Summary Of Yellow Fever And The Slave Trade

In her essay ‘Yellow Fever and the Slave Trade: Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1998), or in this case in the chapter ‘The Contagion of Consumption and Guilt’, Debbie Lee describes how much slavery, guilt and diseases of seamen – especially yellow fever – are connected, regarding Coleridge’s “Mariner”. At the beginning, the author briefly mentions the slave trade which used to be very common during the eighteenth century and skilfully links it to the topic of guilt. At that time, more and more people and of course also abolitionist writers began to realize that slavery was not an exemplary model and that treating people, most of all Africans, as something inferior with no right of a proper life was not a particularly good idea. Europeans

The author points out that especially in abolitionist literature did this fact cause several different opinions amongst writers. While Helen Maria Williams laid her focus on the guilt of British slave traders , Coleridge blamed all Britons for slavery, emphasizing that everyone was guilty of what had happened – slave traders, plantation owners and normal Britons consuming goods produced by forcefully treated slaves alike. According to Debbie Lee, guilt, slavery and most of all contagious diseases can be found as hints in various parts of the poem and therefore mentions James McKusick’s interpretation of the albatross being a symbol of guilt, an innocent life being destroyed by Europeans just as the slave’s lives have been ruined by the people in power. In addition to that, the reader is informed that yellow fever and other contagious diseases were widespread amongst seamen during this epoch and it is added that yellow fever was – if you put it