Through Mary’s Eyes: Enslavement, Marriage, and Black Women’s Subjectivity
Alicia Prainito completed this piece during her internship, generously co-sponsored by the C. Dallett Hemphill Summer Internship Program through the MCEAS.
In 1768, a formerly enslaved man living in England brought criminal charges against his wife's enslaver, John Newton, for kidnapping her and bringing her back to Barbados against his will. Remembered as ‘Hylas’ and ‘Mary’ in the historical record, their case offers insight into the intersections of slavery, marriage, religion, and women’s subjectivity. Rather than solely establishing enslaved peoples’ humanity, this story interrogates the degrees of autonomy Black women like Mary could assert within systems designed to marginalize them. While the legal record does not survive, Granville Sharp, a British scholar and abolitionist, attended the trial involving Mary and kept detailed notes. I worked with his notes to make sense of the case. In 1754, John Newton arrived in England with Mary, his sister-in-law Judith, and her enslaved companion Hylas. Hylas and Mary married in 1758 with their enslaver’s consent. And when Judith died in 1763, Hylas gained his freedom. However, in 1766, Newton sent Mary back to Barbados to return to life on his plantation. In response, Hylas sued and pressed charges against Newton in 1768 for kidnapping his wife.
Mary’s date and location of birth is not noted in available records, but she was enslaved on the Newton Plantation, a large sugar plantation in Christ Church, Barbados. As indicated by Newton’s decision to have Mary accompany him to England, Mary likely performed domestic tasks rather than working in the fields. Domestic workers existed in forced intimacy with their enslavers due to their close proximity and interactions - such as cooking and caring for family members - that involved an additional level of trust. Within the brutal framework of Caribbean plantation society, it is highly likely that Mary faced sexual exploitation as a direct result of that close proximity. This abuse was underpinned by British colonial legal systems that denied enslaved persons legal personhood and thus, sanctioned recourse.
In 1661, Barbados became the first English colony to pass a slave code with the goal of detailing what enslaved people were not allowed to do, and the corresponding punishments for disobedience. While the code was quite comprehensive, it made no mention of marriage or any specific gendered laws; notably, the code made no reference to sex at all. This was a testament to the attempt of British colonists and enslavers to deny enslaved people access to social structures central to community and personhood. The limited documentation of enslaved marriages on the island highlights this erasure: prior to 1900, there were only three documented marriages involving enslaved people in Barbados, and in all three instances at least one party was free. Christianity was central here, positioning white sexuality as monogamous and lasting while Black sexuality was seen as promiscuous and fleeting. A stark reflection of hypocrisy, however, is evidenced by what sociologist Cecilia A. Green termed a “dual marriage system”: white enslavers maintained legal wives in England and informal, coerced relationships with enslaved women in the colony. Therefore, historian Jennifer L. Morgan stresses how Black women’s bodies were portrayed as both desired and disdained. White society grappled with the contradictions by utilizing imagery of deceptive beauty to justify reproductive and productive exploitation– all while excluding them from Christian morality and society.
The December 1768 trial in the Court of Common Pleas underscored the racial and gendered power dynamics that permeated the case. Newton’s legal team questioned Hylas’ motives, suggesting financial gain as the primary interest, which was integral in attempting to discredit Hylas. When asked whether he would prefer the money or his wife, Hylas chose Mary– a declaration that challenged the dehumanizing racial dynamics of both the colonies and metropole.
Sharp took a firm stance in support of Hylas, and his reasoning is reflective of reformist thinking in his time. Rooted in Christian and patriarchal frameworks, Sharp argued that “Hylas, as a husband, has a right to his wife by the laws of god and man.” If Hylas was free, then Mary must also be because they are “one person” under the doctrine of coverture in English common law, which held that a woman followed the legal condition of her husband. In a significant outcome that marked a rare legal victory for a Black litigant, the court ruled in favor of Hylas, decreeing that Mary must be returned to England.
Yet, Mary’s voice remains noticeably absent from the historical record. There is no mention of Mary returning to England, or even evidence that she was aware of the trial or its proceedings. This silence reflects the systematic erasure of Black women’s perspectives within both patriarchal and colonial frameworks. In highlighting the gradations of Black women’s agency, Mary’s oppression is twofold: by the institution of slavery and the patriarchal norms rooted in white Christianity. While Hylas’ legal victory indicated progress of a sort, it did not translate to freedom or acknowledged subjectivity for Mary.
Mary’s story is incomplete. Mary enters and leaves the historical record around a legal case in which she was centered, but not a party to. This leaves huge questions around her movements that are impossible to answer for certain. And questions like these are perpetual and pervasive for those struggling against systemic oppression.
Rather than reducing Mary’s narrative to one of abjection, speculative connections based on historical documentation provide a potential continuation of Mary’s story. Historian Hilary Beckles’ work on the Newton Plantation documents suggests a connection between Mary and Mary Ann, an enslaved woman in her mid-50s and of mixed-race descent present in plantation records from 1798. This would mean that May was in her late teens when she married Hylas. If these identities align, Mary remained in Barbados and married a white man named Thomas– raising seven children. Documentation from the same year also mentioned grandchildren.
By this time, she had worked her way up the plantation hierarchy with her sister Old Doll– a status that may have afforded her limited stability and familial connections. In plantation hierarchies, enslaved individuals were stratified based on their labor roles and proximity to the enslaver. With increased proximity came material advantage. Enslavers enacted this system in order to avoid uprisings, keeping enslaved people of different ‘classes’ from bonding and enforcing divisions among enslaved people to maintain plantation power dynamics. Suppressing revolt was especially important on the Newton Plantation because it was known to be particularly brutal. For example, managers locked disobedient people in dungeons until they were ready to ‘behave.’
Therefore, Mary’s high status is notable. She was able to create some comfort for herself and her family while still enslaved– making it unsurprising that she did not want to leave. She had established deep roots in Barbados. In this framework, Mary’s story is not one of merely silence and erasure but also of presence and negotiation. Her life, reconstructed through speculative research, highlights the complexities of survival and subjectivity within oppressive systems. By holding her silence in tension with potential material circumstances, we gain a deeper understanding of how enslaved women like Mary utilized their agency– even if it was marginalized from the historical record.
In providing a compelling microhistorical lens into the intersections of enslavement, marriage, Christianity, and women’s subjectivity, the Mary-Hylas case exemplifies the layered experiences of Black women in the Americas in the eighteenth century. In holding the denial of full personhood alongside nuanced ways in which Mary resisted, the gradations of enslaved women’s agency can be exposed– peaking into the violence and fear associated with British systems of enslavement while also highlighting the ability to create familial roots and social standing inside a repressive socio-political structure.