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Abstract
Cynric Williams’ Hamel, the Obeah Man (1827) is the first novel written in or about the West Indies to feature an obeah practitioner as protagonist and have that protagonist speak, at length, about himself and his beliefs. This complex treatment of obeah is remarkable, considering the threat it posed to plantation rule at the time. This article will explore how Hamel emerges as a folk hero, a figure of resistance and a trickster. Moreover, it will examine how obeah itself emerges as a “tricky,” disruptive epistemological force. As well as disrupting the narrative’s fictional plantation economy, Hamel (and the obeah he personifies) disrupts its assumptions of the very categorisation of obeah. Obeah allows Hamel sufficient discursive freedom to defy the bounds of the narrative and escape into the realm of myth. With it, he demonstrates the power of religion in the formation of West Indian identity, albeit within the confines of slavery. This article will also explore Williams’ text as a site of anxiety, a text caught between Eurocentric imperialist ideology and acknowledgement of African-Caribbean claims to selfhood. Hamel’s fluidity, which results not only from his position as an obeahman, but also from his position as a trickster, exemplifies the a priori in-between-ness of West Indian culture. Hamel is at once a representation of Williams’ imagination of what obeah might be, and a vehicle for the “unruly subject” of the real-life phenomenon of obeah itself. While the identities of trickster and obeahman are not mutually exclusive, Hamel embodies them both. Reading Hamel as at once trickster and obeahman shows not only obeah’s power of resistance to the contradictions of plantation slavery, but also positions it as both a destructive and an ultimately reconstructive cultural force unique to the islands of the Caribbean.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Janelle Rodriques is a doctoral candidate in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University. Her research covers representations of Obeah and other African-inspired syncretic religious practices in contemporary Caribbean literature.
Notes
1. Brathwaite, “Creative Literature,” 48.
2. Brathwaite, “African Presence,” 78 (original italics).
3. William Earle, Jr’s Obi; or, the History of Three-Fingered Jack (1800) is based on the real life exploits of an enslaved Jamaican runaway called Jack Mansong, who escaped in 1780. Mansong was believed to have had knowledge of obeah, but was not himself an obeahman.
4. In response to Tacky’s Rebellion of 1760, the Jamaican Assembly passed “An Act to Remedy the Evils Arising from Irregular Assemblies of Slaves,” which criminalised obeah [See The National Archives, CO 139/21]. Versions of this act were subsequently passed throughout the British West Indies. The Baptist War of 1831–32, though it is not believed to have been associated with Obeah, took place soon after Hamel was published, suggesting that Williams may have been anticipating imminent armed slave resistance.
5. Jaudon, “Obeah’s Sensations,” 716.
6. Brathwaite, “Creative Literature,” 72.
7. There are several ways to spell Ananse. I use the latter spelling, but have remained faithful to the alternative spellings used in quotation.
8. Levine, “Some Go Up,” 99.
9. Ibid.
10. Patterson, “Migration in Caribbean Societies,” 133 (original italics).
11. Ibid., 134.
12. Patterson, “The Underside of Freedom,” 5.
13. Brathwaite, “Creative Literature,” 72n3.
14. Maarit Forde and Diana Paton similarly observe that, since the transportation and enslavement of Africans began, colonial discourse surrounding obeah has been concerned with rationalising and controlling it. See Forde and Paton, “Introduction,” 1–42.
15. Handler and Bilby, Enacting Power, 2.
16. Wisecup, “Knowing Obeah,” 408.
17. Ibid., 410.
18. Hamel was a contemporary novel, and therefore traded on the sensationalism of the day. Janina Nordius, exploring Hamel’s place within the Caribbean Gothic, argues that Williams “recycles the received picture of Obeah” which, already “associated with rebellion,” would have alerted readers to “the danger to peace and stability apparently posed by chaotic modernity.” See Nordius, “Racism and Radicalism,” 681.
19. Benítez-Rojo, Repeating Island, 3. “Chaos” is capitalised in the original.
20. Zobel Marshall, “Anansi Tactics,” 138.
21. Ward, “What Time Has Proved,” 62. Compare this to “obeah practitioners seem to live at once within the space of the colony and, somehow, beyond it,” Jaudon, “Obeah's Sensations,” 716.
22. Jehlen, Edge of Literature, 1–12.
23. Levine, “Some Go Up,” 123–124.
24. Lalla, “Dungeons of the Soul,” 3, 7.
25. Lalla argues that Hamel’s behaviour is a result of the narrative’s struggle with black selfhood, while Ward argues that it is a result of Hamel’s position as an obeahman. See Lalla, “Dungeons of the Soul”; and Ward, “What Time has Proved.”
26. Spivak, “Humanities and Development,” n.p.
27. Benítez-Rojo, Repeating Island, 17.
28. Brathwaite, “Creative Literature,” 71.
29. Williams, Hamel, 357. Subsequent references to the novel will appear in textual parentheses.
30. Gates, Signifying Monkey, 6.
31. Fernández Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert, Creole Religions, 125.
32. Cosentino, “Many-Coloured Cap,” 262.
33. Gates, Signifying Monkey, 6.
34. Cosentino, “Many-Coloured Cap,” 267.
35. See Vecsey, “Exception,” 106–121.
36. Zobel Marshall, “Liminal Anansi,” 31–32.
37. This is a common Anancy story with several variations, but see Vecsey, “Exception,” 121 for reference.
38. “Ginnal,” in Jamaican patois, can loosely be translated as “swindler.” Modern Anancy speaks with a lisp, and is often ridiculed for being an unsophisticated “country bumpkin.” See Zobel Marshall, “Anansi Syndrome.”
39. Zobel Marshall, “Anansi Tactics,” 138.
40. Vecsey, “Exception,” 117.
41. Patterson, Ethnic Chauvinism, 19.
42. Gates, Signifying Monkey, xxi.
43. Roland had been dreaming about forcing himself upon an unidentified woman, who dies in his arms.
44. Lalla, “Dungeons of the Soul,” 9, 11.
45. Patterson, Ethnic Chauvinism, 19.
46. The cave, too, is a transgressive and chaotic space, almost an extension of Hamel. When asked about it, Hamel replies that it is sometimes used to harbour runaways, and as such “belongs” to no-one in particular. It is a place of concealment but also of emancipation; within it is contained contradiction.
47. Gates, Signifying Monkey, xxi. In this instance, Hamel also approximates to Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and transitions, thresholds and passages.
48. Van Sertima, “Revolutionary Hero,” 448.
49. Such religious syncretism was the backbone of an emergent West Indian creole culture.
50. Hynes, “Mapping,” 37.
51. We do not know if Hamel is aware of Sebastian’s true identity but that is moot. “Sebastian” does not trust the obeahman either.
52. Hamel abandons Combah soon after Combah damages his eyes in a fight with Roland, as he is no longer useful to him.
53. Her illness and death seem mysteriously linked to Roland who, it is implied, may have forced himself on her.
54. Like the spider, Hamel is never really “at home” in any space.
55. Brathwaite, “Creative Literature,” 72.
56. See Benítez-Rojo, Repeating Island, 1–29.
57. As Forde and Paton have argued, although obeah practitioners disrupted the structures of colonial law, they had to work within its strictures in order to survive. See Forde and Paton, “Introduction,” 1–42.
58. See Patterson, Ethnic Chauvinism, 13–32.
59. Ibid., 22.
60. Ibid., 22–23.
61. Van Sertima, “Revolutionary Hero,” 451 (original italics).
62. Tim Watson has argued that “proslavery romances,” such as Hamel “freed from the necessity of presenting the facts of the West Indies,” allow “greater access to the hidden worlds of the enslaved Jamaicans themselves.” See Watson, Caribbean Culture, 12.