What does it mean to respect someone? Is it necessary to first see them as equals?
The questions of equality, respect and justice resonate loudly throughout Austin Clarke's much acclaimed novel, The Polished Hoe, which tells the story of a woman who confesses to murdering the man who has been her lover, abuser, benefactor and controller since she was a girl.
The story is set on the island of "Bimshire', an old name for Barbados, a determinedly British outpost in the West Indies. The confessor, Mary Gertrude Mathilda Paul, is black, the daughter of a poor labouring woman, while the victim, Darnley Alexander Randall Belfeels, is the white plantation manager and apparent ruler of the community.
Like her mother before her, the much-older Belfeels takes Mary for himself, marking her as off limits for the boys of her own generation. All her life she remembers his claim on her, as, after church one morning when she is eight years old, he traces a line down her torso with his riding crop as if he owns her. It is this memory that drives her to violence.
Mary's attractions are many but her place as his mistress is secured when she bears him a son, Wilberforce, which no other woman, including his legal wife, had been able to do. As a kept woman, Mary lives in the second grandest house on the plantation, with a servant of her own. Wilberforce is light-skinned and intelligent, benefitting from a white man's education abroad to become a respected doctor on the island. In contrast, while many may fear him, not many respect Belfeels, a man whose treatment of others depends on their colour.
There are comparisons with the situation of American Negros and this rhyme is quoted.
"If you're white,
"You're right,
"When you're brown.
"You can stick-around;
"But when you're bleck,
"You gotta stay a waaaay beck!"
The Polished Hoe is told from the islanders' perspective, giving them a voice that is rarely heard. Mary's long and winding confession to the local police sergeant, a man who has always desired her, is a mixture of sultry coquettishness and posturing as the Madam of the house. Circuitously she explains not just the events of the evening but her whole life, and the lives of women like her. Distracted by lust, he gallantly tries to avoid hearing her testimony, dreading the inevitable punishment that will be hers.
The novel's style won't suit everyone. The story meanders and seems to lose its narrative thread but together the details weave a vivid picture of what it is to be unequal, relegated forever to the slave class. The use of the Bimshire dialect adds authenticity but also obscures some of the meaning for uninitiated readers. Some may be affronted by the frankness of the story " dealing with sex and brutality without blushing and with liberal doses of rum.
The cultural importance of story is felt as Mary reminds the Sergeant, "These narratives are the only inheritances that poor people can hand down to their offsprings… all that we possess to hand-down is love. And bitterness. And blood. And anger. And all four, wrap-up in one narrative."
It's easy to feel that Mary was justified in her actions. Certainly few will weep for Belfeels. Yet if we adopt the relative values of this world, and allow murder to become right in some circumstances, then we become like the oppressors and slave traders who deal in human flesh as though it were their God-given right.
