Unsilencing Slavery by Celia E. Naylor;

Author:Celia E. Naylor; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)
Published: 2022-01-13T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

The White Witch and Enslaved Ghosts

Reinscribing Silences of Slavery in the Contemporary Tours at Rose Hall Great House

The fabricated stories of paradise and peril in Herbert G. de Lisser’s novel offered considerable fodder to fuel rumors and myths surrounding Rose Hall Plantation. They also provided the foundation for the contemporary Rose Hall Great House tours. Such stories involving Jamaican metaphysical beliefs (such as Obeah) had been wholly entrenched by the late 1950s, when John Rollins Sr. (former lieutenant governor of Delaware, entrepreneur, and philanthropist) purchased the seven-thousand-acre Rose Hall property in the 1950s; at the time, the house itself had been uninhabited for over one hundred years.1 In the 1960s Rollins then invested between $2 million and $3 million to renovate the great house to its former glory; this renovation was completed in 1971. Beginning in the 1970s and extending into the present day, the Rollins family has constructed major hotels in Montego Bay.2 Following John Rollins Sr.’s death in 2000, his wife, Michele Rollins, became the owner of Rose Hall and other Jamaican properties owned by him.3 Indeed, she provides her own personal online invitation to guests, summoning visitors to experience the legend of the White Witch of Rose Hall.4 These significant purchases and development schemes by the Rollins family reflect the ongoing U.S. imperialist presence in the Caribbean.5 Jamaica and other Caribbean countries often represent oases of escape and hedonism for foreigners, including prime venues for destination weddings, and these countries have also become targets for neocolonial business ventures.6 Even as England has relinquished socioeconomic and political control of some of its former Caribbean colonies, some Americans have manifestly reinforced and wholly embraced the idea of the Caribbean as the United States’ “backyard”—and, as Karen Wilkes posits in her work, as “paradise for sale.”7

For almost fifty years, the Rollins family has generated extensive and impressive marketing strategies for Rose Hall Great House and its expansive hotel/resort properties.8 Visitors to Montego Bay are inundated with tour information about the Rose Hall Great House at Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, as well as at hotels along Jamaica’s north coast. At the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston (as of November 2019), a picture of the Rose Hall Great House serves as the prominent, central image in the featured poster on St. James Parish—one of several posters in the airport presented courtesy of the Jamaica Tourist Board. There are also cruise ship companies that highlight Rose Hall Great House, with some creating combination packages that include a day tour of the Rose Hall Great House.9 Before and after the tours, visitors are also encouraged to purchase items at the gift store to enjoy the pleasures of Rose Hall beyond the boundaries of this plantation.

The Rose Hall Great House operates as a tourist attraction with fictional information presented as the “history” of the site. It is often mistaken by visitors as a museum; to be explicitly clear, the Rose Hall Great House is not a museum. From the limited information

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