separation of her family. Distressed but helpless to prevent the sale, Mary's
mother prepared her children, dressing her daughters in clean shifts before
taking them to the market-place where auctions were held. This was
tantamount to death itself... "See, I am shrouding my poor children; what a
task for a mother!" (Ferguson 61).
 Her experiences on the auction block fermented Mary's consciousness of
the powerlessness of the enslaved, and in particular, the absolute denial of
enslaved women's rights to motherhood. Hoping to attract the attentions of a
decent master or mistress, Mary's mother was forced to collude with the sale.
She "placed us in a row against a large house, with our backs to the wall and
our arms folded across our breasts." In arranging her daughters in this manner,
perhaps Mrs. Prince, aware of slave masters' sexual abuse of female slaves,
attempted to cover up signs of her daughter's burgeoning sexuality. Her heart
throbbing "with grief and terror so violent," Mary could only stand mutely
observing her mother's distress, vainly hoping that a kind benefactor might
come to their rescue. "Did one of the many bystanders, who were looking at
us so carelessly, think of the pain that wrung the hearts of the negro woman
and her young ones? No! No!" Mary later described her deep humiliation as

 ... [the vendue master].. .took me by the hand, led me out into the middle of
 the street, and turning me slowly around, exposed me to the view of those