R. L. STEVENSON’S SAMOAN GOTHIC: REPRESENTING LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY PLANTATIONS

Authors

Carla Manfredi, University of Hawai‘i at MānoaFollow

Abstract

Sāmoa’s plantation landscape haunts Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1892 text, A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa. Stevenson represents the German-run plantations as sites of gothic terror, which are haunted by the ghosts of indentured laborers. In this essay, I examine Stevenson’s accounts of German plantation culture alongside corollary narratives from Sāmoa’s three commercial newspapers: the Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette (1877–81) the Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser (1888–96), and the Samoa Weekly Herald (1892–1900). By juxtaposing some of Stevenson’s primary texts and local newspaper coverage, I not only identify the divergent discourses that shaped the perceptions of laborers but also reveal how the novelist constructed a form of gothic to participate in debates regarding the ethics of plantation labor in Sāmoa.

Recommended Citation

Manfredi, Carla (2016) "R. L. STEVENSON’S SAMOAN GOTHIC: REPRESENTING LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY PLANTATIONS," Pacific Studies Journal: Vol. 39: No. 3, Article 4.
Available at: https://digitalcollections.byuh.edu/pacific-studies-journal/vol39/iss3/4