Ada Quayle

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Ada Quayle was the pseudonym of Kathleen Louise Woods, née Robinson (1920 – December 2002) was a Jamaican novelist, author of a historical novel, The Mistress (1957). In a 1958 essay Sylvia Wynter called Quayle the first West Indian woman novelist.[1]

Life[]

Kathleen Robinson was born to a mixed-race marriage in Jamaica in 1920. She married an English husband, whom she had apparently met on a boat to Kenya in Egypt. She moved to England during the Second World War, working there as a wireless operator. After the war she settled in Manchester, where she wrote The Mistress.[2]

The "rather predictable" plot of The Mistress, set in Jamaica in 1915, is one of "plantation decadence and deteriotation", dominated by "lust, avarice and cruelty".[3] The novel "explores the psychological (and psycho-sexual) legacy of a slave economy" after emancipation.[4] In one scene, a white landowner, Neil, finds he has blood on himself after whipping a black labourer, Sammy Johnson. The landowner's distress at what he feels as racial contamination has ambivalent erotic undertones.[4] The novel contains passing references to Jamaican folk traditions such as the Junkanoo dance, and an Obeahman, Chi-Ju-Ju.[3] Both white and black characters speak in Jamaican creole.[4]

Wynter called The Mistress "a competent historical piece", though gave it no extended treatment.[3] Frank Collymore, reviewing the novel for BIM, characterised its style as "that clipped staccato style which one might be tempted to call the earnest heming way". However, "much can be forgiven", Collymore continued, "so well is the story developed, so intense its presentation, so powerful its characterization".[5] Wynter's claim that Quayle was the first West Indian woman novelist is dubious. had published several novels,[4] Phyllis Shand Allfrey had published The Orchid House in 1953, and both Elma Napier and Jean Rhys can be considered West Indian writers. Yet a novel by a West Indian woman was still remarkable in the 1950s.[3]

Woods died in Suffolk in December 2002.[2]

Works[]

  • The Mistress. Letchworth, Hertfordshire: MacGibbon & Kee, 1957. Paperback reprint, London: Four Square Books, 1961.

References[]

  1. ^ Wynter, Sylvia (1958). "Strangers at the Gate". The Times Colonies Review: 26.
  2. ^ a b Caribbean Literary Heritage (20 April 2020). "Q is for Ada Quayle (Kathleen Louise Woods nee Robinson)". Retrieved 6 November 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d Campbell, Elaine (1982). "An expatriate at home: Dominicas Elma Napier". Kunapipi. 4 (1).
  4. ^ a b c d Summer, Karen E. (1997). Whiteness and women's writing in the Caribbean (PhD). University of Western Ontario.
  5. ^ Collymore, Frank A. (1958). "Review of The Mistress. By Ada Quayle". BIM. 7 (27): 185–86.
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