Clarine Stephenson

Clarine Stephenson was a Jamaican novelist and poet, ^[1] one of the first women writers in Jamaica. ^[2]

Stephenson's novel Undine tells the story of a Jamaican governess, described in the novel as a "creole child of wealth, reared in the midst of luxury and idleness". ^[3] Forced to return to Jamaica to work as a governess, she escapes the dust of the city and falls in love with an Englishman. The Jamaican countryside is idealised as an "Eden", the "sweet dreamland of these happy hills". ^[4] After having her heart broken, she dies, having a vision of her former lover as Jesus Christ. ^[3] Kim Robinson-Walcott has remarked the fact that the novel features no black characters. ^[5]

Works

• 'The White Man's Prophecy', Jamaica Times, 21 August 1909.
• Undine: An Experience. New York: Broadway Publishing House, 1911.
• 'A West Indian miscellany: chip lagwood'. West Indian review, Vol. 2, no. 1 (Sept. 1935), p.59

References

1. Claire Buck (ed.). "Stephenson, Clarine". The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature. p. 1045.
2. Brenda F. Berrian; Aart G. Broek (1989). Bibliography of Women Writers from the Caribbean: 1831-1986. Three Continents Press. p. x. ISBN   978-0-89410-600-2.
3. Karen E. Sumner (1998). Whiteness and Women's Writing in the Caribbean (PDF) (Thesis). The University of Western Ontario. p. 101.
4. Evelyn O'Callaghan (2004). Women Writing the West Indies, 1804-1939: 'A Hot Place, Belonging To Us'. Routledge. pp. 84–5, 98, 103. ISBN   1-134-44096-0.
5. Kim Robinson-Walcott (2006). Out of Order!: Anthony Winkler and White West Indian Writing. University of the West Indies Press. p. 176. ISBN   978-976-640-172-6.