The Haitian Revolution in Marlon James' The Book of Night Women

“No, this be nigger hell, but we soon turn it into nigger heaven. Just like Saint-Domingue. Me was have from the massa himself. He get letter from Barbados hearing that the Saint-Domingue nigger trying to unite the island. You hear that? They going to call it a republic. Me hear that, me almost want cry.”

            The Book of Night Women by Marlon James is a profoundly realistic portrayal of Caribbean slavery in early 19^th century Jamaica. Violence, rape, torture, intimidation and a culture of fear remain ever-present in order for the small white minority to control a slave society overwhelmingly black. Taking that into consideration, James had no choice but to depict the cruel, ugly reality of Caribbean racial slavery that reveals the lowest depths of humanity, mostly on the part of whites but blacks themselves who internalize the values of their white oppressors and collaborate with the slave regime. Moreover, this story takes place as the Haitian Revolution fundamentally overturns white supremacy and slavery in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. Thus, the climate of fear whites in Jamaica utilized to protect themselves and colonial rule became even more violent and excessive to prevent the slave population from emulating the model of violent self-liberation used in Haiti. The slave population, however, already heard news of Haiti and followed events as closely as possible, as well as remembering Jamaica’s own long history of maroon wars, slave revolts, and conspiracies. Therefore, the image of Saint-Domingue in the novel illustrates a revolutionary period and inspirational story for blacks still living in shackles in the Anglophone Caribbean as well as a terrifying shock to white Europeans that turned their world upside down.

            As mentioned previously, fears of the Haitian Revolution spreading large-scale insurrections in Jamaica led to whites tightening the reins of the slave regime. Many perceived events in Haiti as attributable to a leniency toward African slaves that did not actually exist in Saint-Domingue. For instance, Massa Humphrey, owner of the Montpelier estate where the events of the novel occur, hears his mother say the following, “Serves those bloody Frenchies right, the mistress say. Too slack, that Code Noir. Way too permissive with those negroes. I swear, give a negro a free hand and he’ll rub it all over you” (139). This heightened fear of slave revolts led to more British redcoats being stationed in Jamaica to ease white fears (43). This British belief that the leniency of the Code Noir, a French government promulgation attempting to codify the laws regarding slavery and punishment of blacks issued under Louis XIV, encouraged the Haitian Revolution lacks any basis, since metropolitan edicts issued to the slave colonies were rarely enforced. 

This perspective, however, allowed white Europeans to continue to discount the organizing capabilities and intellect of enslaved blacks, whose rebellion was allowed to only occur because of whites letting down their guard or actively undermining slavery itself (abolitionists). Unsurprisingly, many whites of the era believed the Haitian Revolution occurred because of abolitionists leading it themselves or indirectly guiding blacks, who like animals, are dumb and unable to organize themselves and act in concert. Similarly, whites in Jamaica respond to the slave uprising sparked by women on different plantations in Middlesex County with shock and blinding paternalism. In the case of Massa Humphrey’s insane mother, who had tortured Homer, the elderly woman who spearheaded the revolt after hearing about the Saint-Domingue August 1791 slave revolt in the Plaine du Nord (302), she tells Homer before she is killed, “Oh, dear Lord. What do you want from me? I’ve always treated you niggers well. I have always treated you well” (403). Cleary, self-delusion and projection of their own savagery was a requirement for whites to live with the unbearable oppression they imposed on others. No matter what enslaved blacks did, they were always the savages, the rapists, the beasts. The narrator of the novel, Lilith’s daughter who tells the story of the women who planned the revolt since nobody else, black men and white men, would bother to tell the story of these slave women, sums this up quite well in the following quotation: 

“The truth be this. They’s scared of the negroes. They scared of the arms that can grab three stalk of cane in one grip and chop it straight through with one swing. They scared of the fingers that sprinkle something in the soup that might be pepper today, poison tomorrow. They scared that the hand that can wring a chicken neck can wring a lady neck. They scared that what between negro man leg goin’ battering ram up in white woman and leave her loose with niggerkin, and ruin her. They scared that deep in the blackest pussy more bewitching than opium.” (260)

Hence, European narratives and accounts of the Haitian Revolution likely exaggerated and emphasized tales of black men raping white women and the extreme violence committed by former slaves against their white oppressors, but never perceived their own transgressions as anything akin to cruelty or evil. This is not to deny the violence of the Haitian Revolution, or the extreme violence slaves on the Montpelier use against white slave-drivers and the Johnny-jumpers, or black men who collaborate with the slave-drivers and whip negroes. Indeed, in the novel the blacks, even after killing whites, chop, stomp, burn, and desecrate the corpses out of rage and a desire for vengeance. Indeed, in one section of the canefields, where the slave uprising began, the narrator describes the carnage after the blacks refused to continue work as the following, “The negroes in that section circle the mens like a flood and swallow them up. They stop screaming. The negroes still stomping and chopping” (398). Blacks were uncontrollably seeking vengeance, and since the men resented listening to the women who orchestrated the uprising, they wasted time breaking into the stable for horses they could not ride or even the rape of Miss Isobel, the half-French white woman orphaned by Lilith who killed her entire family prior to the slave revolt (401-402). 

Clearly, the white response to the Haitian Revolution not only led to an increase in white repression of blacks in the immediate aftermath, but also forced whites to acknowledge, although begrudgingly, the unsustainability of slavery as a social institution once blacks have liberated themselves from the shackles of plantation life. Indeed, after the quelling of the Montpelier estate rebellion, the narrator describes the future as, “Maybe it better for backra and nigger that things go back to what people think is the best way until the fire next time. White man sleep with one eye open, but black man can never sleep” (421). This ominous conclusion on the relationships between masters and slaves symbolizes a constant struggle, manifested in the numerous revolts of blacks, especially those of Coromantee blood, known for leading several revolts throughout Jamaican history. Once the Haitian Revolution succeeding in unseating white rule and slavery in the Caribbean, the climate of fear, vigilance on the parts of whites, and slave revolts and conspiracies flourished across the Atlantic world, eventually forcing Britain to abolish slavery in the 1830s.

In spite of the aforementioned extreme violence and vengeance enslaved blacks justly used and how deservedly whites received it in Saint-Domingue and Jamaica, Lilith, the protagonist of the novel, transcends the ethical values of her time, choosing to not murder blacks nor whites anymore. Lilith, unlike Homer, does not find the whites of the novel inherently unnatural and inhuman, so serves as an ideological bridge between whites and blacks. This dark-complected, green-eyed mulatto house slave struggles to discover her identity and humanity in the most barbarous, inhumane conditions, but refuses to kill after she discovers the permanent stain of spilling human blood. Unlike Homer and other slaves, she also falls in love with the Irish overseer, Robert Quinn, who challenges her views on whites, even though their relationship is one founded on slavery and unequal power relations. Nevertheless, she embraces extreme violence to engage in self-defense against white and black attacks on her body, sexually and physically. Thus, Lilith represents a deeply flawed injection of moralism in a sea of excessive bloodshed. Unsurprisingly, Lilith at times forgets her blackness, or in the words of Gorgon, Lilith’s half-sister through the former overseer, Jack Wilkins, “De only white be full white, fool. Whether you mulatto, mustee or octoroon, you still nigger. Some o’ we forget dat, Gorgon say” (341). Similarly, many people of mixed descent in colonial Saint-Domingue also forgot their blackness, partly due to the absence of the one drop rule in the French Caribbean whereas Jamaica’s racial structure closely resembled the Anglo-American one drop rule to the north. Therefore, Lilith’s opposition to the extremism of the enslaved masses, especially field slaves out for revenge, could be partly due to her multiracial identity. Likewise, gens du couleur of Saint-Domingue often worked against the radicalism of the enslaved African masses. Consequently, the Haitian Revolution was not heralded as a great event in Lilith’s mind, especially because Homer and the other woman plotting the insurrection did not have a concrete plan for escaping and surviving the Maroons and avoiding starvation once the plantations were burned (347).

For the majority of the slaves, however, news of Haiti was hailed and praised. Scholar on the Haitian Revolution, David Geggus, cites evidence of Jamaican slaves singing songs about the Haitian Revolution as early as the 1790s, proving that news of events in Saint-Domingue percolated throughout the Caribbean. Moreover, slaves such as Homer’s following statement reveal the pride and desire on the part of slaves in Jamaica to emulate the Haiti: “You hear ‘bout Saint-Domingue, Lilith? That be the all-negro republic. Nigger want freedom and they take it. Nigger want land and they take it. Nigger want blood and they take that too” (304). Blacks such as Homer obviously did not perceive events in Haiti as proof of African savagery but as a morally justified response to whites that should be carried out throughout the Caribbean. Indeed, according to Homer, “Nigger from Saint-Domingue better than we, them woman have sense and them man have balls. Them don’t take nothing from no devil no more. Our time now” (305). She also interestingly highlights the role of women in the Haitian Revolution, which is often overlooked and male-centered, focusing on leaders such as Toussaint, Dessalines, Henri Christophe, Boukman, and Alexandre Petion rather than the countless women who sacrificed their lives fighting, organizing, and dying for emancipation. Likewise, the Jamaican women who plot the revolt, Homer and Lilith’s six half-sisters, carry it out work in concert with slaves at other plantations in the county but the revolution is remembered as that of Atlas, a male slave whose role was marginal, but his maleness allowed posterity to remember him. 

In addition, Homer and the Night women who plot the revolt practice Obeah and Myal, fusing African-derived traditions and religious practices into their resistance to slavery. Just as Vodoun played a necessary role in the Haitian Revolution, as an influence on the worldview and the belief in the supernatural among slaves, Obeah and Myal are used and widely believed in among the slaves of Jamaica. For instance, Homer and another older woman face accusations of witchcraft and Obeah because of the death of slaves due to bloody flux. Andromeda, a house slave and enemy of Lilith, dies after Lilith asks Gorgon to see an Obeah woman, illustrating the presence of magical realism in the novel (126). Numerous other instances abound of Homer invoking African spirits and communicating with them and through them, her deceased children stolen from her by her mistress’s insistence on selling them into slavery or invoking African deities such as Shango and Oshun to heal Lilith after her near-death beating (169). Homer and the night women also invoke one hundred to two hundred spirits before the revolt begins to ensure success (278).  In truth, these references to the importance of African religious traditions and the focus on life in the present and collective liberation entailed in these creole faiths that united Africans from different cultural backgrounds played an essential role. The experiences of African-descended slaves in both Haiti and Jamaica were quite similar as majority black slave societies with significant African retentions due to the large presence of bossale, or African-born slaves, thus Jamaican slaves likely knew and understood the importance of preserving and looking to slave religions for sustaining the Haitian Revolution. Indeed, during slave revolts, charms believed to protect people from bullets were believed in by enslaved blacks to allow them to face whites armed with muskets and rifles. This liberatory potential of African-derived faiths for slaves was a necessary counter to the pro-slavery sermons, the following given to slaves on Christmas in the novel, “Preacher man tell them that the Bible say them to stand firm in they suffering ‘cause that is they lot for being the cursed son of Noah. That Jesus don’t care for slavery but for the heart of the slave. That Jesus goin’ reward them in heaven for being a good nigger” (149).

Furthermore, the image of Haiti and its symbolic importance for enslaved blacks not only encouraged slave resistance but fundamentally altered the relations of power and labor in the broader Caribbean, including Jamaica. Black consciousness and transnational anti-slavery gained momentum in this period, with slave revolts spreading across the Caribbean and inspiring unrest throughout the region. Britain could no longer ignore the inevitable slave revolts and violence that the system relied upon, and blacks knew this. The desire for retribution, taken to excess by both slaves in Saint-Domingue and in this novel, exemplifies the role of violent retribution as cathartic and required for fomenting consciousness, a very Fanonian idea. Thus, Homer’s role in the revolt was partly due to retribution for the lifetime of beatings and the robbery of her children, as well as a general desire among her and other enslaved persons to live free, like those in Saint-Domingue had achieved. Indeed, the desire for freedom and hatred of whites fueled Homer saying, “"Enough. Learn this, and take it as God-swearing truth. We goin' kill them, girl chile, every single white son of a bitch within hundred mile. We goin' kill them all."

The Book of Night Women is a perfect example of the role of the Haitian Revolution in Caribbean and Western race relations, abolitionism, and the competing narratives and impacts of Saint-Domingue on slaves and whites. In the novel, whites find their worst fears materialized and a complete reversal of their natural world rooted in subordination and enslavement of Africans, whereas Jamaican slaves use the Haitian Revolution and its successes to inspire their own revolt. The actual revolt was hardly a success, with hundreds dying on the side of the blacks and only 94 whites killed, but had the blacks stayed and fought, they could have overran and won the county. Although Lilith’s character serves as a beacon of moralism in the novel, she is overshadowed by the extreme violence of slavery and cannot prevent the revolt. Indeed, her own experiences slaughtering the Roget family, including the children, and getting away with it earns her the respect of Homer and the night women. Nevertheless, the Haitian Revolution’s permanent contribution to Caribbean emancipation furthered the cause for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and eventually emancipation in 1834, since Caribbean slaves in Saint-Domingue showed the world that racial slavery, the plantation system, and white rule were not timeless features of life in the region.